Plans for Neighborhood’s Revival Leave Residents on Islands of Despair

Gennaro Massaro is feeling ignored.While the streets around his Long Island City neighborhood are rezoned for large developments, his home and those of his neighbors are on an island of city blocks that have been left out of the planning.The Department of City Planning is rezoning large swaths of Hunters Point, a 37-block neighborhood at the eastern end of the Queensboro Bridge, to allow for luxury residential developments and high-end office space. Homeowners in these areas will be able to transform their two-, three-, and four-story buildings into multiple-story structures up to 12 stories high, in some areas.The midblocks that make up 40% of the neighborhood will not be rezoned, and homeowners fear they will be left with poorly valued railroad apartments and wood-frame homes untouched by the neighborhood’s revival.“I don’t understand why the buildings on all sides of us are being rezoned for larger structures, while our buildings are being left out of the planning,” said Mr. Massaro, 53, a lifelong Hunters Point resident.“Property that can be developed to 10 stories becomes worth far more than adjacent property developable to only four stories,” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Julia Vitullo-Martin, wrote in a recent newsletter. “Smaller-scale blocks may well lose value as they become overwhelmed by their large neighbors.”The new developments in the re zoned areas will push up real estate taxes for the entire neighborhood, which could price many longtime property owners out of the area, they say.“We are the original residents, I’ve lived here my whole life, and now we may be forced out,” said John Osman, 40, a filmmaker.The city’s plan calls for 300 new apartments in Hunters Point, in addition to the five residential high-rises that are being erected in the general Long Island City vicinity.“This plan will make our land depressed and the land around us more valuable,” said 72-year-old Santo Ancalone, who has lived in the area for 60 years and is concerned his home will not be valuable to pass on to his family.Another resident, John Malloy, 29, has begun rallying the neighborhood in the hopes of getting the City Council to vote down the Department of City Planning’s rezoning plan. The council is to vote on the rezoning sometime this month.Under the new zoning, Mr. Malloy would be able to add an additional apartment to his six-unit building, occupied by rent-stabilized tenants. “With only one new apartment, it just doesn’t pay,” he said. “It will cost $900,000 to knock down and rebuild this building, and with only one tenant paying market rate, I couldn’t afford to do it.”There is also concern that if their neighborhood becomes less valuable, the city could use eminent domain to seize this neighborhood for schools and other services to support the area’s growing population. “If you had to build a school, where would you buy? In the cheapest neighborhood,” Mr. Massaro pointed out.“I think we need to re-study these inner blocks to ensure long-term residents get a fair deal,” said City Council Member Eric Goia, who represents the area. The Hunters Point rezoning is in the late stages and change would require a new environmental impact study, which experts say could delay the rezoning by a year.Mr. Goia is calling for a targeted study of the midblocks, which he says could be completed more quickly.The Department of City Planning said the midblocks are not being rezoned because they are too narrow to support larger buildings.“We went block by block and street by street to make sure the diversity and character of the neighborhood wasn’t diminished,” the director of the Queens office of the Department of City Planning, John Young, said. The narrow streets cannot handle additional parking and the rezoning mainly took place along the wider boulevards, he added.Hunters Point residents point to streets that are as narrow as theirs that have been rezoned for higher density. According to City Planning, narrower streets have been upzoned only if they front a park, or there is already a tall building on the street and the new zoning must comply with the current architecture.The city is concerned that if the entire area is rezoned, the neighborhood could lose the many affordable rents tenants now enjoy.“This neighborhood has always been residential, and it is an area of affordable housing. We wanted to make sure that didn’t change,” Mr. Young said.Residents say rezoning is a matter of freedom. “I want to develop if I choose to,” Mr. Massaro said. “It isn’t right that I can’t, and that my property will be worth only half of what the property behind me is worth.”

Plans for Neighborhood’s Revival Leave Residents on Islands of Despair

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