20 THE QUEENS COURIER • NOVEMBER 22, 2018 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
in Queens
Photo: Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech/THE COURIER
Amazon HQ2 latest change in ever-changing LIC
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
rpozarycki@qns.com
@robbpoz
Long before shimmering high-rise
apartment towers and offi ce buildings
rose out of the streets, Long Island City
had been one of the city’s biggest industrial
hubs — home to everything from oil
refi neries, to plastics producers, to even
Pepsi-Cola.
Over the last 50 years, the neighborhood
on the East River waterfront evolved into
a much diff erent neighborhood. Th e blue
collar industrial jobs disappeared along
with the scores of low-rise factories and
warehouses that dotted the landscape.
In its place came residents and corporate
enterprise. It’s easy to understand
why. Th e neighborhood’s many subway
links to Manhattan — a minutes-long
commute on seven of the eight subway
lines serving the area — made it a natural
for attracting residents who wanted to
live closer to midtown, or were priced out
of neighborhoods on the western side of
the East River.
Th e ever-changing community will
enter a new phase soon, now that Amazon
has agreed to open part of its second
headquarters in Long Island City. At least
25,000 jobs will be added to the neighborhood;
Governor Andrew Cuomo said that
number could top out at 40,000 by 2034.
You have to go back to the late 1960s
to see where the dynamic in Long Island
City began to shift .
Th at was the last decade in which new,
low-rise industrial buildings were developed
in the community, as noted in a
draft environmental impact statement on
Plaxall’s proposed rezoning of the Anable
Basin area. (Th e company, which has
operated in Long Island City for more
than 70 years and focused on plastics
thermofi tting, is partnering with Amazon
to develop the HQ2 campus in LIC.)
Th e Anable Basin itself is not a natural
waterway; it was carved out of the Long
Island City waterfront to allow boats and
barges access to oil refi neries that have
long since disappeared. One of the biggest
industries on the basin, for much of
the 20th century, was Pepsi; it had a bottling
plant there topped by a iconic, cursive,
red-white-and blue sign created in
1937. Th e sign was moved to Gantry Plaza
State Park aft er the plant was demolished
in 1999.
Overall, the fi rst big change for Long
Island City was the arrival of cultural
institutions during the 1970s and 1980s.
Th is includes P.S. 1, a former public
school that the Museum of Modern Art
acquired and transformed into a pop
art destination and event space. Other
museums showcasing the fi ne arts would
arrive in Long Island City, including the
Noguchi Museum, Socrates Sculpture
Park and the Museum of the Moving
Image.
But it was full-scale, city- and
state-sponsored redevelopment of former
industrial land, begun in the late 1990s,
that sent Long Island City soaring.
It began with the Queens West development,
which brought a number of
high-rise apartment buildings to the LIC
waterfront and the creation of the 12-acre
Gantry Plaza State Park.
Th e city created in 2001 a special LIC
Mixed Use District that led to further
residential and commercial development,
including the creation of 1.4 million
square feet of new offi ce space in the
vicinity of Court Square, the heart of the
neighborhood.
Aft er acquiring part of the Queens West
property from the state (south of 50th
Avenue and along the waterfront), in
2008, the city created the Special Southern
Hunters Point District. Th is cleared the
way for the development of 3,000 aff ordable
apartments and 2,000 market-rate
units, along with a number of community
and commercial facilities.
Th ese projects, along with scores of
other private development programs
in Long Island City, sparked a boom
throughout the neighborhood. More than
16,800 housing units have been completed
since 2006, according to the LIC
Partnership, and another 11,700 apartments
will open by 2020.
As more people fl ocked to new developments
across Long Island City, rents in the
area have soared. An August 2018 report
from Modern Spaces found that the average
net rent was $3,412; net rents for
studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom
apartments increased between 6 and 9
percent year over year. Approximately
50 percent of all luxury apartments in the
neighborhood are one-bedroom units.
Th e estimated 25,000 jobs that Amazon
will bring to Long Island City is equal to
21.7 percent of the current neighborhood
workforce. Th eir arrival marks yet another
milestone in a neighborhood that’s
been changing for years, yet remains one
of the most important economic engines
in Queens and the city.
Sources: Anable Basin rezoning draft
environmental impact statement; “Th e
Hidden Waters of New York City” by
Sergey Kadinsky; “300 Years of Long
Island City” by Vincent Seyfried; LIC
Partnership; and Modern Spaces.
The mouth of the Anable Basin in Long Island City, where Amazon will develop its HQ2 campus in partnership with local real estate companies.
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