Real Estate
Plaxall family aims to revamp Long Anable Basin with ambitious 15-BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
Long Island City‘s Anable Basin
has long been inaccessible
to the public, but a new plan
announced by the Plaxall family would
transform the portion of closed-off wa-terfront
to include a mix of housing, retail,
manufacturing and community facility
space. It’s one of the largest private de-velopment
projects proposed in Queens.
Plaxall, a plastics company founded by
architect and engineer Louis Pfohl, who
also happened to invent thermoforming,
has been located in the neighborhood for
more than 70 years.
After relocating his business from Flush-ing
to Long Island City in the 1940s, Pfohl
and his family began acquiring properties
along the waterfront and leasing space out
to manufacturing and artist tenants. His
grandchildren, Paula Kirby, Tony Pfohl and
Matthew Quigley, continued that tradition
as managing directors of the company.
After big manufacturers like Pepsi
and Hertz, who both leased space on
Plaxall property, began to move out of the
neighborhood – Quigley says the influx
of families with strollers and dogs made
the area less attractive to warehouse us-ers
– the family began to lease out their
properties to smaller tenants.
“The tenant mix has very much
changed,” Kirby said. “We decided to
break it down into small spaces because
we noticed an influx of artists, an influx
of startups – just a really different, vibrant
mix here.”
Their tenants include Tietz Baccon, a
digital fabrication firm; Krypton Neon, a
neon art and sign company; Rockaway
Brewing Company; and The Neustadt,
which holds the largest collection of Tif-fany
glass.
While the family discussed rezoning
the area with the city in the early 2000s,
they could not come to an agreement on
how to move forward. But about two and
a half years ago, the groups decided to
create a special district that would include
all eight of the Plaxall buildings that sur-round
Anable Basin.
“We started talks again with the city
and with a different concept which is
very much this idea of rather than being a
specific building zoning or project rezoning
we create a district,” Kirby said. “We’re
creating parameters which then define
how developers can build in that space.”
16 DECEMBER 2017 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
The family owns almost 1 million
square feet of space and hopes to turn
the mostly industrial area into a “very
vibrant live-work-play-create-make dis-trict,”
Kirby added.
The plan would create a 14.7-acre
Special Anable Basin Mixed-Use Dis-trict
spanning from 44th Drive and 45th
Avenue to the north, Vernon Boulevard
to the east, 46th Road to the south and
the East River to the west. It will need
to go through the Uniform Land Use
Review Procedure and be approved by
Community Board 2, Queens Borough
President Melinda Katz, the City Planning
Commission and City Council.
In addition to Plaxall’s properties, the
district would include several sites along
Vernon Boulevard that, if developed by
anyone in the future, would have to adhere
to the newly created district’s standards.
The city requested these additions to
“keep a consistency,” according to Kirby.
The plan is ambitious and the property
managers say it would be take about 15
years and $3 billion to complete. The main
attraction, according to President Jona-than
Drescher, is the 3.1-acre waterfront
esplanade that would provide access and
green space to residents.
The basin was named after Henry An-able,
who dug out the basin 150 years ago
to make it easier for barges to transport
oil to the area. Plaxall’s plan would create
a dual-level esplanade to make the area
resilient and keep it out of the range of
the flood zone.
Pedestrian-only lanes will be created
along the zone to give residents safe and
easy access to the waterfront.
When completed, the area would
include 4,995 housing units, of which
approximately 1,250 would be afford-able
through the Mandatory Inclusionary
Housing program. Affordable housing
has become a concern of many longtime
residents, who argue that many develop-ers
are only interested in attracting high-income
tenants.
“We think the plan provides for a lot
of public benefits,” Kirby said. “Many
of them are not typical of many devel-opments
and part of the way you can
provide these benefits is that you have
the market rate housing there to help
be the economic driver. If a project isn’t
economically viable, it won’t get built. It
is a fine balance that we’ve studied for
a number of years so we think this could
be a really fabulous area.”
