By Connor Adams Sheets
The City Council Land Use Committee voted to approve the redevelopment of the White House restaurant in Whitestone Tuesday afternoon and the project’s developer, Joe Franco, agreed to make certain changes to the plans for the project in an attempt to appease its critics before the vote.
The contentious debate over whether to allow Franco to turn his restaurant into a full-size catering hall — an issue which has divided the Whitestone community and stirred up anger in the residential northeast Queens neighborhood — heads next to the full Council for approval. The Land Use Committee vote count was not immediately available Tuesday evening.
Franco said he was pleased about the vote and that he believes his project, at 10-24 154th St., will benefit area residents.
“We anticipate creating between 100 and 125 jobs mostly for people from the neighborhood who are walking distance from their jobs,” Franco said. “They’ll have a beautiful place to go for catering and for events and weddings …. It’s going to be an oasis of Queens, definitely of Whitestone.”
Under Franco’s original plan, the existing restaurant’s footprint would have been expanded and included a new, second-floor party space. The building’s capacity would have been 250 to 300 people with more than 100 parking spaces, and the entire block would have been upzoned to allow certain types of commercial building to be built.
That proposal was amended at the behest of Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone), who gave his support for the project only after the concessions were secured, Halloran said.
Most significantly, the commercial upzone will only cover the White House and an adjoining property, sparing two residences and a bank from being included in the commercial designation.
The new second floor of the project was scaled back and the building will have to be separated by the adjacent property by an 8-foot, heavily-planted barrier.
Brian Garry, who lives in the house next door to the White House property, said the concessions were a “small victory” but that he believes Halloran did not do enough to protect residents’ interests.
“The floodgates are open now on the block and it’s definitely not going to be good for the block as a residential area,” Garry said. “I definitely still oppose it because it’s still going to be too big. Even if they give me the 8 feet, it’s still going to cause a hell of a lot more traffic. Everything that was at the White House is going to be amplified by how much bigger it ends up being.”
Kim Cody, president of the Greater Whitestone Taxpayers Association, said he was also unhappy about the vote, adding that “it’s not a compromise” even though concessions were secured from Franco, because he believes the planned catering hall will still have significant negative impacts on the community.
“Halloran went to bat for a developer without any concern for the surrounding residents, without any concern for the students at PS 193 a couple hundred feet away, and no concern for a representative civic group of which I am the president,” Cody said after the vote Tuesday. “That’s not the right location for a full-size catering hall. A restaurant, yes, but not a massive catering hall.”
Franco is the former proprietor of Caffé on the Green in Bayside. In 2009, he lost the license to the city Parks Department concession, which is now operated as Valentino’s on the Green.
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
