Creedmoor fight brews as community petition circulates

The Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus is slated for redevelopment. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach 

By Ryan Schwach

The redevelopment of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus is still in its infancy and it will be years before shovels go in the ground. However, pushback over potential plans to bring affordable housing to the 55-acre campus has already begun. 

A petition, which was started by Oakland Gardens resident Arlene Schlesinger and Hollis Hills Civic President Carin Bail, recently began circulating online. It calls for more public input on the development process, which is being led by the state and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, of the Creedmoor site. The petition has garnered around 1,100 signatures in the past three weeks. 

Those behind the petition argue that not enough has been done to reach out to the community in regards to the development, and that the public meetings the state’s Empire State Development has held were not widely advertised. 

“We have almost 1,100 people, these are voters, who are finding out about [the project] through a petition,” Schlesinger told the Eagle. “There's a huge majority of people who never even knew about [the ESD’s Creedmoor project] website.” 

However, a number of civic leaders from the mainly suburban communities surrounding the Creedmoor site and who share similar concerns over potential incoming high-density housing have been involved in the early stages of the project’s planning. Some met with Richards and ESD as recently as a few weeks ago. 

“Yes, community leaders are going to be involved, but the people are not being involved and some of the civics are not making a big enough issue out of it,” Schlesinger said. 

She also argued that the meetings that were held lacked proper question and answer periods, and did not do enough to properly hear out potential concerns.  

There currently is no master plan for the Creedmoor site. In February, ESD held several “visioning workshops,” during which they solicited feedback about what Queens residents would like to see built on the notorious campus. The state agency held several other public sessions following the February meetings and originally planned to release draft masterplans for the site in July and host two additional feedback sessions on those plans. 

However, the timeline for the release of the plans has been pushed back until the fall, the Eagle reported last week. 

But the lack of specific plans has not stopped speculation. The online petition asserts that the development will “have 3,000 initial units,” a figure Schlesinger said she heard at one of the public meetings. That number has not been confirmed. 

Regardless, Schlesinger told the Eagle that details aside, she believes housing is likely coming to the site. Her belief was confirmed by Richards last week, who told the Eagle that housing will very likely be at least one element of the final project. 

But Schlesinger said that a housing component would likely prompt her and others to consider taking the matter to court.  

“I don't want to get to that point,” she said. “But you can't just run us over.” 

The Creedmoor project comes as the city’s homeless population is hitting new highs nearly weekly and as the city contends with an ever-growing asylum seeker crisis. Richards has cited the city’s housing crisis as a core reason for why the Creedmoor project should include robust affordable housing. 

A petition, started by local community members, calling for increased public input on the Creedmoor project has begun circulating online. Screenshot via Change.org

It’s also likely to be yet another project in New York City that sees clashes between developers, public officials, those who want expanded affordable housing and those who’d rather keep the density of the neighborhood’s housing low. 

“This is a marriage, and there's no such thing as a perfect marriage,” Richards told the Eagle last week. “There are going to be disagreements on different facets of the plan.”

Schlesinger said she’s taken issue with the borough president’s insistence that housing will be a part of the plan. 

“I hear Donovan Richards saying, ‘We're going to do this,’ and ‘We're going to do that,’ but never input, never asking, never giving information as to when the meetings were or how to get involved in this,” Schlesinger argued.  

However, speaking with the Eagle last week, Richards said both his and ESD’s desire for community involvement is what has thus far delayed the process. 

“When we started this process, I was very clear with ESD that we wanted to ensure that the community's voice and community input was number one,” Richards said. “I want to ensure that the community's voice is heard.” 

At the heart of Schlesinger and Bail’s concern for bringing increased housing to the neighborhood is its lack of infrastructure – the neighborhood is not connected to any major public transportation and is often prone to traffic congestion. 

“There's no transportation, no infrastructure, no sewage,” Schlesinger said. “This is a plan that is doomed to turn into a nightmare project that cannot be maintained.”

But Richards agrees – the borough president has said several times that he hopes transportation can be factored into the plan.

Most of the duo’s argument, and that of the civic groups in the surrounding communities like Glen Oaks, Bellerose, Rocky Hill and others, relate to the fear that their communities might change. 

“It’s all homes and co-ops, and people have their lifeblood invested in that,” Schlesinger said. “And you want to take that and say, ‘I don't really care that you've been struggling for 30 years to pay off your mortgage?’”