The City Council voted 50-0 to approve a C2-2 commercial overlay last Thursday that will allow Douglaston’s Mizumi restaurant to expand significantly, which Councilmember Vickie Paladino (R-Whitestone) supported despite overwhelming opposition from area civic leaders.
The original plan, which Community Board 11 voted unanimously against in May, extended the commercial overlay from the western end of the Mizumi property to 234th Street. Though Borough President Donovan Richards recommended that the overlay be approved — if it only included the Mizumi property — the original plan went before the Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises last month, at which point modifications were recommended.
At the time, civic leaders believed that modification to be the same as Richards’ plan; following last Thursday’s vote, however, they were informed that is not the case. Though smaller than the original overlay, it will extend to 233rd Street, and therefore includes two additional properties: the carwash two doors down and the adjacent abandoned church.
Sean Walsh, president of the Douglaston Civic Association, said the move once again calls Paladino’s transparency into question.
“I feel double-betrayed,” he told the Chronicle. Referring to the councilmember, he continued, “I feel insulted that you can lie to me so bald-faced ... now I’m going to have to go full tilt against you.”
And that he did. At Monday’s Community Board 11 meeting, he and several others made their discontent with Paladino clear. Flushing land-use expert Paul Graziano even went through each point in Paladino’s subsequent press release on the matter, detailing his objections to each. Both Third Vice Chair Henry Euler and board member Doug Montgomery noted that they were not informed of the additions to the overlay. Montgomery said Monday that a City Planning Commission employee told him the added properties were incorporated after the vote; the Chronicle did not receive confirmation of that by press time.
Paladino has stood by her decision, which she has touted as a compromise, and says she did not flip-flop on the issue. “I did what was best to serve the community, the small business owner and the environment,” Paladino said. “This was a homerun.”
