Downtown Flushing in Queens is one step closer to receiving a 1.3-acre \u201ctown square,\u201d as local Community Board Chair Chuck Apelian puts it. The development he heralds is a public plaza of a decades-in-the-making tower complex known as Flushing Commons.<\/p>\n
The project\u2019s developer, F&T Group, a major force reshaping the Flushing skyline, has started construction on the plaza and the second of three mixed-use towers. The buildings will house a new YMCA, several hundred condo units, and hundreds of thousands of feet of retail and office space. At the ground-breaking, several local politicians and business leaders welcomed the new construction and public amenities.<\/p>\n
The developers and former city economic development officials originally advertised the project \u2014 steps away from the Flushing-Main Street train station, the busiest stop<\/a> in the city outside of Manhattan \u2014 as an economic growth supercharger, promising thousands of jobs and a transformation of the neighborhood into a destination.<\/p>\n The neighborhood has transformed in the years since the project was approved by the City Council in 2010. The skyline of the largely middle- and working-class majority-Asian neighborhood is now dotted with dozens of new luxury high-rise condos<\/a>, the arrival of which accompanied a rise in apartment rental and sales prices.<\/p>\n And as the neighborhood\u2019s skyline continues to change, some residents and onlookers have applauded the growth, while others worry about gentrification, rising rents, and who the changes are truly serving. Critics of the Flushing Commons project see the site as a scar of inequitable development and \u201ca catalyst\u201d for Downtown Flushing’s gentrification.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re building a neighborhood that\u2019s catered to the global elite,\u201d said Tarry Hum, a retired CUNY professor and former chair of the Queens College Urban Studies department who has studied Flushing’s development for decades. \u201cThey think they\u2019re building Shanghai in Queens.\u201d<\/p>\n The neighborhood, which includes large Chinese and Korean populations, has a $69,000 median household income<\/a>, less than the city\u2019s overall average of $85,000. But since 2010, the median home sale price has surged from about $350,000 in 2010 to $650,000 this year, according to data<\/a> provided by the real estate listings site StreetEasy.<\/p>\n A study<\/a> by the Urban Displacement Project, an academic group, based on 2016 demographic data, found that in some blocks of the neighborhood, there was ongoing gentrification and displacement of low-income households, and some other swaths were at risk of gentrifying.<\/p>\n With the Flushing Commons project in particular, some housing advocates and officials said they lament the lack of affordable or below-market-rate units. The project sits on a lot that was previously owned by the city and was sold to the developers at below-market rate. The asking price for condos at the site start around $1 million, according to the project\u2019s website. Several officials said a similar redevelopment plan likely wouldn\u2019t have been approved in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a different world,\u201d Apelian said. \u201cWithout a doubt there wouldn\u2019t be an upzoning today without\u2026affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n Apelian added that the project was approved by the City Council alongside a nearby 140-unit affordable housing development. But Hum called the Flushing Commons redevelopment plan a \u201cgive away from day one.\u201d<\/p>\n An earlier transformation<\/p>\n In the middle of the 20th century, urban planner Robert Moses forced out a Black community<\/a> living on the site as part of a \u201cslum clearance plan<\/a>\u201d to make way for the city\u2019s first municipal parking lot, the New York Times reported.<\/p>\n In 2004, the Bloomberg administration, along with local elected officials and a selection of residents, conceived of a development to replace the lot, one piece of a three-part plan<\/a> to redevelop Flushing\u2019s downtown, waterfront, and the neighboring industrial Willets Point neighborhood.<\/p>\n The Flushing Commons project was later approved by the City Council in 2010, though it has been beset<\/a> by delays<\/a> over the years<\/a>.<\/p>\n Local community board member, artist and organizer Cody Herrmann was also skeptical of how beneficial the new public plaza would be, given the developer\u2019s past attempts at creating privately owned public spaces in the neighborhood. She pointed to the strip of waterfront by the nearby SkyView shopping mall, developed by Onex Real Estate Partners, where F&T\u2019s Executive Vice President Helen Lee was previously a director. Herrmann said the waterfront space was \u201cfumbled\u201d as a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are scenarios where privately owned public spaces become assets for a community,\u201d Herrmann said. \u201cBut when I look at the privately owned public spaces that F&T has already built, I\u2019m so unimpressed.\u201d<\/p>\n