Fate of OneLIC uncertain hours before key Council vote

The fate of the OneLIC rezoning plan is uncertain hours before a City Council vote.  Rendering via DCP 

By Ryan Schwach

The fate of a plan to rezone and reshape 54-blocks of Long Island City is uncertain just hours before it’s scheduled to come before a key vote in the City Council.

Negotiations over OneLIC – the city’s plan to encourage 15,000 new units of housing in a neighborhood whose growth has far outpaced the rest of the city in the last decade – are ongoing hours before the plan is expected to come before the Council’s zoning committees.

Local City Councilmember Julie Won has threatened to veto the project if her concerns over affordability, infrastructure, public space and other issues are not addressed in the plan’s final draft.

The progressive legislator holds a fair amount of leverage in the negotiations as the resident councilmember. Should she choose to derail the project, it would mark the end of the multi-year effort, one that Won has stewarded through since the start.

Won’s potential withholding of support for OneLIC also comes just as New Yorkers begin to cast their vote on a series of ballot proposals that, in part, aim to cut back on the power the City Council has over the fate of housing projects.

In a press advisory sent Tuesday afternoon, Won’s office doubled down on comments she’s made in recent days, threatening to withhold her support unless the city commits to meeting her demands, which include increased affordability, school construction, more park space and a connected waterfront in the Western Queens neighborhood.

The councilmember, as well as the Department of City Planning, declined to comment to the Eagle on specifics of the negotiations and where they stand, but said they are ongoing.

“This plan reflects priorities we’ve heard from residents on the importance of schools and open space,” a DCP spokesperson said in a statement. “We are encouraged by the plan's broad support — including the local community board’s approval — and look forward to getting all parties to a yes.”

DCP said that the plan’s goals, including the promise of 4,300 permanently affordable homes, are key to addressing the city’s housing crisis, and that many of Won’s demands, including a new school, are at the “forefront of our minds as we continue productive conversations with the councilmember.”

OneLIC will, at the very least, come before the Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises and the Committee on Land Use on Wednesday.

What’s unclear is if it will come for a vote before the entire Council. In order for the plan to make it to the legislature’s floor, it would need to clear the committees without enough substantial changes as not to warrant getting sent back to the DCP for another round of approval.

While Won has long said that meeting her conditions are required for getting her approval, troubles began to bubble up on Monday when Won called out Con Edison, claiming the utility company was pulling back on a commitment to pay for a connected waterfront in LIC.

She said Con Ed’s move alone could "tank" the OneLIC project.

“Despite nearly two years of good-faith engagement, Con Ed has rejected the community’s vision of a connected LIC waterfront from Gantry Park to Queensbridge Park,” Won said in a statement. “Con Ed, as a $72 billion dollar company, refuses to pay their share of design costs for a public waterfront esplanade in LIC. Con Ed's refusal to participate, two days before the Council's vote on OneLIC, is going to tank this project.”

Con Ed vehemently denied that they had backtracked on the plan and submitted paper work to the state to make it happen.

Queens Councilmember Julie Won is threatening to kill OneLIC if her list of demands aren’t met by the city. File photo by Emil Cohen/NYC Council Media Unit

“Con Edison supports the goals of the rezoning, and we welcome the opportunity to continue working with Councilmember Won,” a spokesperson said. “As a regulated utility, any land transfer must follow established state regulatory processes. We have already initiated this process.”

In response, Won’s office said that ConEd has not made such commitments to pay for the design costs on their portion of the connected waterfront.

‘Not perfect’

The residents of Long Island City and Astoria that will be affected by the rezoning appear to be split on it.

Some locals and housing advocates see the plan as an opportunity to address overdevelopment in LIC, and bring affordability and other benefits to the Western Queens community.

Others worry it will bring more of the same type of development seen in the neighborhood over the past decade, further displacing longtime residents.

Dating back to 2010, LIC has grown faster than any other neighborhood in the city, outpacing the rest of New York by nearly ten fold in population, according to a report from the state comptroller.

During that time, LIC in particular became the destination for developers looking to build luxury high rise apartments in the neighborhood that’s just a quick train ride over to Manhattan.

Some locals say that this inundation of new development priced them out, and that the influx of housing was not met with an equal measure of infrastructure, school seats and open space.

OneLIC’s main tenant is to reverse those trends. But locals are not convinced it will achieve that goal.

Many of Won’s demands, namely her call for an increased mandate for housing affordability, are in lock step with the local community boards and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.

Queens Community Boards 1 and 2, and the BP approved the project when it came before them earlier this year, but all did so with a laundry list of conditions and stipulations.

“All of us voted for the promise that we see and the opportunity to bake in and incorporate as much as possible from our conditions,” said Anatole Ashraf, the chair of CB2, which contains the majority of the rezoning area.

Ashraf told the Eagle that he has hope that councilmember will get the plan across the finish line, but said it would be less than ideal if a good amount of CB2’s conditions aren’t met.

“It would be very disappointing if none of our plans are met,” he said. “Some of us would prefer something over nothing, but if it's along the lines of table scraps, then that's unacceptable.”

His counterpart at CB1, Evie Hantzopolous, has been more vocally critical of the OneLIC plan.

She organizes with the Western Queens Community Land Trust, an organization that has continued to call on Won to kill OneLIC outright.

“I don't know how much the city is giving, that's the whole thing,” she told the Eagle in Astoria last week.

“I genuinely believe [Won] is pushing for these things,” she added. “She tells us she is fighting for these investments in the community, and it's the city that has to come up with them. There's only so much that she can do.”

At a rally last week near the Queensbridge Houses in LIC, which, alongside the nearby Ravenswood Houses, is the largest public housing community in the country, NYCHA residents spoke out against the OneLIC Plan.

“We've been neglected for so long,” said Christina Chase, who has lived in both developments. “The audacity for the Department of the City Planning to come over here saying we're going to invest all around you, but not in you, it's disgusting. We've been waiting years for these repairs. We've been waiting years just to live in dignity, and it ain't right.”

“We need truly, deeply affordable housing, and OneLIC is not it,” she added.

Locals in Astoria and Long Island City are skeptical about the massive plan to rezone a swath of their Western Queens community. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach

Still, others in Queens and housing advocates say that the project will do wonders to address the housing crisis and increase economic growth.

“This is an area that is prime to be developed and to be rezoned because of the proximity to Manhattan, the closeness, especially all the different transportation options,” said Queens Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Grech.

Grech argued in a recent op-ed and to the Eagle last week that Won shouldn't kill the project, even if it's not “perfect.”

"There's no particular land deal or rezoning that's going to make every party happy,” he said. “If you want to get nirvana or perfection, it probably doesn't exist. But this is pretty darn good.”

Housing advocacy group Open New York, is also in support of the plan’s housing measures.

“New York City is facing a dire affordability crisis that's directly driven by a housing shortage, and that Queens in particular is facing housing increasingly unaffordable,” said Open NY’s Political Director Logan Phares. “Every new home helps reduce housing pressure on existing renters. All New Yorkers will feel the benefits of the rezoning, but especially Queens renters across the borough, who are feeling that intense pressure.”

On Wednesday, the full City Council will vote to approve another massive rezoning project in Jamaica.

The Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, which will rezone over 200-blocks of busy Downtown Jamaica, has already cleared the committees with the blessing of its local councilmembers, who had many of their demands met during negotiations.

But still, just hours before the vote, the fate of OneLIC is unclear.

"There's a lot of uncertainty,” said Ashraf. “What gives me hope is the fact that I'm sure negotiations are ongoing. This is a stage where these final plans take shape.”