Hotel developers looking to build by Hotel Z would need a special permit if the text amendment passes. (Google Maps)
June 11, 2018 By Christian Murray
Community Board 2 voted last Thursday to approve the city’s plan to restrict hotel development in manufacturing zones.
The board begrudgingly approved the plan, upset that the restriction would not apply to the Special Long Island City District, a roughly 40-block section from Hunters Point to Dutch Kills.
The special district is an area already inundated with hotels, where they are located alongside residential and industrial buildings.
However, the board did not want to disrupt the city’s overarching plan, and included with the vote a provision that City Planning come back and review the Special District.
The city’s proposal, known as the M1 Hotel Text Zoning Text Amendment, would require hotel developers to obtain a special permit—requiring a lengthy public approval process—to build in M1 districts throughout the city. The city aims to protect manufacturing industrial zones from the encroachment of hotels that are changing the fabric of many industrial areas.
The city says that rampant hotel development in M1 zoning districts, where hotel development is allowed as of right, has created myriad problems. For instance, hotels are driving some businesses out of some manufacturing areas.
Alexis Wheeler, with the Dept. of City Planning, told the board Thursday that the purpose of the restriction is to “keep industrial business zones intact.”
Mixed-used zones, such as the Special Long Island City District, are excluded since the infrastructure is in place to support hotel development, City Planning has said. Areas near the airport are also excluded.
The new permit would require developers to not only go through the lengthy public process but also prove that their development would not be undermining the industrial fabric of the area. Other restrictions also apply.
Wheeler told the community board that the city would have to scrap the entire hotel text amendment if it were to make changes to include the Special District.
The board therefore voted in favor of it.
A map showing areas that will be affected by the M1 Hotel Text Amendment. The Special Long Island City Mixed Use District (light blue) would be exempt from the special permit requirement. The areas in orange would fall under the permit requirement. (DCP)
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14 Comments
There is no mention in this article that hotels operated for a public purpose (Homeless Shelters) will be EXEMPT from the Special Permit requirement.
Why can’t we get some stores instead of hotels. How about a movie theater etc.. Why hotels ? Overkill on Hotels will lead to Homeless shelters as many have said on this site. Are the rents killing retail development still?
Because the zoning in queens is garbage. Why can’t we get housing??? Let people build wherever they want, there aren’t enough homes for people.
You hit the nail on the head. Why not RETAIL decelopment in Dutch Kills and around Queens Plaza.
In Dutch Kills we had the disaster of the rezoning where the City made us go through a lengthy ULURP process where they checked everything, then ssked for local residents opinions, then the City officials under Amanda Burden went it did whatever they wanted. She acted as a modern day marie Antoinette, making it hapen so that an 8 square block area of Dutch Kills Be inundated by 18 hotels, one of which is already a shelter. And THIS is City Planning? Yikes!
Many of these new hotels are being built by EB-5 Chinese interests, investors who then get a green card under the EB-5 investor program on the backs of NYer’s who will pay the bill when the hotels are converted into homeless shelters.
isn’t there a sanction for that… yet? How is this not contested as part of the immigration policy? If you come here seeking asylum, or bring your children, or get a respectable job and pay taxes – get ready for a world of pain, but if you invest in some shady hotels, then please, be a legal immigrant.. oh nevermind, just answered my own Q.
So what they’re saying is, all of the undeveloped space in Court Square will now become hotels.
Not only there…….but on all the blocks near the 7 that are 2 and 3 stories. Communities will have to come out for ULURP and say no.
No, those will be mixed-use skyscrapers. They’re not going to plop down a hotel when they can make more money with commercial or residential space.
The hotels are going up mostly in areas that don’t allow residential.
Since so many of these hotels in Queens (not just LIC folks) are being converted to homeless shelters me thinks we do not have a need for more “hotels” in Queens. Logic
It’s not that they’re being converted, it’s that the city offers to pay a reduced rate to house homeless here if there are empty beds.
So hotels will house homeless when they have empty beds.
Reply to gdf gfs, the City pays 4 thousand a month per room and fills many places to near capacity. No motel in these forlorn neighborhoods can begin to reach that income. They were motels built for the homeless, will wither and die when the City runs out of money. Oh, that’s we taxpayers, when we revolt.
It appears the letters written by “gdf” are written by a person with big pockets willed to allow the City’s millions to flow….to him.
The former Verve Hotel, we called it the Perve, is now
Entirely a shelter and requires guards.
When the hotels were all being built in a frenzy, they all were built by undocumented labor. Now I do not fault the workers, I fault the fact t hat the City of NY and even our elected officials turned a blind eye to all these union jobs being siphoned off, away from qualified citizens. The developers were permitted to build and pay NOT new yorkers, but underpay for their labor. The Holiday Inn on 39th Avewas built by ALL Chinese workers who we re bused in and out and fed from cauldrons on the construction site. Kind if like a chain gang. They had no freedom of movement…to even crossthe street to buy coffee or tea. I tried to approach Congresswoman at a meeting in Astoria to ask her t o check the working and pay conditions of these workers. Her chief of staff got inbetween me and the Congresswoman, saying to me, “That is below the interest of the
Congresswoman.” That says it all.
Chinese
The tall residential building they’re building on the corner of 44th Drive and 23rd Street is also being built with nonunion labor.