“Con Edison supports the goals of the rezoning, and we welcome the opportunity to continue working with Councilmember Won,” a spokesperson said. “As a regulated utility, any land transfer must follow established state regulatory processes. We have already initiated this process.”
In response, Won’s office said that ConEd has not made such commitments to pay for the design costs on their portion of the connected waterfront.
‘Not perfect’
The residents of Long Island City and Astoria that will be affected by the rezoning appear to be split on it.
Some locals and housing advocates see the plan as an opportunity to address overdevelopment in LIC, and bring affordability and other benefits to the Western Queens community.
Others worry it will bring more of the same type of development seen in the neighborhood over the past decade, further displacing longtime residents.
Dating back to 2010, LIC has grown faster than any other neighborhood in the city, outpacing the rest of New York by nearly ten fold in population, according to a report from the state comptroller.
During that time, LIC in particular became the destination for developers looking to build luxury high rise apartments in the neighborhood that’s just a quick train ride over to Manhattan.
Some locals say that this inundation of new development priced them out, and that the influx of housing was not met with an equal measure of infrastructure, school seats and open space.
OneLIC’s main tenant is to reverse those trends. But locals are not convinced it will achieve that goal.
Many of Won’s demands, namely her call for an increased mandate for housing affordability, are in lock step with the local community boards and Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.
Queens Community Boards 1 and 2, and the BP approved the project when it came before them earlier this year, but all did so with a laundry list of conditions and stipulations.
“All of us voted for the promise that we see and the opportunity to bake in and incorporate as much as possible from our conditions,” said Anatole Ashraf, the chair of CB2, which contains the majority of the rezoning area.
Ashraf told the Eagle that he has hope that councilmember will get the plan across the finish line, but said it would be less than ideal if a good amount of CB2’s conditions aren’t met.
“It would be very disappointing if none of our plans are met,” he said. “Some of us would prefer something over nothing, but if it’s along the lines of table scraps, then that’s unacceptable.”
His counterpart at CB1, Evie Hantzopolous, has been more vocally critical of the OneLIC plan.
She organizes with the Western Queens Community Land Trust, an organization that has continued to call on Won to kill OneLIC outright.
“I don’t know how much the city is giving, that’s the whole thing,” she told the Eagle in Astoria last week.
“I genuinely believe [Won] is pushing for these things,” she added. “She tells us she is fighting for these investments in the community, and it’s the city that has to come up with them. There’s only so much that she can do.”
At a rally last week near the Queensbridge Houses in LIC, which, alongside the nearby Ravenswood Houses, is the largest public housing community in the country, NYCHA residents spoke out against the OneLIC Plan.
“We’ve been neglected for so long,” said Christina Chase, who has lived in both developments. “The audacity for the Department of the City Planning to come over here saying we’re going to invest all around you, but not in you, it’s disgusting. We’ve been waiting years for these repairs. We’ve been waiting years just to live in dignity, and it ain’t right.”
“We need truly, deeply affordable housing, and OneLIC is not it,” she added.