Developer Eyes Hunters Pt. Site
Community Board 2 will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, Mar. 19 to vote on an application to rezone parts of Long Island City.
The session will take place at 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday at the Academy for Careers in Television and Film’s auditorium, located at 1- 50 51st Ave.
The applicant, Hunters Point 49 LLC. is seeking zoning map amendments to rezone a portion of 49th Avenue.
Changes would allow the rezoned portion to allow residential development and also extend the special Long Island City mixed use district.
The proposal seeks to specifically rezone a portion of a development site located at 11-55 49th Avenue in the formely industrial area of Hunters Point.
Hunters Point is no stranger to rezoning for the purposes of residential development. Several zoning changes over the last 30 years have paved the way for large-scale development.
Long Island City and Hunters Point are historically manufacturing and industrial areas. Since the late 1860’s and after the construction of the LIRR terminal and continued by the establishment of the MTA Subway yard in Sunnyside, the area has been a transportation hub with residential and commercial growing up in the vicinity.
For many years Hunters Point was typified by a mix of housing, industry and manufacturing. In 1961 as the city was losing jobs overseas and to southern and western states, manufacturing districts were established to encourage industrial firms to establish sites in the area.
By the 1980’s the area had evolved into a mixed industrial, manufacturing and residential neighborhood. In 1981 the city established the Hunters Point Special Mixed Use District to regulate this blend of businesses and residences.
The next two decades saw parts of the neighborhood rezoned several times. These include the Court Square Subdistrict, created in1986 to encourage high-density commercial office development along Jackson Avenue, which led the construction of the 50 story Citigroup building in 1989.
Then in 1993 the Department of City Planning recommended further changes for the Special Hunters Point Mixed Use District, resulting in the 1995 changes which rezoned corridors along Jackson Avenue, Vernon Boulevard and 44th Drive from light manufacturing to residential and commercial districts.
