Queens Borough President Melinda Katz shot down an ambitious plan to build a 1,700-unit luxury complex on the Astoria waterfront on Thursday, citing the project’s relative dearth of affordable housing.
“There is still a severe shortage of housing within reach of many lower- to middle-income households throughout New York City,” Katz wrote in her decision on the Astoria Cove development.
“There should be a larger percentage of affordable units provided to help meet the need for such housing.”
Developers, led by Alma Realty, are asking for the city’s permission to rezone and convert a swath of industrial land into 1.7 million square feet of predominantly residential space spread between five buildings.
The tallest would rise as high as 32 stories.
But the striving builders have drawn the community’s ire for the plan’s relatively low numbers of affordable housing units.
After the plan was voted down by Community Board 1, they raised the affordable units to 345 — 20% of the residential space.
Critics have pointed out those proportions are comparable to buildings asking for rezonings during the developer-friendly Michael Bloomberg years.
They hailed Katz’s ruling as evidence of a growing change in the city’s development climate.
“Communities are starting to realize that the amount of affordable housing needs to be significant,” said Moses Gates, the planning director at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development.
“The days of 20% affordable housing are over.”
In the attempt to win over the community, developers have promised to set aside room for a school and parkland.
In a recent concession to the community, they agreed to make the affordable-housing component of the project mandatory — a first in the city.
But that failed to win over Katz, who met with developers several times and urged them to up the affordable quotient of their project, but to no avail.
Katz also pointed out the inadequate transit options and potential traffic impacts of the project.
Developers said they saw the silver lining in Katz’s disapproval.
The plan will come before the City Planning Commission next week.
