Dutch Kills Development
I predict, after L.I.C., the next artists haven is Dutch Kills, NY
http://queens.about.com/b/a/190348.htm
A comprehensive plan for Dutch Kills
http://www.urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~sokolow/dkwebsite.htm
Neighborhood struggles for survival
http://www.queenstribune.com/archive...427/index.html
Stats
http://www.licbdc.org/licbdc/plannin...tch_kills.html
Rezoning
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?n..._id=574903&rfi=
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/rdr_02.htm
Last edited by clubBR; February 7th, 2007 at 12:40 AM.
Dutch Kills is a part of Long Island City.
And I thought you said in another post that Blissville is the next 'hot' area of New York, after LIC gets developed?Besides, Blissville is part of LIC too! It's like you've never been to NY before and you're looking at old maps and making predications, which really have no point.
I like kyle.
i was born and raised in queens. true, i am new to queens west. i have deep interests in urban planning and yes i am making predictions through newspaper articles and statistics. and Yes i know dutch kills/ blissville is part of L.I.C. After considerable research and walking through L.I.C., i firmly believe DUTCH KILLS to be the next place artists/students seek for affordability and easy access to public transportation.
Thinking Big at a Time Others Are Thinking Small
By JEFF VANDAM
Published: April 8, 2007
AT community meetings in veterans’ halls, senior centers and junior high cafeterias throughout Queens, it’s the rare debate that doesn’t center on the thorny issue of zoning. From Maspeth to Douglaston, simmering anger over McMansions and overbuilding in general is bubbling over. The result is a boroughwide push to use zoning — specifically downzoning — to keep out the tall, bulky multifamily dwellings that seem to be popping up in more and more neighborhoods.
Yet in Dutch Kills, a small community in northwest Queens that is part of Long Island City, keeping out big buildings is the furthest thing from many minds. Few imposing mega-manors with terra cotta-style roofs have arrived; instead, the neighborhood has for decades been home to a mix of residential and industrial uses that is increasingly rare in the city. Two- and three-story houses sided in pale pink and firehouse red vinyl or aluminum, their backyards dominated by plaster shrines to the Virgin Mary, share blocks with brick garages and businesses like the Dewes-Gumbs Die Company, a fixture on 24th Street for half a century.
The talk in Dutch Kills these days is not of downzoning, which would keep out bigger buildings. Instead, local residents want upzoning, a much less frequently requested designation, which would make possible larger structures, at least on certain specified streets.
“It will bring a lot of change, and a lot of people don’t like change,” said George Stamatiades, second vice chairman of the local community board and vice president of a neighborhood funeral home, who discussed possible changes as he conducted an impromptu tour of the neighborhood in his black Cadillac. “But they know that if they don’t get change, the neighborhood will atrophy and die.”
•
Dutch Kills is wedged between once-seedy Queens Plaza to the south and somewhat happening Astoria to the north. The “kills” in the name refers to streams that once ran through the area. What runs through the area now is the noise of hammering from Queens Plaza, where a 12-story condominium tower called View59 is rising quickly, its steel beams pointing skyward like an oversized cellular tower. View59, scheduled to open this fall, is the second such tower rising in the neighborhood. The first occupants of the other new building, the 10-story Queens Plaza condominium, have already moved in.
Residents of Dutch Kills have also seen the new residential buildings sprouting along the Long Island City waterfront, and they want their share. Working with the City Planning Commission, they have developed a plan that would allow buildings of 5 to 7 stories on the widest local avenues and 8-to-12-story buildings on Northern Boulevard, the area’s southern border. Buildings on the side streets would be restricted to three or four stories.
•
Given the proximity of Dutch Kills to Manhattan — Bloomingdale’s is two stops away, on the N train — many local residents believe that under the right conditions, a boom could occur.
“The community is very obviously familiar with the fact that they have great transit access,” said Amanda Burden, chairwoman of the City Planning Commission. “I think there’s a very broad consensus for this rezoning.”
The changes, she added, which need to pass a gantlet of municipal reviewing boards, could go into effect by the summer of next year.
