Multi-family homes will be destroyed for mega tower.

LIC Post

Three more century-old homes in Long Island City are slated for demolition.

The multi-family homes are all located on the same block – one at 23-10 45th Ave. and two at 45-03 and 45-07 23rd Street.

The demolitions will clear the way for the construction of a 45-story building near the southeast corner of 23rd Street and 45th Avenue in the heart of Court Square.

Development Site

Permits for the demolitions were filed Nov. 8. A total of seven multi-family homes on the block are in the process of being torn down to make way for the new high-rise.
The addresses of the buildings to be bulldozed extend from 23-10 to 23-16 45th Ave., and 45-03 to 45-09 23rd St.

The new project, however, will not cover the corner two-story building currently at 45-01 23rd St. The developer noted in city filings that attempts to purchase the property and its development rights from the owner were unsuccessful

No shit, Sherlocks at City Council; the city planning department doesn't evaluate the effects of overdevelopment?

LIC Post


City Planning’s predictions as to the outcome of neighborhood rezonings will be put under the microscope if a number of bills sponsored by Council Member Francisco Moya become law.
 
The bills would require city agencies to review past neighborhood rezonings to see how accurate City Planning’s projections were with what took place on the ground in following years.
 
The bills come at a time when there have been a number of neighborhood rezonings—where existing residents have voiced concern about being displaced due to gentrification– and instances where City Planning’s projections have been found to be way off.
 
For instance, City Planning’s projections were proven wrong when it rezoned a 37-block area in 2001 in the Court Square/Queens Plaza area. The city anticipated, according to its Environmental Impact Statement in 2001, that no more than 300 residential units would be built in the rezoned area by 2010, according to a report released by The Municipal Art Society of New York last year. In 2010, there were 800 residential units and by 2018 almost 10,000 units—with more coming.
 
With each neighborhood rezoning, the city goes through an environment review process, called the City Environmental Quality Review (CEQR), to identify the likely outcome.
 
Based on the CEQR manual, the city must evaluate the impact of a rezoning on land use, traffic, air quality, open space, schools, socioeconomics, among other items. City Planning studies these impacts and makes projections that go into an Environmental Impact Statement, which the public relies on when it undergoes the ULURP public review process.
 
City Planning works with other city agencies, such as the School Construction Authority, Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, to produce an Environmental Impact Statement. The agencies provide guidance based on City Planning’s calculations.
 
However, the city is not held accountable for its predictions and legislators want that to change. There is no mandate requiring officials to re-examine their projections.

Here's more unaccountability:

Hunters Point developers for parcel C given the green light to build their towers higher and higher

Developers have released new designs for Parcel C of the ongoing Hunters Point South development, a shift that will result in the two planned towers to rise significantly higher than expected along the 

Long Island City waterfront in order to accommodate the complex infrastructure running below the ground along with a recently planned school for the site.
 
The two residential towers, referred to as “north” and “south” will rise to 55 stories, or 550 feet, and 44 stories, or 440 feet, respectively. The north tower’s new design is 14 stories higher than previously planned, and the south tower will see an additional nine stories, up from 35 stories in the previous plan.
 
The developer, TF Cornerstone, aims to break ground in June 2018.
 
The two towers will be flush against the perimeters of the parcel, as will the newly incorporated elementary school, resulting in cleared-out space in the middle of the site, where no built structures will rise, save for a food pavilion with outdoor seating amidst greenery and public art installations.

 The changes were revealed during Community Board 2’s Land Use meeting Wednesday night. Jaclyn Sachs, a senior planner at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and John 

McMillan, director of Planning for TF Cornerstone, said that they had to redesign the two towers so they wouldn’t disturb  power lines, an Amtrak tunnel, and other infrastructure running below the site. 

Furthermore, easement holders such as the New York Power Authority and Amtrak, wanted unobstructed access to the site.
 
