Innovation QNS town hall gets tense

Activists and community members protested Innovation QNS, a multi-block development in Astoria, during a town hall listening session on the project on Wednesday, April 21, 2022. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

By Liam Quigley

Emotions flared Wednesday night at a town hall listening session organized by the developers behind the massive Innovation QNS project in Astoria.

Residents and a cohort of activists charged the leaders of the project with failing to conduct meaningful community outreach for the plan they say will displace working families and hasten gentrification.

The meeting, which lasted around two and a half hours, was a sign of more battles to come as the developers aim to shore up public support in the borough that shut down Amazon’s plan to develop its second headquarters in Long Island City in 2019.

Innovation QNS is being led by three groups – Silverstein Properties, BedRock and Kaufman Astoria Studios. The $2 billion project would require the rezoning of five city blocks from 37th Street to Northern Boulevard, between 35th and 36th Avenues, which is currently occupied by a number of warehouses, residential buildings, retail space and a movie theater.

The plan currently calls for a dozen new buildings, including a little over 2,800 apartments, office space, retail space, health and wellness facilities and, potentially, a school.

Developers said that public spaces included in the plan will improve the quality of life for the community and give a boost to local business rather than displace them, as well as create thousands of new jobs.

"Controlling five city blocks is a tremendous opportunity, and a unique one, to build an extraordinary amount of community amenities into our plan,” said Tracy Capune, the vice president of Kaufman Astoria Studios. “Amenities that can help address some of the challenges our neighborhood faces.”

A proposed map of the five-block redevelopment in Southeastern Astoria dubbed Innovation QNS. Map via Innovation QNS

As the event got underway inside Astoria’s Museum of the Moving Image, members of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities launched into chants of “Our neighborhood, not your playground,” outside.

Organizers called the proposed development a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and said that promises of affordable units as part of upzoning projects across the five boroughs have only given way to higher rents.

“We know that this is going to raise the price of rents across the neighborhood,” Farihah Akhtar, 26, a lead organizer of the group, told the Eagle.

“This is a front line for gentrification for the rest of Queens,” Akhtar added. “We will not allow what happened in Long Island City and Williamsburg to happen here. These luxury apartments have high levels of vacancy. The reality is we need deeply affordable housing and not luxury market rate apartments.”

The developers behind Innovation QNS organized the town hall meeting after City Councilmember Julie Won requested they conduct further outreach in a public letter last month. Though Won hasn’t taken a position on the merits of the project, she’s continued to take issue with the ways developers have and have not engaged with the community.

Innovation QNS’ developers have presented their plans to Queens Community Board 1 a handful of times over the course of the past two years. They’re currently gearing up to submit the project to the city’s Universal Land Use Review Process.

As the councilmember for the project, Won will likely have the final say on whether or not it passes through the ULURP process.

Some of the area’s elected officials, however, have taken a clear stance fully against the project. Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, whose district will include the area the project aims to cover when redistricting lines kick in at the end of the year, joined the protestors outside the museum.

“We will simply see more and more landlords looking over at those units as the going rate for living in Astoria,” Mamdani said. “I will never stand in opposition to affordable housing, what I will stand in opposition to is projects that masquerade as such.”

Despite the opposition outside, the plan had supporters in the audience, including a swathe of members from the District Council of Carpenters and members from SEIU 32BJ, who read a statement in support of the development.

“We are in full support of this project,” said Shirley Jackson, 55, a 32BJ member. “This rezoning is a chance for working families to benefit from development.”

Another woman who spoke in support of the project said it was time to cast aside complaints and move forward.

“I’m in full support of this project because I’ve watched it and followed it intimately,” said Nakeah George, a Woodside resident. “They’re our friends, not our enemies. But we have to actually grow up so we can help them. Let’s stop complaining and freaking build.”

Tom Grech, the president and CEO of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, is an ardent supporter of the project and cites the jobs created by its construction and eventual retail positions as its biggest benefits.

“[The developers] are ready to address all the concerns of the community and make sure that they fully understand the benefits that they've been talking about,” Grech told the Eagle.

“In this day and age, when it comes to an opportunity where there's not a need for government funding on a project, all by private developers with a lot, a lot of community input, I think it's really important to look at these things with a very, very sharp eye about approving,” he added. “I hope that when all is said and done, the project will be approved as a very important way to bring New York back from the brink.”

At the end of the first of two listening sessions Thursday, protestors marched into the museum chanting, and were briefly stopped by police officers and museum staff. After a brief negotiation, the protestors agreed to lay down their megaphones.

Still, they lambasted the panel of developers, which included Bishop Mitchell Taylor of Urban Upbound, Tracey Appelbaum of BedRock Real Estate Partners, Jamison Divoll of Silverstein Properties and Tracy Capune of Kaufman Astoria Studios.

Protestors opposed to Innovation QNS, a proposed, multi-block development in Astoria, were briefly blocked from entering into a town hall organized by the developers of the project on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. Eagle photo by Liam Quigley

They charged the developers with being culturally insensitive in their planning of the event – a number of the speakers said they were fasting for Ramadan. They also said survey questions sent to residents about the project were written to elicit more favorable community responses and accused developers of being disingenuous about who can actually afford to live in the proposed development.

“We are the people who took down Amazon,” Akhtar, one of the organizers, told the panel.

“We will not stand by for this,” Akhtar said. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Working class people live here and built Astoria. Take your money and go elsewhere.”

Panelists said they were acutely aware of the housing crunch and were committed to ensuring at least 700 of the units in the development would be affordable.

“We are committed to continuing the dialogue with Councilmember Won to look at the affordability crisis which exists citywide and do what we can to help,” Appelbaum said.

Additional reporting by Jacob Kaye