By Dustin Brown
New York’s top city planner carries a vision of Long Island City’s future that fits offices, homes and industry within the boundaries of one neighborhood — just not next door to each other.
“This area has the potential to be one of the most enviable regional mixed-use districts in New York City,” declared Amanda Burden, the director of the city Department of City Planning, at a breakfast sponsored last Thursday by the Long Island City Business Development Corp.
Burden plans to encourage development in Long Island City by maintaining its diverse uses, promoting an active street life and improving the neighborhood’s infrastructure.
A total of 37 blocks in Long Island City were rezoned last year to encourage high-density mixed-use development and ultimately spur a new business district, a long-anticipated move that triggered questions about whether long-entrenched manufacturers and artists would be pushed out as the area rose in stature.
But Burden said the zoning was designed to protect the area’s diversity.
“While I believe that this neighborhood is large enough to accommodate many different concentrations of land uses, I know that we need to take the necessary steps to protect and enhance those areas that are predominantly industrial,” she said.
When one audience member said the noise and pollution associated with manufacturing made it inappropriate for a neighborhood with such economic potential, Burden replied that Long Island City’s size expands its possibilities.
“We encourage industry in certain quadrants where they don’t butt up with other uses where it will conflict,” she said.
She also vowed to preserve the community of artists who discovered the neighborhood first.
“It’s absolutely critical that artists find a way to show their work and also make their work here,” she said.
Burden has stood at the helm of the department since the beginning of this year, when she was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She had previously overseen the development of Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, a project she held up during her talk as a model of strategies she would pursue in Long Island City.
“When I started at Battery Park City, there was only sand there,” she said. “We decided the only way to attract developers … was to build the first public parks and infrastructure.”
In Long Island City those investments are coming in the form of two federally funded programs: the Queens Plaza Bike and Pedestrian Improvement Project, and Long Island City Links.
Although she called Queens Plaza “the gateway to Queens,” she said it is now “a dark, congested, eight-lane triangle of roadbed and elevated subway structures which we are hoping to tame.”
The department is seeking about $12 million to implement the first phase of the improvement project, which would reconfigure the traffic patterns in the central part of Queens Plaza. By next month a design team will be chosen for the second phase, which would improve the streetscape with better lighting, landscaping, and signs along the wide stretch between the East River and Van Dam Street.
Long Island City Links, meanwhile, seeks to improve the internal transportation network connecting the neighborhood’s waterfront, cultural institutions and shopping strips as well as residential and business districts.
“Right now, Long Island City has a streetscape environment that only the most intrepid pedestrian or bicyclist is willing to endure,” Burden said. “The transportation network here seems to be designed to get people in and out of the neighborhood instead of improving the experience within it, and that’s what we believe Long Island City Links can change.”
The department has also started a zoning study to encourage residential development and streetscape improvement in Hunter’s Point, Burden said.
“New residents can foster the development of shops, restaurants and art galleries — bring life to the street day and night, creating a vibrant street experience for people who live and work here.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