Sachs added that while the New York Power Authority and Amtrak and other easement holders were part of initial conversations about the development, it wasn’t until a specific proposal for the parcel was put out by TF Cornerstone that easement holders preferences for an undisturbed center became clear.
 
TF Cornerstone also had to incorporate an elementary school on the parcel, which was not part of the original plan, after the city pushed for its addition during the developer’s redesign. The school will be 34,000 square-feet, with 572 seats, and have a ground level playground directed toward the center of the site.

 “This was not an easy thing to do,” Sachs said, adding that parcel C is the largest and most complex of the parcels on the 30-acre Hunters Point South development.

This obviously got permitted because it contains, ahem, "affordable housing", which as we have been told ad nauseum that it can only be achieved if market rate and luxury housing get built also. Like the nearby "zipper building":

The Zipper Building, a new luxury condominium development in Hunters Point, has officially placed all 41 of its units on the market.
 
The available condos, located inside the converted and expanded zipper factory at 5-33 48th Ave., range from studios to four-bedrooms. The units begin at $650,000 and go up to $2.5 million.

“The Zipper Building will complement the budding Hunters Point neighborhood, which is in the midst of a real estate boom,” said Eric Benaim, CEO of listing brokerage Modern Spaces.

And the behemoth at Court Square,

The first units have hit the market in the 67-story, 802-unit building that is going up in Court Square.
Twenty-units are now available in the condo, which will be the tallest building in Queens when it is complete. The listing prices for those units now on the market range from $660,400 for a studio to $2,325,610 for a three-bedroom.
 
The development, called the Skyline Tower and located at 23-15 44^th Drive, is across the street from One Court Square and is being marketed as offering spectacular views and more than 20,000 square feet of luxury amenities.
 
The condos offer floor-to-ceiling windows, modern appliances, and marble-adorned bathrooms.
 
The initial listings are in floors four through 36. The developer anticipates that buyers in the bottom 36 floors will be able to move in by the end of 2020, around the same time that the Dept. of Buildings is expected to issue a Temporary Certificate of Occupancy.
 
Residents will be able to move into the higher floors by the end of 2021, when the TCO is expected to be issued. The upper floors will tower over the Citigroup building.
 
Eric Benaim, the CEO of Modern Spaces, anticipates that it will take four years to sell all of the units. Modern Spaces is the exclusive marketing and sales firm for the project.

Apparently, the city and the real estate industry that truly runs it is building for speculative, well, hypothetical residents to supply instead of and for the present demand of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who are having difficulty finding affordable housing right now.

It's not just here

From PIX11:

Nearly three dozen people were found living in a single-family home on Long Island in what police called “dangerous and hazardous conditions.”

Officers with the East Hampton Town Police Department served a search warrant at the house shortly after 6 a.m. on Monday, after the town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department issued an investigation into the property.

In all, 32 people were found to be living in the house.

Police said 18 of the inhabitants were found sleeping on mattresses in the basement near the gasoline generator and gasoline storage tank.

LIC concerned about L train shutdown

From LIC Post:

L train shutdown woes are spilling over into Long Island City, where local leaders are demanding that the city develop a plan to reduce the impact of the thousands of L train riders expected to take the G up to the Manhattan-connecting Court Square after the L train shuts down in 2019.

The Court Square Civic Association urged MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota to protect Long Island City’s already-crowded Court Square station from the extra riders that would travel there once the L train tunnel connecting Williamsburg to Manhattan closes for Sandy-related repairs in 2019.

The G train, one of four train lines that go through Court Square, will be increasing its capacity by doubling in length to carry would-be L train riders to the station, who will then get on Manhattan-bound 7, E, and M trains, according to the MTA.

The CSCA says the neighborhood is dealing with its own capacity issues after an influx of residential development over the years, with a 25 percent increase in ridership recorded at the station from 2011 to 2016. An MTA-sanctioned plan to divert riders to Long Island City, they say, will disproportionately affect Western Queens.

Wow, so no one saw that strain on the subways when they were cheerleading overdevelopment?

