34 The Queens Courier • JANUARY 30, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com
34 THE QUEENS COURIER • JANUARY 30, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
editorial
Hallets Point megaproject takes a big hit
The Halletts Point megaproject on
Astoria’s waterfront will remain in
limbo after talks broke down between
the de Blasio administration and the
Durst Organization.
The $1.5 billion project was going
to build more than 2,000 units in
a seven-building complex with a
waterfront esplanade, public spaces,
retail, sewers and streets, but the two
parties could not come to an agreement
Courtesy Studio V Architecture
The developer of the Halletts Point megaproject will wait until a new mayor is elected before they
resume building after fi nancial negotiations broke down.
Story: Queens Public Library mourns the loss of
Whitestone children’s librarian Susan Scatena
Summary: Beloved Whitestone children’s librarian Susan
Scatena, also known as “Miss Susan,” died on Jan. 10, at
age 61.
Reach: 4,469 (as of 1/27/20)
over $21.6 million in city funding
that was promised to the developer
in 2015.
“We will not cut special deals that
result in more profit for developers
and less affordable housing for New
Yorkers,” City Hall spokeswoman Jane
Meyer said.
So, for the foreseeable future, the only
building that has been completed on
the site is 10 Halletts Point with its 405
units, 81 of them affordable.
“For a project as large and complex as
Halletts Point there needs to be a partnership
between the city and the developer
and for whatever reason we haven’t
been able to forge that partnership
and without that the project is simply
not viable,” Durst Organization spokesman
Jordan Barowitz said. “Therefore
we are suspending the project until the
next administration in the hope they
will share the enthusiasm that the local
community and we have for the development.”
Th at is bad news for the Astoria Houses
NYCHA complex right next door on
Halletts Peninsula where 47 percent of
the residents are unemployed or underemployed.
Th e project was expected to
revitalize and reconnect the community
to the rest of the neighborhood while
providing thousands of job opportunities
in construction, retail and security.
Astoria Houses residents were to have
rental preference over 50 percent of the
400 aff ordable units.
Claudia Coger, the president of the
Astoria Houses Tenants Association,
is demanding answers from the Durst
Organization and the de Blasio administration.
“We are setting up a meeting with
the Durst people so they can tell us
what their intentions are,” Coger said.
“I want to know — we want to know —
where Durst stands and then we’ll confront
the city.”
Coger, who has lived in the Astoria
Houses since she moved to New York
City in the 1950s, has been bitterly disappointed
by the de Blasio administration
in recent years. When Coger advocated
for NYC Ferry to add a connection
from Astoria to Manhattan’s Upper
East Side, to help ease the long commutes
of many of her neighbors who
work as attendants and nurses at medical
facilities that are clustered there, she
was told there’s a moratorium on new
ferry routes until 2021.
Last June, the de Blasio administration
backed off an ill-conceived
plan to close the senior center at the
Astoria Houses and bus residents to the
Queensbridge Houses despite the facts
that a $500,000 renovation had recently
been completed at the facility.
“Look, I’m old enough to know politics
set out like it out to be and sometimes
things fall apart,” Coger said.
“They owe us an explanation and that’s
what we’re going for right now.”
The residents of Astoria Houses
deserve answers to why they have been
treated as an afterthought during this
impasse.
THE QUEENS
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