The owner of an eight-acre industrial complex straddling train tracks in Maspeth, Queens, wants to propose a mixed-use project on the site.
The oddly-shaped property at 57-46 56th St. is currently home to a series of buildings used by various warehouse and industrial companies, and is bisected by a set of tracks used by the Long Island Railroad. The parcel is owned by Manhattan development firm the Chetrit Group, which said Wednesday that its plans are still in the early stages, but that it would like to propose something that fits in with the low-rise housing that flanks the property.
Winning approval for a rezoning could prove difficult, as the parcel lies within one of the city's Industrial Business Zones, which the de Blasio administration pledged to protect from residential development, in keeping with a 2015 commitment. But the Chetrit Group said that the site both lies at the edge of the district, and is across the street from existing housing, which would help make the case for redevelopment.
The site has been mentioned this year by City Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley in connection with her critique of City Hall’s homeless policy.
In August, she sent a letter to the mayor encouraging him to proactively search for more opportunities to develop permanent, low-income housing, rather than rely on converting hotels to homeless shelters, which has led to vehement protests and lawsuits in her district.
"We need affordable housing, not another shelter-hotel," she wrote in the letter to the mayor. "In recent months, two real estate developers who are eager to build residential housing units in Maspeth and Woodside have approached me, looking to start a conversation about a zoning change."
21 comments:
This is the old Welbilt Stove company location. I'd like to see what the EPA would say about the ground underneath the site, it's a mess.
Also, public transportation in the are sucks. One needs a bus or two to get to a subway or el.
Wouldn't this have been a better place for a park considering it is right next to Metropolitan Oval?
Ms. Crowley must be considering a difficult reelection ahead, since she is working on "Yuge" campaign moneys from the real estate industry.
Perhaps she does not have any idea what the initials "IBZ" stand for...
did they tell dizzy lizzy it will be shiney and new
Beware of the chetrit group...
http://ny.curbed.com/2015/11/2/9905036/developers-try-to-rebrand-the-south-bronx-to-disastrous-effect
"did they tell dizzy lizzy it will be shiney and new"
No. They told her to support it if she knew what was good for her.
How about we just leave it as a warehouse because, because, you know warehouses/small businesses = long term steady jobs?
Anonymous said...
"This is the old Welbilt Stove company location. I'd like to see what the EPA would say about the ground underneath the site, it's a mess.
Also, public transportation in the are sucks. One needs a bus or two to get to a subway or el.
Wouldn't this have been a better place for a park considering it is right next to Metropolitan Oval?"
Once it is covered in concrete, to the powers that be, it will not matter what is underneath. Realize how many of our schools and children spend their days are atop waste sites.
BUT you want a park, and it would be OK for the children to play on the un-encapsulated contaminated soil???
Each and every time someone wants to improve a property the first cry is "make it a park!"
How much of the peoples' hard earned tax dollars can we waste upon such silly endeavors to build a park next to a PARK?
And rather that having a private investor pay for remediation and-or encapsulation let the City pay the HIGHEST bidder and additional overruns with our tax dollars.
BRILLIANT!
"...public transportation in the area sucks..." This is in an industrial zone.
So your solution is to a BIGGER park next to an existing park surrounded by factories and warehouses.
Will we covert each and every closed warehouse into another park?
Who will use it? And we then need to take care of it at the public's expense.
Ironically the Parks Department is one of the smallest and greatly underfunded departments.
Additionally the Parks Department is to first to have funding cut anytime budget cuts are announced.
Does anyone think these plans through?
I imagine the anonymous poster has a masters degree in "Urban Planning".
Last anon - "...long term steady jobs?"
More Government jobs. The continued growth of the Government Leviathan...
F_ing great Cant put cookie box housing for "PEOPLE THAT WORK" in that place there is no transportation.
I was looking for a house with a driveway in that area for that very reason and the neighborhood itself. Most the people that own those 2 small floor homes around this property have jobs, cars & driveways and in some cases ample street parking during the day.
Low income my ass, it will become another sec 8 barracks or homeless shelter that will eventually have the neighborhood problems of the Bronx projects of the 1970s. Complete with gangs of teenagers climbing through your windows.
It appears Crowley looses more brain cells by the day needs to see a doctor. Why must she put on knee pads every time the mayor comes calling ? She pulled the same shit under Bloomberg.
Duh--Hey Stupid Liz: Every apartment would need at least 2 reserved & numbered parking spaces for working class prospects. --AND you KNOW that's not gonna happen, look at the owners history. This is a TROJAN horse for welfare barracks !!
Stop feeding the public shit and telling them its a meal, it apparently not working anymore.
If the proposed Queens Light Rail project goes through, this property is all of a sudden going to be worth much more zoned residential, as it sits within walking distance of the proposed Maspeth-Grand Avenue Station
Anon said: "Each and every time someone wants to improve a property the first cry is "make it a park."
