Community Board 3, gathering at a special meeting Thursday night, voted to draft letter to city officials formally opposing modifications that would allow for the construction of two apartment buildings on what is now the parking lot for the New York LaGuardia Airport Marriott hotel in East Elmhurst.
The final vote was 22-3.
The property is located at 102-05 Ditmars Blvd. CB 3 Chairman Richard Mullings told members at the Langston Hughes Library in Corona that the special session was required after time constraints prevented a vote during the regular meeting on Sept. 17.
ASAP LGA East Elmhurst LLC is proposing to construct two buildings with a combined 535 new units. A total of 98 would be set aside for affordable senior housing.
There also would be ground floor commercial space, plus some designated community space.
“But what I’d like to do before we have a vote is to have members of the community as well as members of the board have the opportunity to speak about this, addressing concerns and comments about this application,” Board Chairman Richard Mullings said.
Many speakers were concerned that the project would require only a modification of regulations put in place in 1979 rather than a zoning change and a more stringent environmental review, thus blunting any input from the board.
Others are angered by the fact that the project appears to have been in the works for about six years, but the board was only informed several weeks ago.
“We as a community are just finding out, trying to get together details” said Marie Gayle. “That’s disrespectful. I know people in Forest Hills, Bayside. And when they have a project coming in they know about it years before.”
Frank Taylor, president of the Ditmars Boulevard Block Association, a Board 3 member and its former chairman, echoed that sentiment, using Forest Hills and Whitestone as examples.
“It happened in Black and brown communities … studies of the air, traffic and environment are incomplete,” Taylor said. “When they came to this board, the said they were coming as a courtesy.” He and Board member Danielle Horry reminded everyone of what homeowners had to go through with everything from traffic to damage to their homes’ foundations during the recent reconstruction of LaGuardia Airport.
Taylor also was one of many who said the area’s infrastructure and services are not ready for us to 2,000 new residents.
“Right now in East Elmhurst we have PS 329 that is at 150 percent of capacity,” said Marlene Rossi. “We have PS 127 at 115 percent. We have special needs students We have a mandate for smaller class sizes. And we don’t have the space.”
Board member Arthur Teiler mentioned that the developers said there would be fewer than 100 schoolchildren living at the new site, though he expressed doubts as to how that could be guaranteed.
Board member Celso Garcia and others questioned whether the designated affordable apartments would be within the price range of present-day residents.
Taylor said the neighborhoods have only NYC Health + Hospitals /Elmhurst for more the 350,000 residents.
Board member Ann Brown struck a similar chord on what critics contend are the area’s already-overburdened infrastructure and services.
“My first question was ‘Where was Con Edison?” Brown said. “Where are all the other service providers saying they will provide resources and services?”
Brown said she was unpleasantly surprised this summer by brownouts when she was not operating air conditioners or doing laundry.
She said in the past a family member was dependent on long sessions of dialysis, and that someone she knows relies on supplemental oxygen, both absolutely reliant on electricity.
Brown also questions where construction workers, hotel employees and guests will park before the project and its promised parking spaces are completed.
“This will not enhance the neighborhood,” she said.
“There are gaps in the studies, gaps in the information,” Horry said. “To say there won’t be a sewage problem(with 535 more residences), there has to be a problem. If you have a size 7 show and you jam a size 12 foot into it, the show is going to break. [The problem] isn’t the housing. It’s trying to shove 10 pounds of rice into a one-pound bag.”
But the plan had some defenders on the board.
Mark Buhrmester questioned the board’s commitment to new housing in general, saying this could be an opportunity to secure playgrounds and other amenities as part of a deal. He also cited a vote since he joined the board where it approved parking lot on land zoned for residential use.
“I’d like to see what we are for,” he said.
Board member Bill Bruno questioned Mullings’ and Taylor’s assertions that the objection in this case is this particular project in this particular place, rather than housing projects in general.
“Hopefully we can address this, because we do have a housing shortage,” he said, while acknowledging that he thinks ASAP Holdings mishandled the application process.
“The record is clear — they should have come to us sooner,” Bruno said. He also would like to close gaps in the documentation. “I’ll use the saying ‘This was worse than a crime — it was blunder.’”
Nuala O’Doherty was more direct.
“I’m a mother of three 20-somethings,” O’Doherty said. “They all live in our house. They have good-paying jobs. They want to stay in the neighborhood. And they can’t because there is no housing. This board has not been for housing.”
The Chronicle has reached out to attorney Adam Taubman, who represented ASAP Holdings at the Sept. 17 meeting, for comment on Thursday’s proceedings.