One LIC Rezoning — déjà-vu all over again
Last month, I sat at MOMA PS1 listening to the preliminary rezoning plan coming out of the One Long Island City Comprehensive Community Planning. As I listened I had a feeling of foreboding déjà-vu to a meeting at the Irish Center in Long Island City in November 2018. A week before this meeting, Long Island City was announced as one of Amazon’s two future headquarters. As a result, the meeting was packed with my neighbors, press, and representatives from lawmakers across our city and state. The only topic discussed was Amazon in Long Island City.
The meeting left me frustrated. Not only was this a three billion dollar tax giveaway to one of the richest and most aggressively monopolistic companies in the world but it also felt like no one was listening to the deep concerns of the community. Concerns about overdevelopment, affordability, livability, resiliency, climate change, and failing infrastructure in one of the most rapidly growing communities in New York City.
I have had the same feeling many times since. Recently, when Queens Community Board 2, on which I serve, reviewed a proposal for development of Parcel E on Hunters Point South and the City of Yes Housing proposal that is grounded in theory not community. And when I hear politicians and housing advocates speak of building our way out of a housing crisis instead of calling it what it truly is, a housing affordability crisis. Building our way out via tax breaks to developers for a limited number of affordable units is not the answer. Instead we need to build communities with substantial investment from our government.
This is how I felt listening to the latest LIC rezoning plan, déjà-vu all over again.
The One LIC plan was more framework than fully flushed out and it will need to go through Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) and an environmental review. Some parts were acceptable, like protecting and improving the Industrial Business Zone (IBZ) for new technologies and businesses. My concern is that it seems unlikely that people working in the IBZ will be able to afford to live in Long Island City. A community that is already unaffordable and becoming more and more economically exclusive with every new build.
The One LIC meeting last month started with a zoning 101. This is not a bad idea because many people do not understand the fundamentals of zoning, but the message was that zoning cannot solve the concerns of the community. It felt like my neighbors and I were being scolded for laying out what the community needs during the so-called community input sessions.
Perhaps a better way to start the meeting would have been to have a government 101 about how we the people have the power and our elected leaders work for us, their constituents. About how the policy elected leaders put forth should be in service to the people they work for–not developers, not billionaires, not private equity, not special interest groups who advocate for blanket policy without having lived experience in our community.
Also important to point out that my neighbors and I understand the limitations of rezoning because we are already living with those limitations in Long Island City. We agree that the urgent issues won’t be solved by rezoning but require policy and funding, the hard work of governing and serving the people. The One LIC plan feels not only like a giveaway to developers but like our government and elected leaders have given up and handed over control to developers.
The One LIC plan twists some parts of what the community said to fit a narrative of market-rate development. The fundamental idea on which the One LIC plan is based, increasing density by transit, only works if that transit is not already totally overwhelmed and inadequate. Likewise, Long Island City’s sewers, parks, schools, libraries, public housing, and all infrastructure is overwhelmed and inadequate. We have been increasing density in Long Island City for two decades with only limited investment in infrastructure. The focus should be investment there, not more tax giveaways to developers to build majority market-rate housing.
Furthermore, the community has been loudly clear that any new housing must be 100 percent affordable and for families with a priority on families who are unhoused living in shelters in the area. The One LIC plan totally ignores this priority set by the community.
The One LIC Plan also seemingly ignores the growing concerns about resiliency and the climate crisis. There is another plan put forward, the Hunters Point North Vision Plan for Resiliency, that offers real solutions, the community supports, and could have been incorporated into the One LIC Plan.
Listening to the One LIC plan, my overwhelming anxiety was about how long can I realistically continue to live in Long Island City as it becomes more and more unaffordable and unlivable. I know I was not the only community member experiencing that anxiety.
Long Island City is the community that told Jeff Bezos and Amazon no. Now it feels like we are getting another version of Amazon HQ2. A more insidious version that will quietly but just as effectively create a gated, wealth segregated community that displaces my neighbors, damages our environment, and is not about building community at all.