Great moments in overdevelopment history

From DNA Info:

More than half of the city’s 1.1 million public school students attend overcrowded schools, according to a new report from the watchdog group Class Size Matters.

Despite the Department of Education’s addition of more seats and new buildings, many families feel the situation is getting worse as existing seats are being chipped away due to lost leases, schools being co-located together, or the elimination of annexes, mini-buildings and trailers housing temporary classrooms, according to the report released Thursday.

As trailers housing temporary classrooms — with nearly 8,000 seats — are expected to be phased out entirely, it may further strain school buildings, the report warns.

Roughly 575,000 students attended schools in 2015-2016 that were at or above 100 percent capacity, the report said, citing Department of Education enrollment data.

From the Queens Chronicle:

School Construction Authority officials on Monday said they have the money ready to alleviate overcrowding in overutilized school districts, such as SD 24 in southwest and western Queens, but a lack of available space remains their main obstacle.

“The hardest job of the SCA is to try and find real estate,” Michael Mirisola, director of External Affairs at the SCA, told members of the Borough Board during the annual update of the agency’s five-year capital plan. “We have brokers in every borough, in every district. We are constantly doing tests to see if a site will hold a school. We go through that exercise many times during the week and some of them just don’t pass muster.”

School District 24 has consistently been one of the most overcrowded in the city — as of February of this year, its average school utilization rate was 115 percent.
Mirisola said the SCA is always open to tips on available space to fit a school, yet many suggested sites are ultimately deemed unfit for an educational facility.

“Generally, the No. 1 reason is size,” he said. “If it’s a funded need and we don’t have a project, it’s because we’re looking for a location.”

Lots suitable for a new school site must be 20,000 square feet, the SCA official said, in addition to “other specifications and other requirements.”

SROs: not just for poor people anymore!

There are now "luxury" SROs in this town as reported by the NY Times.

I gotta get outta here.

Woodhaven: historic but overcrowded

From AM-NY:

As its name implies, Woodhaven is truly an escape in the urban jungle.

The Queens neighborhood is probably one of the few places in the city where you can get off the train, take a stroll through a forest, grab a bite to eat from a Latin restaurant and head home to a house that was built a century ago.

“It’s always been a place where people come in and bring their experiences to the community,” said Ed Wendell, a lifelong resident and the executive director of the Woodhaven Cultural & Historical Society.

Jamaica Avenue is a bustling corridor stocked with mom-and-pop stores and restaurants that reflect the diverse population in the neighborhood, according to Wendell.

“People ask how many businesses have been around for more than 100 years and there are like seven or eight,” Wendell said of the avenue. “We are proud of our history.”

Meanwhile, the one- and two-family homes south of the avenue have kept their Victorian look from the early 1900s. Most also come with backyards.

“It’s an actual community. People get to know each other and help everyone out,” noted Vickie Messina, 67, who has lived in Woodhaven with her husband in their two-story house for 40 years.

But Woodhaven is becoming less of a hidden gem, and some locals said there are concerns about overcrowding.

For example, there have been complaints about illegal conversions that pack too many tenants into basements and other spaces, Wendell said.

“If you walk around the streets of our neighborhood and you look around what you see is a two-family house that has six satellite dishes or four doorbells,” he said.

Breaking News: Flushing overcrowded!

From The Real Deal:

Even to passing observers, the strains on the neighborhood’s infrastructure have become obvious. While both the MTA and LIRR serve the area, the streets around Flushing’s Main Street are one of the most congested in terms of vehicle and foot traffic. For motorists and business owners, the availability and price of parking is a big concern. On any given weekend, traffic slows to a crawl as frustrated drivers circle crowded parking lots.

“It’s like putting a size 7 foot in a size 6 shoe,” said Dian Yu, president of Flushing’s Business Improvement District. He fretted that major traffic congestion will discourage the very consumers new developments are aiming to woo.

