By Bob Harris
They plan to join with the West Cunningham Park Civic Association and the Civic Association of Utopia Estates – which together also voted unanimously to rezone – and all apply together to the Queen City Planning Commission for the rezoning. These areas are in Community Board 8.Civic associations in Bayside have gone through the procedure and have been re-zoned down to R2A. This mean that builders and speculators can't utilize the loopholes in the 1961 Zoning Resolution to build those gigantic McMansions we have noticed towering over the previously built homes in R2 single-family neighborhoods.The old zoning laws had said that recreation rooms, tool rooms, boiler rooms and garages did not count in the size of a new house being built. Attics could also be 8 feet high. All this meant that those big houses could legally be built with high yellow brick walls, cement replacing grass and bushes, with the prospect that all those free areas in the building could be made into illegal rooms and apartments some day, if not sooner. This means more cars, more auto noises, more garbage and recycling cans, more trash and less green spaces and light and polluted air. R2A should correct these problems if the Department of Buildings can police the new zoning law and enforce it.The new R2A would make all those free spaces part of the size of the house so swimming pools can't be built in the basement and free space can't be made into rooms secretly in the future. Attics can only be 5 feet high which is enough for storage but not another apartment. The maximum height of the front wall would be lowered from 24 to 21 feet, but houses could slope back up to 35 feet so they would not overwhelm a street. Only one garage would be permitted in these one-family areas.Since Bayside was rezoned, the Auburndale Civic Association President Jim Rogers has asked Community Board 11 to help them rezone their community down to R2A. Since the City Planning Department is looking at College Point and Whitestone as areas to be downzoned, the Auburndale Civic feels that they better be rezoned before speculators descend on them.To our south, the Cambria Heights Civic Association has been pressing for re-zoning. President Kevin Jemmott worked with Assemblywoman Barbara Clark, Councilman Leroy Comrie and Community Board 13 Chairman Richard Hellenbrecht to have Community Board 13 pass a resolution favoring the change to R2A. Borough President Helen Marshall held her public hearing on the issue and should issue a positive report. Their re-zoning is moving fast and the Daily News did a half page story on Kevin Jemmott and the fight of the Cambria Heights Civic Association to preserve their community.This R2A issue reminds me that about 20 years ago the builders discovered a city law called the Infill Zoning Law. It gave builders an incentive to build on vacant land, so the speculators started tearing down fine homes, as they are today, and building new houses on the “vacant” land. This was being done in Bayside. I remember a rally with civic leaders and legislators standing on a flatbed truck with state Sen. Frank Padavan speaking with a bullhorn. The civics fought then as they are today to preserve their communities. They did repeal that Zoning Law, but today we have the loopholes in the R2 zoning rules.Good and bad news of the weekFor years civic leader and activist Mandingo Tshaka has been trying to obtain a memorial for his ancestors and about a 1,000 African and Native American residents of Flushing, who were buried in what was then known as “The Colored Cemetery of Queens,” now known as Martin's Field. In the 1800s “colored” and Native Americans were buried outside of town and this was the location.In the 1930s the city just paved over the burial ground and made it a playground named after local naturalist Everett P. Martin. Tshaka persisted for year after year and now with a grant of $2.7 million, provided by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and City Councilman John Liu, a memorial park is being constructed at the site. A new playground will be constructed, but not over the graves, as was in the past. It is good that this is being done, but it is too bad it took so long.
