From left to right: Peter Papamichael, Dan Mogolesko, Eric Benaim, Crystal Xu and Patricia Dunphy at Tuesday’s real estate panel discussion at LIC Summit. Photo by: Charles Yu
Oct. 9, 2024 By Shane O’Brien
Long Island City Partnership (LICP) held its annual LIC Summit at the Museum of the Moving Image on Tuesday, bringing together leaders from diverse sectors across the neighborhood to discuss various issues and showcasing LIC as one of the most dynamic neighborhoods in New York City.
The LIC summit, now in its 10th year, featured three panel discussions, including a keynote panel addressing the broader issues and opportunities in Long Island City, a residential real estate panel, and a discussion focused on the One LIC Neighborhood Plan.
This year’s summit, themed “Building Tomorrow: LIC’s Growth & Vision,” took place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave. The event drew around 300 business leaders, community representatives, and cultural figures.
Much of the discussion centered around the One LIC neighborhood plan, with Council Member Julie Won and Deputy Borough President Ebony Young participating in the panel discussion. The panel explored plans to rezone the neighborhood and provide thousands of new housing units, along with around nine acres of new park space, new schools for the community, and an initiative to connect the LIC waterfront.
Members of the audience were invited to ask questions and make comments at the end of each panel discussion, with issues such as affordable housing, congestion pricing, and open space regularly surfacing. Audience members also appealed for cultural institutions such as Culture Lab LIC to be included in the neighborhood plan, while others called for plans to house non-profits in the area.
LICP President Laura Rothrock moderated the opening keynote panel discussion, which featured Ya-Ting Liu, the city’s first-ever chief public realm officer, and Basha Gerhards, Senior Vice President of Planning at the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY).
The opening panel discussed a number of issues affecting Long Island City, particularly Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes proposal, a zoning reform proposal that aims to add a little bit of housing in each New York neighborhood, New York’s permanent outdoor dining program and the city’s “Trash Revolution,” an Adams initiative that aims to reduce the number of garbage bags on the sidewalk by introducing garbage containers.
Liu told the audience that the city needs partnerships if the various initiatives are going to succeed, adding that government inefficiency often stands as a roadblock to successful initiatives.
“Outdoor dining has been this wonderful, great experiment. It was a lifeline during the pandemic,” Liu said, adding that restaurants now have to go through a complicated application process ever since the initiative was made permanent.
“(We have to) try to streamline the design of the application process, the documents required, and try to make it as seamless as possible, so that we have low barriers to entry, so that as many restaurants and food establishments around the city can participate,” Liu said.
Patricia Dunphy, senior vice president at Rockrose Development Corporation and LICP Board Chair, chaired the second panel discussion of the day, which centered on issues and opportunities related to residential real estate and retail in the neighborhood.
Eric Benaim, founder of Modern Spaces, Dan Mogolesko, senior vice president of residential leasing & compliance at the Durst Foundation, Peter Papamichael, founder of the VOREA Group and Crystal Xu, director of business development at United Construction and Development, took part in the second panel discussion, which discussed the changing face of Long Island City and a number of projects currently in development.
The panel told the audience that the new dynamic for retail in Long Island City now centers around food, healthcare and gyms, reflecting a city-wide shift.
The panel also discussed vacancy rates in the neighborhood, stating that LIC boasts a vacancy rate of about 1.5 % at present, which is causing rents to climb. Responding to a question from an audience member about affordable housing, Benaim said the solution to climbing rents was to build more housing, whether affordable or not, which would reduce demand and cause prices to go down.
Dunphy also quizzed panelists on climbing retail rents, stating that the average rent for retail spaces along Jackson Avenue now stands at around $200 per square foot.
“I don’t know how a food establishment can really make it (paying) $200,” Dunphy said. Benaim replied that landlords appear to be gearing toward national chains that can afford high rents.
The final panel discussion of the day, moderated by Young, saw Won joined by Hunters Point Parks Conversancy President Rob Basch, Carolyn Grossman Meagher of the Department of City Planning’s Regional Planning Division and Wil Fisher, director of external affairs at Rise Light and Power, for a lengthy discussion about the One LIC plan.
Won said more than 2,000 people have submitted feedback about the plan after multiple town halls and public engagement forums over the past 12 months.
She discussed plans to connect the LIC waterfront from Queensbridge Park down to Hunters Point South Park, stating that Con Edison has given a soft commitment to provide 20 feet of waterfront access at its Learning Center, located on the LIC waterfront at 43-82 Vernon Blvd.
She also called on the New York Power Authority to provide access to the waterfront at a decommissioned NYPA site along the LIC waterfront to allow for a continuous walkway or greenway stretching from Queensbridge Park to Hunters Point South Park. She said she remains in dialogue with both NYPA and Con Edison about waterfront access at both sites.
Basch said Hunters Point South Park and Gantry Plaza State Park served as sanctuaries for the local community but said they were not enough to cope with LIC’s growing population.
“We are fortunate to have two great parks, but we need more help,” Basch said. We need more green space… but what we really need is active green space.
“It’s great that you can sit down and have a nice, quiet meal, but with all our young families, we need space for the kids to play soccer, to play baseball, and that takes a little bit more room.”
Basch acknowledged that the One LIC plan would not satisfy everyone in the community but said he has been taking part in visioning meetings for several different neighborhood plans since 2015 and that something needs to be done for the local community.
“I’m tired of looking at abandoned sites and not having the waterfront access,” Basch said. “I would like a lot more green space, but I think this is the one opportunity we have and we really need to take advantage of it. Because, in five years, I don’t want to be sitting at another visioning meeting and putting more post-its on the wall.”
The panel discussed LIC’s rapidly growing population, which was also reflected in LICP’s biannual neighborhood snapshot, which was released on Tuesday to coincide with the summit.
The snapshot noted that LIC’s population grew by 40% between 2010 and 2021, more than five times faster than the average rate of growth in New York City. During the same period, more than 31,000 jobs were added to the neighborhood, a growth of 58%.
In 2024, LIC completed 34,000 residential units, more than one million square feet of retail space, 10 million square feet of industrial space, and 7,000 hotel rooms.
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Sadly, Julie Won has a plan to gut the light industrial areas south of the Queensborough bridge, which is not remarked upon, so must be unmentioned. Her plan, an obvious collaboration with the real estate interests here, is for at least four m0re luxury buildings, apart from some moderate rentals. Her and City collaborators scheme is a robbery of jobs, with light industry businesses erased, and crucial services—cranes, anyone?—gone. The whipping up of greenway stuff, without Con Edison’s permission to enter their land, is fluff and nonsense. Julie Won apparently has no shame.