Real Estate
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I APRIL 2018 17
“They judge potential tenants by
the number of jobs and quality of jobs
so they’re trying to avoid warehousing
and, similarly, general uses that are
not noxious to residential uses,” said
Jake Elghanayan, senior vice president.
“There’s a high-tech quality that’s coming
into play.”
The plan will also include 400,000
square feet of commercial space. Court
Square and Queens Plaza were rezoned
in 2001 to attract more commercial tenants.
Instead, thousands of residential
units were built in the area.
While C4Q will receive about 100,000
square feet for work training and 10,000
square feet will be dedicated to an incubator
space, the majority of the plan
will feature spec office space, meaning
no tenants will be lined up before the
building is constructed.
“There has been an effort to promote
the definition of Long Island City as an
office center around Citi Corp, Queens
Plaza,” McMillian said. “That was what
that zoning was supposed to be about.
We’ve come along and we’re willing to
do a spec office building to help Long
Island City get started as a place where
people work so people living here can
walk across the street instead of getting
into the overcrowded subway.”
A 600-seat elementary school, a performing
arts space with dance studios
for choreographers and dance companies
and 1,000 units of housing are
also included in the plan.
Though TF Cornerstone has said
25 percent of the units will be deemed
affordable, that number is “fluid” and
McMillian said it could change after
conversations with Councilman Jimmy
Van Bramer.
“That was our opening bid that’s probably
going to change over time once we
negotiate this with Jimmy Van Bramer,”
McMillian said. “He’s made that very
clear that he’d like to see more affordable
housing.”
Van Bramer attended the rally and
made remarks against the development.
Elghanayan said the plan goes “beyond
the simplistic affordable housing
debate.”
“Part of affordability is incomes,” he
said. “Even though affordable rents have
been relatively flat, incomes have been
even lower, so part of the story here is
helping create jobs because that’s part
of the affordability discussion.”
TF Cornerstone will spend about
$100 million on remediation work along
the waterfront and are planning to raise
the site about 13 feet to protect against
future storms. The community is requesting
that wetland park be constructed
but McMillan said the park is not a big
enough solution.
“The flaw with that is that the flooding
we’re trying to protect ourselves from
is ocean surge where literally the sea
level rises like in a Hurricane Sandy,
and when the sea level rises the water is
going to go absolutely everywhere it can
up to a certain elevation, so the levels
of water involved in those incidents are
so enormous.”
The plan will create an acre of public
space and local retailers will anchor
the office building near the waterfront.
Developers will also open an event
and catering space at The Water’s Edge
property, which previously housed a
similar company that closed after the
owner was arrested for financial crimes.
The Developers are also working with
Plaxall, who own the adjacent properties
and are planning to rezone the area
for development, to “lift up the edge
condition” all along the Anable Basin.
“We have joint meetings with city
planning all the time with Plaxall to make
sure the projects plug in together,” Mc-
Millian said. “Our open spaces meet together
so with Plaxall we put together
comprehensive resiliency plans. We’re
doing a lot of work with Plaxall.”
Developers said they were surprised
by the amount of pushback from the
community after the plan was announced.
“We think of our reputation in Queens
as very important,” Elghanayan said. “It’s
where my dad and uncles founders of
TF Cornerstone are from and I think
we were not expecting such a negative
response. We don’t want to be the developers
coming in and upsetting people.”
Members of the LIC Coalition argued
that this plan would not preserve the kind
of businesses Long Island City needs.
“There is no evidence to support the
idea that this type of development will
preserve small manufacturing, the arts or
existing retail,” the group said. “Historically
the opposite is true. What it does
is continue to attract designers, photographers,
tech companies and retail
startups being priced out of Manhattan.
This creates increased competition and
higher costs. That is understandably
what the developers want and that is
why the city should not be giving city
land to a private developer.”
According to TF Cornerstone, about
25 percent of the manufacturing businesses
currently looking to move to
GMDC sites in Brooklyn have been
displaced from Long Island City due
to high rents.
LIC Coalition members argued that
businesses along Vernon Boulevard
are leaving because commercial rents
are not sustainable and landlords do
not provide leases longer than two or
three years. They also added that 1,000
additional units would put more stress on
an area with “substandard infrastructure
and services.”
“While C4Q does admirable work, it is
small and inexperienced and a sustainable
job market cannot be built on computer
coding alone,” the group added.
The group also said that a moratorium
on waterfront developments should be
implemented by the city.
“The site in question is not on the
ocean; it is on a tidal strait,” they said. “A
moratorium on waterfront development
proposals must be implemented until a
comprehensive plan that addresses the
climate change and sea level rise vulnerabilities
along the Brooklyn/Queens
East River waterfront is adopted.”
LIC Coalition also called the project
a “giveaway of taxpayer assets” by the
Economic Development Corporation,
saying that 25 percent affordable housing
is not enough considering that the
EDC “does not reveal to the taxpayer
what the cost of using this land is for
the developer.”
Members of the LIC Coalition also
called this a “closed door process” and
said neither the developers or EDC
reached out to community members
about the plan.
“The bigger problem is that neither
organization has had a connection or
involvement with the community that
will be most affected,” the group said.
“This is not how a city agency should
work with the city land. The city should
be supporting the needs of the community
as framed by the community,
not through the lens of a for profit
developer. They should be using our
tax dollars to come up with a plan that
preserves our local economy and does
not further harm an already oversaturated
community.”
The plan will go through the Uniform
Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP)
process next year. The Community
Board, Queens Borough President, City
Council and City Planning will have a
chance to weigh in.
If it is approved, the manufacturing
and school sites will be the first to open
in 2022.
We’ve come along and we’re
willing to do a spec office building
to help Long Island City get started
as a place where people work so
people living here can walk across
the street instead of getting into the
overcrowded subway.
JON MCMILLIAN
Director of Planning
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