George Xu, CEO of Century Development Group, which is building a 14-story mixed-use project on Farrington Street and 35th Avenue, noted that his friends have begun parking north of Northern Boulevard, the thoroughfare that marks the northern edge of Downtown Flushing, just to avoid the congestion. Xu himself confessed, “I don’t like to drive there anymore.”

The city has also acknowledged the overcrowding. The de Blasio administration recently nixed a massive rezoning plan for Flushing West, an industrial zone between the 7 subway terminal and Flushing Creek that the mayor had targeted for affordable housing. The decision came after City Councilman Peter Koo, who represents the area, wrote a letter to City Hall, saying: “Concerns arose about the sustainability of nearly every major category in the urban planning spectrum — affordable housing, public transportation, traffic, school capacity, small business and residential displacement, and environmental remediation.”

Joseph Sweeney, a chairperson on Community Board 7, which includes Flushing, said he researched the rezoning plan and agreed that it wasn’t sustainable. “We were not ready for it,” he said.

School trailers will stay for now

From the Queens Chronicle:

The School Construction Authority has no immediate plans to remove 70 of the trailers being used as portable classrooms on school grounds across the borough, agency officials told Borough Board members Monday.

“We go at them as we can find solutions,” said Michael Mirisola, director of external affairs at the SCA.

The agency went over its amended 2015-19 capital plan with board members, detailing the plans to build and renovate schools in Queens district by district, but it was the part about the trailers — known as transportable classroom units — that most interested the community board chairpersons and a few City Council members who showed up to the meeting.

The capital plan, as it stands, has $450 million allocated for the removal of the units, but before they can be taken away, a plan must be developed to seat the children in them back in their school or an addition built onto it.

Right now, there are 17 Queens schools with such a plan, though some details still need to be hammered out.

Living in a McMansion's shadow

"This is a photo comparing the size of a typical rebuild with the older homes in Floral Park, NY. If you've never been to Floral Park, Queens, get prepared to see a dumpster on every corner. That's the new status symbol.

Buyers buy little houses with nice-sized yards and cut down old growth trees to stuff oversized houses on the old property. The new houses overshadow the neighboring houses and have little, if any, landscaping. A lot of the times, the trees and grass at the curb are eliminated and the front lawns are paved over to make room for the multiple cars owned by the multiple families living in what used to be one family/one owner houses.

The streets are now crowded with cars and the neighborhood is hotter and noisier due to the loss of noise buffering, cooling trees and bushes in vanishing yards. Rebuilds have less frontage and there's more cement all around. What used to be suburban, is slowly becoming more urban." - anonymous

More U.S. families living with fewer bedrooms

From Curbed:

An analysis of home sizes in the country’s top 100 metro areas found that 26.4 percent of U.S. renters are in want of at least one extra bedroom. Using U.S. Census data, Trulia compared household size with the number of bedrooms in the home and found that across the U.S., homes are getting more and more crowded, with an increasing percentage of households having more family members than bedrooms. While the average size of the American home has ballooned over the years, renters are feeling more and more confined, especially in urban areas.

This "space crunch" is most evident in Los Angeles, where 29.2 percent of households have shared bedrooms—the highest proportion in the country. Roughly 67.9 of renters with children in L.A. were short on bedrooms. New York City is next, with 25.2 percent of households squeezed for space.

Overcrowded subways causing delays

From NY1:

If you thought that maybe this year, MTA trains were letting you down more than usual, well, you're not alone — even the MTA agrees that delays increased this year.

In April 2015, there were nearly 49,000 delays. In April of this year, they had slightly more than 50,000 delays.

The transit agency says overcrowding has gotten worse, accounting for 38% of delays in April.

People took nearly 1.8 billion rides on subways last year, setting a new record.

Wow, I wonder what's causing the overcrowding??

When you pack people into neighborhoods, this is what happens

From the NY Times:

The Lexington Avenue line is the most crowded in the system, but subway riders across New York City are finding themselves on platforms and trains that are beyond crowded. L train stations in Brooklyn are routinely overwhelmed. In Queens, No. 7 train riders regularly endure packed conditions.

