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QUEENS WEEKLY, FEBRUARY 9, 2020
Flushing community board faces contentious
vote on transformative waterfront rezoning
BY MAX PARROTT
As Community Board 7
gears up to vote on rezoning
the Flushing waterfront
next week, the public
hearings over the project
have made it increasingly
clear that the community
board’s concerns diverge
from those of the activistled
resistance to the project.
The Community
Board’s Land Use Committee
met Wednesday, Jan.
29, and came up with 13
recommendations ranging
from environmental to
traffic calming measures
for the proposed rezoning
and large-scale development
project. While the
committee’s requests were
numerous, they signaled
conditional support of the
zoning amendment.
On the other hand, the
development’s opponents,
led most prominently by
a tenant group named the
MinKwon Center, say that
they are not inherently opposed
to the redevelopment
of the Flushing waterfront,
but are particularly unsatisfied
with its housing
offerings, which include
between 61 and 90 units
of affordable housing out
of the total 2,725 units. To
them, the plan’s potential
for displacement is a dealbreaker.
The developers, represented
at recent public
meetings by legal counsel
Ross Moskowtiz, have
pointed out that the zoning
changes create no legal
obligation to provide affordable
housing in three
of the four sites they are
proposing.
At the public hearing on
Jan. 21, Moskowitz framed
the rezoning as a choice
between two fixed options:
take the community benefit
of a new road system
and an expanded public
waterfront park or accept
as-of-right development
with no public benefits or
affordable housing.
“I just want to make it
perfectly clear to you. It’s
going to be this type of development
or it’s going to
be an as-of-right development,”
said Moskowitz.
A transformative
proposal
The Special Flushing
Waterfront District (SFWD)
proposal would include
nine buildings in the area
enclosed by 36th Avenue to
the north, College Point Boulevard
to the east, Roosevelt
Avenue to the south, and the
Flushing Creek to the west.
The application was prepared
by FWRA LLC, a joint
partnership of the three major
developers who own plots
in the area. They claim that
all-told the project would
involve $1 billion of private
investment, and would generate
$28 million in annual
revenue.
These towers would add
3.36 million square feet of
development — the majority
of which would be residential
units or hotels. The 1,725
new apartments would take
up 46 percent of the development,
879 new hotel units
would take up the 20 percent
and the remainder would go
to office space, retail, community
centers, parking and
open waterfront space.
Though the plan covers
a 29-acre swathe of land, the
proposed rezoning is limited
to a small patch that is currently
zoned for manufacturing
in the north end of the
project. Because the developers
are not attempting to
change the zoning in three
of the four proposed sites
that are already zoned for a
mix of commercial and residential,
they have avoided
requirements to build affordable
housing in these areas.
Mandatory Inclusionary
Housing laws only require
them to add affordable housing
in the one tower that is
planned for the northern plot
of land.
Aside from the affordable
housing, the developers are
offering infrastructural improvements
that would not
be part of as-of-right development.
According to Moskowitz,
the partnership between
developers involved collaborating
on elements of the
plan like a continuous plans
for roadways and waterfront
park space.
In between the towers, the
developers have proposed to
build a new street system
that would open the area up
to pedestrian and vehicular
traffic. Though the streets
would be publicly accessible,
the developers would maintain
private ownership of
the roads, which would be
managed by a homeowners
association.
The new district would
contain a contiguous waterfront
walkway that would be
double the amount of open
space of what would otherwise
be required in an as-ofright
plan.
“This is not a new
project”
As Moskowtiz pointed out
in his presentation to CB7,
neither the plans for this
project, nor the resulting
fight over the future of downtown
Flushing are new.
The push to develop rezone
downtown Flushing
and develop the waterfront
property dates back to several
planning and environmental
impact studies that
various city entities have
conducted over the past 16
years.
The city created Downtown
Flushing Development
Framework in 2004 – a land
use planning strategy for
the area. In 2010, the Flushing
Willets Point Corona
Local Development Corporation
(FWC LDC), helmed
by former Queens Borough
President Claire Shulman,
secured a Brownfield Opportunity
Area grant that studied
how to redevelop the land
and propose a rezoning.
These studies culminated
in the Flushing West plan, a
rezoning that spanned an 11-
block area and proposed to
build an estimated 3,316 new
apartments. But because the
Flushing West plan proposed
a more expansive rezoning
than the SFWD proposal, it
meant that the MIH requirements
for affordable housing
were also significantly
higher. It included about 515
to 619 affordable units, as
opposed to the 61-91 in the
SFWD plan.
Political pressure mounted
against the 2016 plan–first
from Senator Tony Avella
and Assemblyman Ron Kim
who cited transit congestion
and environmental concerns,
as well as the limits
of MIH to provide deeply
affordable units.
It was finally shelved by
the Department of City Planning
after Councilman Peter
Koo came out staunchly
against it in a letter he wrote
to the city, citing similar concerns
as Avella and Kim, in
addition to noting that Flushing’s
schools were already
overcrowded.
Community board
concerns
In its recommendations
to the SFWD on Jan. 29, the
community board hit familiar
concerns to the 2016
Flushing West plan. The
biggest flashpoints for the
Land Use Committee were
the creation of a new school,
traffic congestion and
environmental impacts.
Of the 13 recommendations,
three concern vehicular
traffic, three concern
environmental impacts
and two concern education.
Several of its most concrete
and immediate recommendations
involve asking several
specific changes to the
road system and asking for
the expansion of the main
street train station to Prince
Street.
Of all the recommendations,
however, only one
concerns housing. The committee
asked to ensure that
community district residents
are allotted 50 percent
of the affordable units — a
requirement that is already
enforced by the city.
The recommendations
would also require the developers
to research and design
a new school to accommodate
children in downtown Flushing–
a point that Moskowitz
disputed at a recent public
hearing on the rezoning.
“The analysis that we’ve
done does not warrant the
need of a new school,” said
Moskowitz.
Councilman Koo was in
attendance at the committee’s
last meeting to listen to
the discussion. He will have
a 30-day period after the full
community board votes on
the plan, to reach a decision
on whether to advance zoning
in the ULURP process.
Tenant-led resistance
At the four meetings on
the project over the past
month, protesters with
MinKwon Center and other
local organizations have
been a constant presence
at the community board’s
meetings.
A foundational issue for
the protestors is that they
feel like they had no voice in
the planning process leading
up to the current special district
proposal. A statement
that MinKwon releases asserts
that the board began
the ULURP process without
prior community notice or
feedback.
“The massive rezoning
of the Flushing waterfront
will exponentially speed up
the process of gentrification
and displacement,” said
MinKwon organizer Seonae
Byeon.
The protesters have also
found an ally in Assemblyman
Kim, who has come
out against the SFWD plan,
in a move consistent with
his opposition of the Flushing
West rezoning. “Adding
thousands of luxury condos
is simply about extracting
as much value and profits
as possible out of our communities,”
wrote Kim in a
statement.
The Community Board
will vote on the plan at an
upcoming public hearing at
7 p.m. Feb. 10.
Courtesy of FWRA LLC