City Planning Commission backs Flushing Waterfront rezoning
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Special Flushing Waterfront District was approved by City Planning in an 11-2 vote. Rendering courtesy of FWRA LLC
By Rachel Vick
The New York City Planning Commision voted in favor of a contentious plan to rezone a piece of the Flushing Creek waterfront for residential use Wednesday, the latest step in the city’s land use review process.
The City Council will next vote on the proposal, known as the Special Flushing Waterfront District, or SFWD, which would allow a trio of developers to build residential and mixed-use buildings on the land along Flushing Creek.
The coalition of developers, FWRA LLC, own swaths of land adjacent to the waterfront and have said they plan to develop that portion regardless of land use approval for the other section. Rezoning approval would require the developers to make 20 percent of the units affordable under the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing land-use policy.
The CPC voted 11 to 2 in favor of the proposal, nine months after Queens Community Board 7 voted to recommend the rezoning in its advisory role. A month later, Acting Borough President Sharon Lee rejected the plan in her advisory role. The city’s Universal Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, was suspended during the COVID pandemic, preventing the CPC from weighing in earlier.
The process resumed in September with a public hearing that highlighted the divided community response before the CPC vote.
Commission Chair Marisa Lago, one of the 11 members who voted in favor of the rezoning, said the land use application was “an important step forward for Flushing.”
The vote paved the way for a Monday hearing before the City Council, where members will have an opportunity to analyze the plan.
The full Council traditionally votes in lockstep with the member who represents the affected in district on land use issues, but Flushing Councilmember Peter Koo has not said how he will vote, but he has signaled his support for parts of the project.
“Council Member Koo believes it has many merits that would provide our community with tangible benefits we wouldn't have under an as-of-right scenario,” Koo’s spokesperson Scott Seiber said. “We're working with stakeholders in hopes of making this project the best it can be for Flushing.”
The FWRA LLC developers — F&T Group, United Construction & Development Group, and Young Nian Group — say their project will increase access to the waterfront and create a “traffic-alleviating public road network.” They have also said they will clean up the polluted and long-neglected waterfront.
“City Planning rightly sees that the SWFD is not a rezoning, but an essential next step for Queens at large towards recovery,” they said in a joint statement.
Opponents of the rezoning plan say the new development will hasten displacement in the neighborhood by driving up rents and property values.
“We need actual affordable housing, and not only as a tradeoff for more luxury housing,” said Sarah Ahn, director of the Flushing Workers Center, at the September hearing. “There’s nobody who wants a Queens waterfront more than Flushing residents, but it shouldn't come at the cost of 2,000 luxury condos.”
Critics also contend that the developers have used the issue of affordable housing to force the city’s approval of the rezoning. Since the developers can build “as of right” they are not required to build any affordable units. Rezoning approval would bind them to the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing rules.
“I just want to make it perfectly clear to you. It’s going to be this type of development or it’s going to be an as-of-right development,” said the developers’ attorney Ross Moskowitz at a January public hearing.
Plan opponents have also questioned whether the developers can build “as of right” in the first place.
In an op-ed for the Eagle, Queens College Urban Studies Professor Tarry Hum said FWRA LLC need the rezoning in order to proceed. But the existing plan does not adequately address the neighborhood’s needs, she said.
“If the SFWD is approved, the meager number of affordable housing units — 61 to 90 depending on ‘affordability’ range — will do little to moderate the transformative gentrification of Flushing’s waterfront,” Hum wrote.
