City launches major plan to rezone Downtown Jamaica
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The Department of City Planning on Monday introduced the first draft of its “Jamaica Neighborhood Plan,” an effort to rezone large areas of the Queens neighborhood in the hopes of bringing in more housing, commercial space and jobs. Photo via DCP
By Jacob Kaye
The city this week rolled out its ambitious plan to redevelop a major section of Downtown Jamaica, two years after it first began exploring the idea of overhauling the area that has been plagued by decades of disinvestment.
The Department of City Planning on Monday introduced the first draft of its “Jamaica Neighborhood Plan,” an effort to rezone large areas of the Queens neighborhood in the hopes of bringing in approximately 12,000 new homes, 2 million square feet of new commercial space and thousands of new jobs to the once-thriving section of the borough.
City officials said Jamaica, which was once the commercial capital of Queens and has long-been a neighborhood known for its high rate of Black home ownership, is primed for growth. The neighborhood is a major transportation hub – it’s home to the fourth-most trafficked rail station in the U.S. It also has hundreds of business, foot traffic, numerous cultural institutions and residents.
But it’s also home to a shrinking manufacturing district, riddled with shuttered business, as well as areas with crumbling infrastructure. It’s also home to a high population of rent-burdened residents and a vacancy rate lower than the city average.
The Jamaica Neighborhood Plan, which covers approximately 300 blocks in the area, aims to rezone large portions of the neighborhood in order to encourage developers to build housing and for businesses to move into the downtown core.
“Jamaica has been one of the most bustling commercial and transit hubs in the city, but our own outdated zoning and lack of housing and investments have held it back,” DCP Commissioner Dan Garodnick told the Eagle on Monday.
“In a city like New York, to have a neighborhood that is geographically central to everything, and 20 minutes from an airport, Downtown Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan, it should be thriving with lots of job and housing opportunities around it,” he added. “That is what we hope to deliver here.”
According to the Department of City Planning, the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan would encourage the construction of around 12,000 new homes, 4,000 of which would be income restricted.
The plan features a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing provision that officials say would be the largest MIH zone in the city, if approved.
The plan also features regulations that officials claim will lead to streetscape improvements, open space and mixed-use areas.
Garodnick, who also serves as the chair of the City Planning Commission, said the zoning changes would address the neighborhood’s issues in a comprehensive way.
“We're trying to spur economic activity and housing creation in a more complete way,” he said.
“This plan would vastly expand housing opportunities in the neighborhood and help address current and future demand for housing,” he added. “We also are creating flexibility for commercial and residential space, and we're creating more flexibility for industrial space.”
The Jamaica Neighborhood Plan aims to bring new housing, commercial space and open space to Downtown Jamaica. Renderings via DCP
As part of the plan, the DCP divided the neighborhood into five different sections.
The North Core, which runs from Hillside Avenue to Jamaica Avenue, currently lacks housing but is near multiple transit lines. Under the proposal, the North Core would be rezoned to allow for more housing.
The Downtown Core, which runs from Jamaica Avenue to Archer Avenue, would be rezoned to allow for buildings as tall as 18-stories high and encourage mixed-use development.
The Southern Corridors, which cover major blocks including Sutphin Boulevard, Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and Merrick Boulevard, would be rezoned to allow for developers to construct buildings as tall as 11-stories high. The area currently only allows for buildings as tall as 8 stories.
The South Core, which covers the area directly south of Jamaica Center and includes the busy Archer Avenue bus terminal, would be rezoned to allow for 15-story tall buildings.
The Industrial Area, which covers the eastern portion of the study area, would be rezoned in an effort to bolster and preserve the industrial businesses already local to the neighborhood. It would mostly remain an industrial area under the zoning plan.
Officials say the need for an overhaul of Jamaica’s zoning is dire.
From 2010 to 2020, the neighborhood's population grew by over 13 percent, which is nearly double the rate of growth citywide.
But the housing in the area and in the borough as a whole hasn’t kept pace. Queens’ vacancy rate is currently around 0.88 percent, while the citywide vacancy rate is 1.4 percent.
In Jamaica, nearly 60 percent of residents are rent burdened.
The Jamaica Neighborhood Plan aims to bring new housing, commercial space and open space to Downtown Jamaica. Renderings via DCP
When asked by the Eagle why the number of income restricted in the units in the plan were not proportional to the number of residents struggling to pay their rent, Garodnick said that just by creating more housing, rents across the neighborhood will start to decline.
“We need to reduce the demands that are putting pressure on existing residents and pushing their rent up by creating more housing supply,” Garodnick said. “Housing supply helps to take some of that pressure off.”
The Jamaica Neighborhood Plan will officially begin the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure on Thursday. It will end with a vote in the City Council in the next several months.
