State cuts hundreds of housing units from Creedmoor plan

Queens Assemblymember Edward Braunstein, Senator Toby Ann Stavisky and City Councilmember Linda Lee announced a deal with the state to reduce the amount of housing for the Creedmoor redevelopment. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach

By Ryan Schwach

A deal has been struck that will greatly reduce the amount of housing units planned for the redevelopment of the long-vacant Creedmoor campus in Eastern Queens.

The deal, the product of negotiations between local elected officials and the state, will result in around 850 less units being built as part of the 59-acre redevelopment that has been in the works for the past two years.

The reduction in housing addresses concerns from the local community board and neighboring civic groups that opposed the level of density set for the project, which is being led by the state.

Since the state’s plan to redevelop the area formerly home to the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center was launched in 2023, it was criticized by a coalition of community civic leaders, who said the project was too dense and would negatively impact their residential communities.

But while the new deal, announced late Tuesday, was celebrated by those seeking a redevelopment with a smaller footprint, it was chided by advocates who say the project’s full promise and ability to help address the city’s housing crisis won’t be met under the new plan.

Eastern Queens electeds Assemblymember Edward Braunstein, Senator Toby Ann Stavisky and City Councilmember Linda Lee announced the deal with Empire State Development on Tuesday night. All three were critical of the state’s master plan for the site, which was unveiled in December.

“My colleagues and I have consistently emphasized that any development on the Creedmoor campus must reflect community values; supporting older adults’ desires to age in place and offering truly affordable paths to homeownership, all without straining our public infrastructure,” Lee said in a statement. “I’m cautiously optimistic that the revised plan, with its reduced scale, better aligns with these priorities.”

The project, still several decades away from being reality, will now have 851 less total units. Of those units, 588 of them were supposed to be available to own, and 263 would have been rentals.

The cuts represent more than a quarter of the 2,022 units now planned to be built at Creedmoor.

The deal will also result in a 27 percent reduction in overall unit square footage, a 15 percent reduction in the amount of housing units set aside for individuals with mental illnesses and the removal of five 8-story buildings planned for the site.

The remaining 8-story buildings, the largest in the development plan, will be moved to the center of the campus, pulling them away from the suburban community that surrounds Creedmoor.

In addition, the state promised to move up the timeline for the senior housing units included in the plan, and to shrink the footprint for a proposed school at Creedmoor, which the officials said would free up space for a playground, faculty parking and bus loading zones.

“We believe these adjustments demonstrate our commitment to create a project that responds to comments expressed by yourselves and community members and that provides housing which will enable young adults to stay in their neighborhoods with their family support system, allow seniors to age in place, and create new homeownership opportunities,” said ESD CEO Hope Knight. “We look forward to your support and participation in completing the state’s approvals process for the plan this year and the city’s approval of the street network next year.”

In a phone call with the Eagle, Braunstein said that he and his fellow electeds have long been concerned about the density initially planned for the project, and the deal was a result of negotiations between them, ESD and Governor Kathy Hochul’s Director of Operations Kathryn Garcia.

The trio of electeds had held off on participating in a community advisory council for the development until a deal was reached.

“We don't want to participate in something that we disagree with,” he said. “After continuing to explain to them that we thought it was too dense, fortunately, they came back with a revised proposal.”

The purpose of the development was to help address the ongoing housing crisis in the city, and while the officials involved in the deal acknowledged the need for more housing, they claimed the numbers for Creedmoor were just too much.

“There's a need for housing, particularly for seniors and veterans, and we recognize that,” Braunstein said. “However, we felt that the proposal…was just significantly more dense than the surrounding community, and that was an argument that we continue to make.”

In her statement, Lee said that while New York needs more housing, the developments should “sustainably serve” communities like Eastern Queens.

The planned 59-acre redevelopment of the Creedmoor campus in Eastern Queens will now have about 850 fewer housing units following a deal between elected officials and the state.  Rendering via Empire State Development

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who helped launch the plan alongside the state, had previously been supportive of the size of the development. He said this week however, that he will back the deal.

“The art of politics is compromise,” he said. “I don't feel that we compromised our values here, because we didn't cut drastically, so the reduction I can live with. The mere fact that this part of Queens has not really seen development is a win in itself.”

Richards, who has been a vocal backer of other large-scale developments in Queens like the neighborhood rezonings in Long Island City and Jamaica, said that any new residential building is pivotal to address the housing crisis.

“We're not going to talk our way out of this housing crisis, we need to build our way out of this crisis,” he said. “Queens is growing, people want to live here, and people who've been here are being priced out each and every day.”

Local Community Board 13 leaders have long been opposed to the level of density planned for Creedmoor, and applauded the deal on Tuesday.

“Queens Community Board 13 thanks our state and city legislators – State Assembly Member Ed Braunstein, State Senator Toby Stavisky and City Council Member Linda Lee – for standing with our community to secure a new plan for Creedmoor that provides a scale of housing density consistent in scale with eastern Queens and no longer exacerbates existing oversaturation of supportive housing in Queens Community Board 13,” board members said in a statement.

“When the needs of a local community and community at large converge, it makes absolute sense to blend those into an outcome that meets all needs,” they added.

Queens Power, a group of mainly Queens-based clergy and community leaders, had been the main drivers behind the push to make the development as housing friendly as possible and bashed the reduction on Wednesday.

"This is the kind of narrow civic obstructionism that has helped drive NYC into its worst housing crisis,” said Reverend Patrick O’Connor, the co-chair of Queens Power. “We are calling on Governor Hochul to replace every unit lost at Creedmoor with other units on a buildable site as soon as possible.”

A previous version of this story incorrectly listed the amount of rental units removed from the plan.