Subway use, now at nearly 1.8 billion rides a year, has not been this high since 1948, when the fare was a nickel and the Dodgers were still almost a decade away from leaving Brooklyn. Today, train delays are rising, and even a hiccup like a sick passenger or a signal malfunction can inundate stations with passengers.

Delays caused by overcrowding have quadrupled since 2012 to more than 20,000 each month, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Subway ridership in New York is in the midst of a resurgence almost unimaginable in the 1970s and ’80s, when the system was defined by graffiti and crime. Ridership has steadily risen to nearly six million daily riders today from about four million in the 1990s.

But the subway infrastructure has not kept pace, and that has left the system with a litany of needs, many of them essential to maintaining current service or accommodating the increased ridership. The authority’s board recently approved $14.2 billion for the subway as part of a $29.5 billion, five-year capital spending plan.

On the busiest lines, like the 7, L and Q, officials say the agency is already running as many trains as it can during the morning rush. Crowds are appearing on nights and weekends, too, and the authority is adding more trains at those times.

Trib notices that Flushing is dirty

From the Queens Tribune:

...as the area’s population has surged and business is booming, infrastructure and city services have hardly kept pace with the growth. The MTA’s 7 Train, which terminates in Flushing, is severely overcrowded. Traffic is constant and parking is scarce, many roads are in poor condition and the sidewalks are hardly wide enough for the pedestrians that live, work and play in the area.

And the problems aren’t just transportation related. Schools in the area’s District 25 are among the most overcrowded. The sewer system regularly exceeds its maximum capacity and dumps untreated waste water into Flushing Bay.

Flushing residents will say that their quality of life does suffer as a result of some of these problems. And one of the most unsightly of them may be commercial garbage from some of the many restaurants overflowing into the street ahead of pick up time.

One of the worst areas is on 40th Road and Main Street, near the entrance of the Long Island Rail Road station. The high density of restaurants on the narrow street allowed the Queens Tribune, on two occasions, to photograph garbage or recyclables in that area spilling over into from the sidewalk into the street, blocking parking spots.

Elected officials and community leaders have taken note of the issue.

“It’s on our radar every day,” Scott Sieber, a spokesperson for Councilman Peter Koo, said. Sieber said he personally was once driving behind a trash compactor truck that picked up commercial waste when one of the bags popped and juice exploded over his car and several others.

“If the juice leaks out it collects on the potholes in the street,” he added.

They also noticed the overcrowding! Will wonders never cease?

NY1's dumb population analysis

From NY1':

The five boroughs added more than 55,211 people in the year that ended last July 1, bringing the city’s population to more than 8,550,000, according to an estimate released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

It's the first time in history that more than 8.5 million people have called the city home.

“It shows that we're a place that people want to be, want to come, want to stay, want to grow a family,” says Carl Weisbrod, chairman of the city’s Planning Commission.

The city's population has been on the upswing for some time. With the new numbers released Thursday, the city has grown by more than 375,000 people in just the last five years, an increase of 4.5% -- or more than the entire population of Pittsburgh.

For several years, Brooklyn led the five boroughs in population growth, but that changed last year.

According to the Census Bureau, Queens added the most number of people last year 16,700. Brooklyn was a close second, at 16,015, followed by the Bronx (13,687), Manhattan (7,552) and Staten Island (1,257).

The growth will inevitably put new strains on the city's infrastructure. But it's a relatively good problem to have, as the five boroughs continue to be the place where people want to live.

This is a good problem to have? It means taxes go up for everyone with infrastructure problems outpacing upgrades. Overcrowded schools, trains, roads. Busted sewers. What great problems to have!

Too many kids in Francis Lewis zone

From the Times Ledger:

Public high schools in the northeastern area of Queens are continually some of the most popular schools in the city, and Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows is at the top of the list. Aside from the city’s specialized high schools, it was the public high school with the highest number of applicants in the city in 2015.

