Two plans to bring a total of 26,500 units to Queens made significant progress this week. The New York City Council approved a plan to bring 11,800 new homes to Jamaica, and the Land Use Committee advanced a proposal to rezone 54 parcels of Long Island City in order to build 14,700 affordable apartments.
The efforts are each the largest neighborhood-specific rezoning plans the city has seen in 25 years, according to the New York Times.
The Long Island City plan, known as OneLIC, will now move forward for a vote by the full City Council, while the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan received its final approval. Both projects will allow for mixed-use development.
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The moves come as New York City continues to deal with an undersupplied market and high rents. The issue of housing availability and affordability is a major issue in this year’s mayoral election, with all three major candidates making it a major tenet of their campaigns.
Sprawling mixed-use project in Jamaica
3,800 of the 11,800 units delivered through the Jamaica Neighborhood Plan will be affordable, made possible by the city’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing zoning policies. The project, which will occupy about 230 blocks, is estimated to take 15 years to complete, according to QNS.
In addition to the housing units, the project also includes 2 million square feet of commercial and community space, along with a $700 million investment from the city for community improvements, such as green spaces and updated infrastructure.
A long effort in Long Island City
Even more ambitious than the Jamaica project is OneLIC, which will also include 3.5 million square feet of commercial and industrial space. 4,300 of the plan’s 14,700 homes will be affordable.
Additionally, the city will invest nearly $2 billion in the community, allowing for the addition of 1,300 new school seats, infrastructure improvements and 15 acres of open space, QNS reports. The proposal also includes a waterfront development that will connect Queensbridge Park to Gantry Plaza State Park.
Occupying 54 blocks, the site at which OneLIC will rise is the same plot that Amazon once hoped to build a second headquarters at. The company abandoned that effort after opposition from local officials who preferred to support a development that was more community-focused.
New York City had the second most multifamily units under construction in the country as of July, according to Yardi Matrix data, with 46,368 units under development. 20 percent of those units were classified as fully affordable, with lifestyle accounting for 73 percent of the activity.
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