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Features July 1, 2009  RSS feed
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Housing To Be Built On Hunter's Point South Parcel

Photo Office of the Queens Borough President (L. to r.): Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, Borough President Helen Marshall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Councilmember Eric Gioia were among the officials gathered on the waterfront on Thursday, June 25, to celebrate the city's announcement of a $100 million acquisition of 30 acres in Southwest Queens to create the Hunter's Point South development. The plan includes middle-income affordable housing, retail space, a school and $175 million in infrastructure improvements, which will begin this fall. Photo Office of the Queens Borough President (L. to r.): Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, Borough President Helen Marshall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Councilmember Eric Gioia were among the officials gathered on the waterfront on Thursday, June 25, to celebrate the city's announcement of a $100 million acquisition of 30 acres in Southwest Queens to create the Hunter's Point South development. The plan includes middle-income affordable housing, retail space, a school and $175 million in infrastructure improvements, which will begin this fall. Mayor Michael Bloomberg last Thursday announced the $100 million acquisition of 30 acres at Hunter's Point South in Long Island City. The site was acquired from the Empire State Development Corporation and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and will become the largest middleincome housing development since the 1970s. The largely vacant land, originally intended as the site of an Olympic Village when the city was vying for the 2012 Olympic Games, will accommodate 5,000 new units of housing, 60 percent of which will be reserved for moderate- and middleincome families. The project will also include more than 11 acres of landscaped waterfront parkland, new retail shops, community facility space and a new 1,100 seat high school. Expected to catalyze more than $2 billion in private investment and create more than 4,600 jobs, the first phase of the $175 million infrastructure and park design work will begin this fall. Joining the mayor in Long Island City were Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, Assemblymember Catherine Nolan, City Councilmember Eric Gioia, Deputy Mayor Robert C. Lieber, Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Rafael Cestero, Parks and Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Economic Development Corporation President Seth Pinsky and School Construction Authority Executive Director Lorraine Grillo.

Hunter's Point South is an integral part of the city's $7.5 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan, which calls for the preservation and creation of 165,000 affordable housing units. Sixty-eight percent of those- more than 112,000 units- will serve low-income New Yorkers. At least 3,000 permanently low-income units will be built in Queens over the next 10 years. The Hunter's Point South Plan also includes the rezoning of an adjacent, privately owned 7.5-acre site, Site B, to allow for compatible development, including at least 330 units of low-income housing.

The project will serve moderate- and middle-income New Yorkers with a range of incomes. It is expected that of the 3,000 total affordable units at Hunter's Point South, 1,000 will be for households with incomes at 80 percent of the HUD income limit, another 1,000 will be for families with incomes at 130 percent of the HUD income limit, and the remaining 1,000 units will be for households with incomes at 165 percent of the HUD limit. This translates to 3,000 units available to households with incomes between $55,000 and $158,000 for a family of four.

Concept designs for the open space are available at www.nycedc.com/ProjectsOpportunities/CurrentProjects/Queens/HuntersPointSo uth/Pages/HuntersPointSouth.aspx.