QUESTION
Whitestone Lanes Rezoning: Question Regarding How the Applicant Has Responded to the Borough President's Recommendations
1:20:54
·
3 min
A council member asks Erik Palatnik: "How have you responded some of the borough president's recommendations such as those around affordability levels, job opportunities, or enhancements around open space, and recreational use?"
Erik Palatnik responds.
Speaker 1
1:20:54
Thank you so much.
1:20:55
I have a few questions, and I'm gonna see if counsel Ramon has some questions.
1:20:59
Sure.
1:21:00
Alright.
1:21:01
How have you responded some of the borough president's recommendations such as those around affordability levels, job opportunities, or enhancements around open space, and recreational
Speaker 17
1:21:12
use?
1:21:13
Yes.
1:21:14
We've spoken with the borough president at length.
1:21:17
Some of the the the discussions I just mentioned a moment ago are impacting some of the are substantially impacting the economics, which directly relates to the affordability.
1:21:26
You have the opportunity to bring into this project, a 113 option level 1 units, which is twice as much that has come into flushing in the past few years.
1:21:37
You're creating a great opportunity to do so.
1:21:40
The world president would like to talk about the NIH levels.
1:21:43
The NIH levels are relate directly to the ability of the developer to afford to be able to provide that because there is no tax subsidy in there right now.
1:21:50
And as I mentioned the go, there's a third party involved that's also asking for the developer's funding.
1:21:55
So the developer only has so much money in his pocket.
1:21:57
His name is Marco Macaluso.
1:21:59
He's a local guy.
1:22:00
He's not a he's not a big shot out there.
1:22:02
And there's only so much that can come out of a pocket, we would love to give much deeper affordability.
1:22:08
There are other people that are also asking for money to come out of the project.
1:22:11
And we must make our deal with them as well.
1:22:14
So we'd like to try to increase the number of NIH units greatly.
1:22:18
Tremendously.
1:22:19
I mean, we'd like to make that effort.
1:22:21
But right now, we are putting under some other financial pressures that are causing a little bit of difficulty with us achieving the goal that we all share, which is to provide more affordable housing to the city.
1:22:32
I'll mention this too.
1:22:34
On the cusp of signing an arrangement with 32 BJ that we've been working on for the past 2 years that we feel would be the provision to to the pro president's position.
1:22:45
Very good jobs.
1:22:47
Their rates are incredibly competitive.
1:22:49
They they in the marketplace, they're very similar to other people, and they do a great job, and we just spoke with him yesterday.
1:22:56
I don't recall what what some of his other questions were.
1:22:58
I think I addressed some labor.
1:23:00
I addressed the open space, recreational use.
1:23:03
The open space and recreational use, oh, the plaza.
1:23:06
The plaza was the biggest discussion of the community board.
1:23:09
The area is substantially underserved as I mentioned to go by open space.
1:23:13
There is a lack of open space.
1:23:15
So the dog leg of the property, we're providing beautiful plaza.
1:23:19
I don't know if the barrel president had concerns about it.
Speaker 1
1:23:24
Given that this is a straight rezoning, how will you be ensured that the pausing will be built.
Speaker 17
1:23:29
The the plaza is being put is the restrictive declaration that's being attached to the property that's gonna govern the entire ground floor layout.
1:23:35
This has worked out in combination with the pharmacy planning, their city environmental quality review.
1:23:40
It's a restrictive deck that's tied into the secret executive legal counsel is nodding his head.
1:23:45
That restrictive deck was created at the request of both city planning and the community board.
1:23:50
The purpose of it was to lock in the ground for a layout exactly as you just suggested.
1:23:55
So that the community board could be assured that the Linden Place Extension was a project they worked on for 10 years a decade to to achieve and they're quite proud of.
1:24:04
They wanted the ground floor layout to be in and out the way we were proposing, the way they required it, and they wanted that to be memorialized.
1:24:11
So we put that into the restrictive deck duration, and also in the restrictive declaration is the plaza area.
