TESTIMONY
Eric Palatnik, Land Use Attorney for 88 Justice Avenue, on Removing Restrictive Declaration for Commercial Use
0:04:33
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5 min
Eric Palatnik requests the NYC City Council to remove a restrictive declaration from 1972 on a property, allowing commercial use within an 18-story mixed-use building.
- Palatnik represents 88 Justice Avenue, seeking permission for commercial use in the property's developed space.
- The current declaration restricts commercial activity, limiting the building to use group 4, including the Academy Charter School and Advantage Physicians.
- Around 45,000 square feet could become available for commercial use if the declaration is removed, though some space is reserved by the Academy Charter School.
- The property, originally the site of the iconic Georgia diner, was redeveloped by Palatnik's client who built the existing 18-story building next to the Queen Centre Mall.
- The goal is to adapt the building for contemporary needs while accommodating existing educational commitments.
Eric Palatnik
0:04:33
Just Eric.
Kevin C. Riley
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Council, please administer the affirmation.
William Vidal
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Please raise your right hand and state your name for the record.
Kevin C. Riley
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Eric Palatin.
William Vidal
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Do you affirm to double truth or hold truth and nothing but the truth in your testimony before the subcommittee and in your answers to all council member questions?
Kevin C. Riley
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I do.
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Thank you for the view in public.
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If you need a accessible version of this presentation, please send an email request to land use testimony at counsel.nyc.gov.
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And before we begin, I would just like to say we've been joined by Chair, Hanks.
0:05:08
And now the applicant team may begin panelist as you begin I'll just ask you to please reinstate your name and organization for the record.
0:05:15
You may begin.
Eric Palatnik
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Good afternoon again.
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Eric Palatnik, and I am here on behalf of 88 Justice Avenue.
0:05:23
Thank you very much to the members of the committee that are here in attendance and those that are on Zoom.
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We're here today to ask your permission to remove a restrictive declaration on the property that prevents the development from containing any commercial use.
0:05:40
That restrictive declaration was put in place in 1972, and I'll go through the details of it.
0:05:46
The building is already built.
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There's an 18 story building, mixed use building there with some uses in it that include the academy charter school, as well as advantage physicians, which are all use group 4 uses.
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There's no use group 6 use.
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If you were to agree to the removal of the restrictive declaration, We would be able to occupy some of the space within the building for commercial use, not much, but some of it.
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And that's the reason why we're here.
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The buildings that you see in the picture right now, the building with its base is constructed already.
0:06:16
Next slide, please.
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The right side of the slide is just some salient information, which I'll tell you, the building is 18 stories tall.
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It has 330,000 square feet.
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Of that, 150,000 square feet is residential and about 133,000 is existing community facility.
0:06:34
If the approval was to be granted, it would free up about 45,000 square feet for some commercial use.
0:06:40
I'll note that advantage of that that academy charter school that's in the building right now is looking to take some of that space.
0:06:47
So it may even be less commercial use to put to use.
0:06:51
Next slide, please.
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This gives you an image of the building itself.
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As I said already, it's as I said, it's already built.
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It's next to the Queen Centre Mall.
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It's on the side of an iconic diner that was built many years ago.
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1972 actually is a part of the restrictive decoration.
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And that diner is no longer there.
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It's called the Georgia diner.
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So what the restrictive decoration really did was allow for the Georgia Diner to be constructed in the right area, see up on Queens Boulevard.
0:07:18
And maintained that the remainder of the property be developed upon with a very specific use back in the seventies when city planning and the council wanted to see a specific development they enacted a restrictive declaration on the property that would guide that development.
0:07:31
Well, the owner never built the rest of that development.
0:07:34
The only thing built at the time was the Georgia Diner in the back top portion.
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And the rest of the site was left vacant.
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Next slide, please.
0:07:43
That was until our client purchased the property.
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They demolish the Georgia diner, and they built what you see here in the image in front of you, which I've been presenting to you already.
0:07:51
Again, the request to remove the restrictive declaration would allow for some of the space in that 3 or 4 story portion 4 story portion you see on the top image to be put to commercial use.
0:08:02
Not much space because some of the space has been claimed already by the Queen Central Academy Charter School, which is already within the building.
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Next slide, please.
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This slide gives you a good image of the building from a sectional and it shows you how it's laid out.
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The most important part for this request is that bottom purple part where it says commercial floor area.
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That's not allowed right now under the restrictive deckers.
0:08:25
Good afternoon.
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Thank you for joining us.
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My name is Eric Polanik.
0:08:30
Sorry.
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He came in later, and I didn't get the chance to introduce myself.
0:08:33
So the request is to allow that portion that says commercial floor area 45,000 square feet to be used as commercial floor area right now under the restrictive declaration it's only allowed to be used as community facility.
0:08:45
But I will point out that, as I said already, Academy Charter School, which controls the floor below it, we'll be taking some of that space, and we hope that a little bit more about 5 or 10000 square feet will be left over for commercial.
0:09:00
Commercial use.
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The remainder of the presentation is all about just the location of the property and so forth and so on.
0:09:06
So I'll skim through it rather quick as I know you have a busy agenda.
0:09:09
The crux of it is the removal of the restrictive declaration.
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If you can click back a few slides to the the pictures of the property, please.
0:09:18
Forward I to the forward I meant to the the forward there's some ground shots just to give everybody an idea of what it looks like, and we could save you some time.
0:09:28
There you go.
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So as I've been telling you, the building is built already.
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And if you just click through a couple of these, you'll see this is what's in place right now.
0:09:36
That essentially summarizes our application.
0:09:40
There's no reason for me to go too much further in-depth.
0:09:42
If you'd like me to answer any further questions, I'd be happy to.
0:09:45
I'd be happy to present the plans in greater detail as well as to explain anything else that you may want to see.
0:09:50
Thank you.
