By Nathan Duke
Community Board 5 members and neighborhood civic leaders have been putting pressure on the Department of City Planning to push phase two of the downzoning project forward, arguing that developers are trying to build as much as possible in the interim. “I feel like you are putting us on the back burner,” Glendale Civic Association President and CB 5 member Kathy Masi told City Planning's Joy Chen at the board's Jan. 9 meeting. “I keep reading in the papers that all these other community boards in Queens are getting downzoned. There's no excuse.”The Juniper Park Civic Association and neighborhood residents surveyed blocks in the three communities in December 2005 to determine where zoning changes were necessary for phase two. Phase one of the project was approved in March 2006.City planner John Young had originally told the board that phase two would probably be certified by the end of last summer and adopted by the end of 2007. But Chen told board members last week that City Planning hoped to get approval for the project this spring or summer.”We have to make sure every recommendation is viable,” she said. “It's a huge area – I know it's not an excuse for why it's not done. But it's a very intensive effort.”But Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park civic, said original plans for phase two only included Middle Village and Maspeth and that City Planning had later included Glendale in the project. “They keep saying the reason this is taking so long is that it's too large,” he said. “They made it larger by attaching Glendale. And it is obvious that for the last two years, it has been on hold because it does not fit into [Mayor Michael Bloomberg's] plan to create more housing units.”The plans include a total of 250 blocks to be rezoned in four areas. The first area's borders are Cooper Avenue, Woodhaven Boulevard, Forest Park and 80th Street in Glendale. The second area has borders at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Furmanville Avenue, the Queens-Midtown Expressway and Woodhaven Boulevard in Middle Village. The third area is bordered by 59th Street, Mt. Olivet Cemetery, the Queens-Midtown Expressway and Admiral Avenue in Maspeth. The fourth's borders are 70th Avenue, 69th Place, Felix Avenue and Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Glendale.In many of the neighborhoods, zoning would be changed from R4 and R5 designations to lower the height of buildings in areas with smaller one- and two-family detached buildings and rowhouses. Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