Better to have a park there than low income housing which will relegate the whole area into another democrat slum.
"Queens Light Rail project"
Useless rails to Long Island City & Rockaway. How many people in Maspeth work in Rockaway or the Casino? It be a disaster.
And in who's backyards do we put the substations spewing nasty EMI in ?
Where would people go to work some Café, Starbucks, McDonalds or cleaning gig in a LIC tower for minimum wage?
Yeah Manhattan bound you could transfer to the 7 train already so packed you can’t board it during the day and risk TB and a shitload of other 3rd world disease if you do.
Rail will also bring access to all the shit into the neighborhood. Maspeth being secluded and tucked away is what makes Maspeth, MV, Glendale and its Heritage great and un-messed with.
Rails will turn it into another Flushing or extension of Long Island City.
Perhaps the city wants a barracks for the service industry much like the politicians did in Springs section of East Hampton.. And that's been a disaster on every angle!!
NO THANKS !!!
Housing? On polluted land?
The city is running out of space for building their phony "luxury" housing.
Wanna bet that it becomes a homeless hotel?
Will that proposed trolley line, that is to link Queens and Brooklyn , run past it?
LOL! Living at the isolated reaches of Queens and getting to work in Manhattan is still a problem.
Come on guys, the Democratic Machine will destroy this country to get their way and maintain their gravy train. These are people that really are not qualified to do much of anything except repeat the same tired mantras that were stale a decade ago. Everyone knows that this, along with just about anything they have cooked up in the last 20 or so years is bullshit and self serving.
The best thing to do is put housing for the snowflakes in here. Give 'em bike lanes instead of transportation, a few Lockwoods - the poor man's Fishes Eddy - to decorate their microunits, and add a few half-ass 'comedy clubs' with what passes for humor in their sad-assed lives (routines full of dirty words and bodily fluids that would make a 7th grader's eyes roll up), restaurtants that serve a dozen ways ratburgers are made around the globe and - whompa! - you have a ready made community!
Who would live next to freight tracks that primarily haul trash? What does low rise housing mean? 10 stories? No one Is building 1,2 or 3 family houses.........no $$$ in it.
Every week that goes by ,add a another million dollars to the light rail project. Add all the delaying lawsuits and inflation in general...........it ain't happpenin'
Who would want to live on polluted land and by this light rail? Again why do we need this?
Will this be the Maspeth projects?? Put low income families on polluted soil causing all sorts of health problems.
With all this talk about inappropriate and unnatural park space for lunatic and fabricated overvalued development, look no further than that stupid and delayed Bushwick Inlet. That was implemented by the fun size mayor bloomberg after a warehouse burned down and took 10 years to complete. Of course what happened during that time led to fast track luxury tower building and the displacement of long time residents that could no longer afford to shop for food and live around there anymore. Another example is the way behind schedule and practically bankrupt pacific park project in downtown Brooklyn
You know what's going to happen now that the park is open, especially since it officially opened at the worst time in December. It's going to be a slum village for all the displaced, unwanted and unsightly to the aforementioned snowflakes.
Urban planning has become a hideous mutation of the ideas of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. The only thing people like Dizzy Crowley and her mentally ill developer donors and advisors care for are to get shitloads of revenue quickly.
When we run out of pate the people will be eager to eat shit spread.
We have run out of locations for good housing.
So, here we are. Feed 'em shit!
Queens' voters are like mushrooms.
If you keep them in the dark and fertilize them with crap, you have a nice crop to vote in the incumbents.
What is the IQ of a Queens mushroom?
Correction. It's atlantic yards not pacific park in downtown Brooklyn, in fact it's not even a park but Ratner and the Greenland Partners from China renamed it as such to garner desperate financial EB-5 funding.
LOL-- Mushrooms are smarter the Queens voters.
Light rail involves a lot of monetary technical shit.
Drastic change sin signaling, switching, Power distribution, substations with converters, 3rd rail or overheads for example. Then you have to imminent domain for fencing. Battery powered trolleys ? nope, not in 2016 they wont have the range or capacity.
And last the LIRR will never go for this because it has enough problems with that over crowded Montauk line (people & bags sitting on the floor and isles so many they cant even collect tickets). Then the issue of sharing the rails and scheduling with freight from the Brookhaven terminal.
The logistics just cant work, wont happen in our lifetime anyway. I'm sure the politicians have been told this.
THIS IS A SHILL PROPOSAL STEALTH OPERATION TO RE-ZONE THEN SNEAK IN A HOMELESS SHELTER !!!
BTW an old co-worker who still works at NBC told me the Mayors office (who issues all the tripod & assorted news crew permits) has sent out requests (threats) to its clients requesting the words "homeless and shelter" no longer be used in the same sentence due to some emergency.
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