Forest Hills High School in Queens was the second most popular high school in terms of the number of applications, according to information supplied by the city Department of Education. Midwood High School in Brooklyn was No. 3, while Bayside High School and Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, two other Bayside schools, rounded out the top five. According to the DOE data, there were 9,468 applications to Francis Lewis in December.

Marmor also stressed that there was no correlation between the school’s high number of applicants and its overcrowding. Francis Lewis, like several other nearby high schools, has long struggled with overcrowding in its facilities. The school is operating at about 190 percent of capacity, according to Marmor.

He said the high enrollment stemmed from Francis Lewis’ status as a zoned school, offering space to those from the community who apply. Marmor said that about 65 percent of the students were enrolled in the school because there was guaranteed space for zoned students.

Overcrowding leads to bad outcomes

From the NY Times:

According to the latest Census Bureau data, about 9 percent of all households — or nearly 280,000 units — in New York City have more than one person per room, a common government measure of crowding. A decade ago, the rate was 8 percent. The change represents nearly a 13 percent increase. By comparison, the national crowding rate is 3.4 percent.

The crowding problem in New York worsens considerably in specific neighborhoods, particularly those with large working-class and immigrant populations where it is not unusual for two families to cram into apartments intended for one, and laborers to sleep two, three or more to a room.

While the Bronx and Brooklyn have the highest percentage of crowded units among the boroughs, according to Census Bureau data from 2014, the community district with the highest rate of crowding is in Queens and encompasses Elmhurst and southern Corona. There, a quarter of all residential units are considered crowded. A study published in February by StreetEasy.com found that five of the top 10 most crowded neighborhoods in the city were in central Queens.

The overcrowded dwelling typically finds its most severe expression in illegally converted basement and cellar apartments, most of them overcrowded and riddled with safety hazards such as shoddy construction, dangerous wiring and improper means of exit in the case of a fire.

4 Queens nabes are very overcrowded

From NY1:

We all know the streets surge with people. They file onto packed busses and crowded subway trains. But nearly one in 10 New Yorkers comes home to a crowd as well.

Hassan Amafuzel shares a four room apartment with eight people.

"Sleep is the main problem," Amafuzel said. "We cannot sleep. The sound sleep, we cannot sound sleep. That is the problem."

The website StreetEasy reports that 8.9 percent of all city households meet the definition of "crowded," with more than one person per room. That's nearly three times the national average.

The Bronx has the highest percentage of packed households, at 12.4 percent. Staten Island has the lowest.

However, four Queens neighborhoods have the most crowded households in the city. 23 percent of all Corona housing units are crowded. North Corona, East Elmhurst and Jackson Heights are close behind at about 20 percent.

Projects produce lots of trash

From Crains:

The true population served by the New York City Housing Authority has always been hard to pin down because the customary tally of more than 620,000 people overlooks multitudes who have been welcomed into legal residents' units but aren’t named on a lease or otherwise listed in authority records. But indisputable evidence of their existence is collected each week by the city’s Department of Sanitation. In trucks.

The waste-collection data suggest the Housing Authority's actual ranks are at least 100,000 larger than the official number.

Last Friday, NYCHA Chair Shola Olatoye was speaking at an annual summit hosted by the Municipal Art Society when she mentioned Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and the informal, rubbish-based census.

“She can tell [our population] based on our tonnage,” Olatoye said.

Specifically, the authority estimates that the city’s Strongest collect 380 million pounds of refuse each year from NYCHA developments. If the average New Yorker each piles 756 pounds of trash into garbage trucks annually, as data from the latest Mayor’s Management Report indicates, then accordingly about 502,600 people are living in NYCHA projects.

Sunnyside parents suggest new school location

From NBC:

For thousands of New York parents, it's a challenge finding a public school that isn't overcrowded. In one Queens neighborhood, they're looking for a unique solution -- but will the city respond? Andrew Siff reports.