Following the resounding approval by the City Council’s zoning and franchises subcommittee, the full City Council also voted to approve the rezoning of Far Rockaway.
The rezoning effort was spearheaded by local City Council member Donovan Richards who created a working group prior to this application making its way through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.
The City Council’s approval today allows $288 million to be invested in Far Rockaway for new green space, affordable housing, improvements to local schools, and new commercial space, among other features.
“Today, we begin the journey of building on the progress we have made over the past four years, by infusing hundreds of millions of dollars into infrastructure, quality jobs, parks, streetscape, transit improvements, and both community facility and open space,” Richards said in a statement. “These investments will ensure that Far Rockaway benefits from the amenities that so many other communities in our city enjoy.”
Some of the highlights of the investment in the neighborhood are as follows:
- Building a new park on a vacant, city-owned parcel of land.
- Building a new Queens Library branch at the intersection of Mott and Central Avenues.
- Making upgrades to existing schools’ libraries, playgrounds, science labs and auditoriums.
- Ensuring that all new housing built on city-owned land is entirely affordable.
- Expanding existing sidewalks, improving the sewer system, and building new public plazas.
- Piloting a ferry shuttle that would connect to the existing NYC ferry stop at Beach 108th Street.
This is now the second rezoning proposal that has been approved under the de Blasio administration, following the rezoning of East New York. A proposed rezoning of East Harlem is also making its way through the ULURP process, but it’s being met with increasing community opposition.