Proposed overhaul at Jamaica station comes as Queens area reckons with housing boom

Gov. Kathy Hochul, through her executive budget this week, pitched $50 million in state money to redesign the busy transit hub in Jamaica, Queens, which hasn’t seen an upgrade in more than 20 years.

The proposal came less than three months after the City Council approved a sweeping rezoning plan that clears the way for developers to build 12,000 new homes across 230 blocks in the area.

The rezoning and transit improvements are a sign that drastic changes are coming to the neighborhood. But longtime residents argue Jamaica and its namesake train station have been neglected for decades, and are only now seeing investments because of the incoming housing boom.

A map laying out the rezoning approved for Jamaica, Queens last year.

Courtesy NYC Department of City Planning

The commuter hub is the city’s third-busiest train station. It sees 200,000 people every weekday, a number that’s slated to grow due to the rezoning. Long Island Rail Road riders can get from the hub to Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn in 20 minutes. The station connects to more than 10 bus routes, as well as the JFK AirTrain. The E, J and Z subway lines also connect underground.

The place is also incredibly difficult to navigate.

The station has taken on a new role as a busy transfer point for Long Island Rail Road commuters since Grand Central Madison opened in early 2023. Regular commuters and occasional travelers alike find the station’s myriad signs and escalators dizzying.

“ I was a little confused today, actually,” said Alexis D’Antoni, a flight attendant with JetBlue who was hustling to JFK. She’s traveled all over the world and said many transit systems, like Tokyo’s, are easier to manage than Jamaica station. “They could do a little better, making this easier to navigate. “They could do a little better, making this easier to navigate.”

But many Jamaica residents remain skeptical the city will deliver enough resources to meet the neighborhood’s current need, let alone the increased demand that will come with more housing and transit riders.

“ There’s no infrastructure. There’s only one school in the area. There’s no other schools. So where are all these children gonna go?” said Yesenia Graham, 45, who runs One Stop Home Service, the apartment rental company her father started more than 50 years ago.

More apartment towers keep popping up in Jamaica, Queens.

Stephen Nessen / Gothamist

City officials included $315 million for sewer upgrades and $50 million to build new public plazas as part of the rezoning. But those projects are expected to take 15 years to finish.

Jasmin Tepale, senior lead for community planning at the Department of City Planning, said part of the rezoning allows for schools to be located in private buildings.

“It’s one way that we can open up options for new schools in the future,” Tepale said.

The rezoning doesn’t address Graham’s other top concerns.

“Garbage not being picked up as often as possible,” she said, pointing out the window to a pile of Lime scooters tipped over on the ground. “We still have extreme amounts of homeless, extreme amounts of drug abusers. We just had somebody OD on our corner a week-and-a-half ago.”

Many local Queens residents argued the city and state’s plan to redevelop Jamaica ignores the neighborhood’s current residents.

Stephen Nessen / Gothamist

Jazmin Vega, who works at a construction company in the neighborhood, said major upgrades to Jamaica station are a long time coming.

”That train station is madness,” she said. But she also said adding more housing to the area also seemed like madness.

“We’re being sandwiched one on top of the other, so I don’t know how that’s going to play out in the long run,” she said. “ The businesses are leaving, so you going to bring more people and you’re not going to give them any places to shop, cook, live, buy clothes.”

Skeptics of the rezoning can look to the other side of the tracks from Jamaica station to see what’s coming. There, a massive 30-story apartment building called The Crossing towers over a stretch of clothing shops, chains and small grocery stores along Jamaica Avenue.

“On a flight attendant salary, and there’re a lot of us that live in this building, it is beneficial and then location wise,” said Kelsey Grace, 31, who lives in the building, which opened in 2021 and has a sun deck, a fitness room and a media lounge.

Franklin Wilson, 42, who lives in Harlem but commutes via the LIRR to St. Albans to his job as a minister, said the money spent on upgrading Jamaica station could be better used.

He said the governor should add services to help existing Queens residents get to and from hubs like Jamaica more easily, rather than upgrade the station for the newcomers.

“Those areas out there are transit deserts,” he said. “It’s very difficult to get there.”