Innovation QNS to hold town halls on development project
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A rendering of a plaza on 38th Street to be built as part of Innovation QNS. The developers behind the project will host two town hall meetings on the project on Wednesday, April 20. Rendering via Innovation QNS
By Jacob Kaye
The developers of a massive project in Astoria will hold two town hall meetings later this month on the project that aims to rezone and reform several city blocks.
The Innovation QNS town hall meetings, during which community members will be able to ask questions, provide input and get more information on the development, follows a request from City Councilmember Julie Won in which she asked the development team to be more transparent with their plans.
The town halls will both be held on Wednesday, April 20 at the Museum of the Moving Image, located at 36-01 35th Ave. One will begin at 4 p.m. and the other will begin around 5:30 p.m.
“In our discussions with Councilmember Won and other decision makers, we’ve been asked to do everything possible to gain input from the community and ensure that the project reflects that input,” said Tracy Capune, the vice president of Kaufman Astoria Studios, one of the groups behind the project. “The series of workshops we’ll be hosting are intended to supplement the established public review process known as ULURP that already provides for community input.”
Innovation QNS is being spearheaded 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.
Developers say they plan to build a dozen new buildings with a little over 2,800 apartments, office space, retail space, health and wellness facilities and, potentially, a school.
In March, Won penned a letter to the developers condemning their rollout of the project and demanding they do more outreach and conduct further studies about the potential impact the project will have on residents who live nearby.
“Thus far, the amount of community engagement is insufficient for a project of this scale that will deeply impact not only those in the immediate vicinity, but also will have lasting impacts on the neighborhood as a whole,” Won wrote in her letter. “To initiate a ULURP before addressing the community’s concerns satisfactorily would demonstrate a lack of serious consideration for these critical issues facing Astoria and the impact on the broader community.”
“It would also demonstrate a disregard of Astoria's community priorities in how it evaluates proposals that will bring long-term impacts to our neighborhood,” the councilmember added.
Won, who was elected in 2021, inherited the project and isn’t first councilmember to oppose it. Her predecessor in District 26, Jimmy Van Bramer, called the project “wildly out of character to the surrounding neighborhood,” the day after the project was first proposed in 2020.
But it’s not without its supporters – a city planning scoping meeting in June saw a number of local business owners express their excitement about the project and the potential economic benefits it may have on the surrounding neighborhood.
“At a time when Queens restaurants, shops, boutiques and other small and medium sized businesses are struggling to recover from a year of shutdowns and reduced business, Innovation QNS present our borough with an excellent opportunity… providing a much needed lifeline to small businesses at a time when public resources just cannot meet the need for relief,” Queens Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Grech said at the time.
The upcoming town hall will have live translation for Spanish, Greek, Mandarin, Bengali and ASL speakers.
Two additional community workshops will be held in May and June, the developers said.
