NY’s job-killers trying to ‘preserve’ industrial wasteland in Flushing
Published on Dec 7, 2020 by
New York Post
Editorial Board
12.7.20
Heedless of the dire economic perils the city faces in the wake of the pandemic, New York’s anti-development zealots are now looking to kill the rezoning of the barren Flushing waterfront for residential housing and job creation.
Having killed the Amazon headquarters in Long Island City and the Industry City rezoning in Brooklyn, the ideologues and special interests think they own the city.
Both the Queens and Brooklyn project sites remain fallow.
The Flushing project has the approval of the City Planning Commission and the local community board. It consists of 13 high-rise apartment towers offering 1,700 units — with affordable housing set-asides — nearly 900 hotel rooms and 700,000 square feet of commercial space. That would replace . . . a U-Haul storage facility and parking lots.
Will a tiny but vocal group of anti-development activists stop it? “When the voices of only a narrow group are looked at, you’re going to continue to see things like Flushing, Industry City and Amazon fall apart,” Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress, told The Post.
Yet City Council members, wary of crossing the lefty activists who have become a force in elections, say they’re “deeply concerned” about the developers’ plans. That’s been enough to repeatedly postpone a key council committee vote on the project.
And new Queens Borough President Donovan Richards told The Post: “The challenge with this project as it stands is that this is not a project that is going to help communities grow. We have to have economic growth that works for everyone.” What kind of growth works for everyone?
If anti-development forces keep getting their way, it will be the death of New York. There’s nothing progressive or woke about killing working-class housing and jobs.
https://nypost.com/2020/12/07/nys-job-killers-trying-to-preserve-industrial-wasteland-in-flushing/
