CUNY dorm for LIC

After undergoing a two-year redrafting due to community opposition, the City University of New York (CUNY) plan to build a dorm in Long Island City finally received approval. The property’s developer had to obtain a variance from the city because the structure will be taller and bigger than the area’s zoning permits. The dorm will also be green.
The CUNY structure is going to be a mixed-use building taking up two lots at 5-11 47th Avenue, within the Special Long Island City Mixed-Use District, said Brent Carrier, vice president of O’Connor Capital Partners, the company developing the property.
One of the structure’s components will be the CUNY Graduate Center - a six-story residential section of nearly 200,000 square feet for CUNY Ph.D. students and faculty, according to Carrier.
Twenty-one units will be designated for faculty members and 228 units will be designated for graduate students, most of whom are expected to live there with family members, according to the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA), which granted the variance.
“We are bringing a really young vibrant community. They are focused on their career,” said Carrier, explaining that many of the students will be teaching throughout the CUNY system.
The project will also feature a 12-story mixed-use residential/commercial building of nearly 160,000 square feet; about 20 percent of the apartments in it will be set aside for affordable housing, the BSA variance resolution revealed.
In addition, the $152 million structure will devote one floor to the Queens Council on the Arts and one floor to 90 parking spaces as well as opening its courtyard to the public, said Sid Davidoff, of Davidoff Malito & Hutcher, a law firm that counsels the building’s developer.
The height and the floor area of the proposed project exceed what the area’s zoning regulations allow. In addition, one of the lots the structure will take up does not permit graduate student and faculty housing uses. That’s why the developer had to seek building permission from the BSA, which was granted on September 23.