Not everyone is over the moon about rezoning. One subject being discussed on the streets of Dutch Kills is including affordable housing in new buildings along Northern Boulevard.
“When we were talking about affordable housing, they’re telling you one-bedroom for $1,600,” said Helen Hubbard, who works as a volunteer at Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church on 29th Street. “That’s not affordable.”
•
Mr. Stamatiades, whose black and white two-story house next to the elevated subway tracks on 31st Street turns 100 this year, has a related concern. “I hate to use the word gentrification,” he said. “But that’s the negative side of the upzoning, because the property becomes more valuable.”
Yet even before a possible rezoning becomes law, gentrification may already be under way, and the prospect is not universally unwelcome. “We’re not looking to maintain anything,” Mr. Stamatiades said. “We’re looking to change.”
E-mail: streetlevel@nytimes.com
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Dutch Kills has no where to go but up. As Astoria, Sunnyside, Hunters Point and even Queens Plaza are being "upzoned", geographically, Dutch Kills is forced into development.
Dutch Kills: Recent rezoning could transform unattractive neighborhood into land of opportunity
BY Jason Sheftell
Developers and people with serious real estate vision, start your engines. Renters looking for a cheap, up-and-coming place to live, get in line.
There’s a tiny neighborhood most of you never heard of just two subway stops from Lexington Ave. and 59th St., where the zoning was changed in October 2008 from strict manufacturing/commercial to residential development, lifting nearly a 50-year ban on all new home building.
It’s Dutch Kills, and it’s off the N/W subway line at 39th Ave. near Astoria.
But prepare yourself. It’s not pretty. *After 40-plus years dominated by warehouses, factories, small industrial businesses and automotive repair shops, these dead-quiet streets are a mishmash of two-story clapboard homes, giant warehouses, one-story garages and single-family *houses that have seen better days.
In the past three years, five hotels have moved into the area, with seven currently under construction, some of them mid-block structures next to small houses.
“Days before the zoning went into effect two or three hotels got their foundation in the ground,” says Barbara Lorinz, a lifetime neighborhood resident who started the Dutch Kills Advocacy League, a group devoted to protecting the local community. “Now what happens if these hotels don’t make it? We have to think ahead. We’re very happy to be residential now. We want families to come here again.”
A new charter school, Growing Up Green, recently moved into the neighborhood. The streets are peaceful and safe. Weekends and weeknights, it’s so quiet and empty you may not see a person for two blocks. On a recent Saturday, a group of motorcyclists burned rubber around corners, free of pedestrians and police. You could hear a child playing a xylophone from a quarter-block away. One mint-condition, 1960s jet-black Cadillac El Dorado ragtop sat behind a chain link fence.
On the neighborhood edge where the manufacturing section becomes residential, by 36th Ave. near the Dutch Kills Playground, one longtime resident said he rarely even walks “that way.” Paul *Colella, 82, a retired baker from Bari, Italy, has lived on Crescent Ave. for 48 years.
“I go over there sometimes, but not *really,” says Colella, who says he hasn’t seen a dangerous incident in over 45 years. “The only thing wrong with this neighborhood now is the lack of garbage pickup outside the public school across from my house.”
Renters can pay $1,100 for a one-bedroom apartment in one of the few prewar buildings. Signs on doors and in windows advertise large three-bedroom apartments for $2,000. On the buying side, a two-family wooden home can go for $625,000. A three-unit apartment building with the potential to build several floors on top is on the market for $725,000.
This is artist or musician heaven — inexpensive housing, dead quiet nights and lots of privacy with welcoming neighbors.
George L. Stamatiades has lived in the manufacturing section of Dutch Kills since 1973. He lobbied for the zoning change that he thinks will bring this neighborhood back to life.
“The 1961 zoning cursed this neighborhood to a slow death,” says Stamatiades.
“We’re probably the only neighborhood in the history of New York who asked the city to upzone to allow residential growth. When we were zoned for manufacturing, you couldn’t get house insurance because you were so close to a factory.”
Living less than 15 minutes from Lexington Ave. and 59th St. by subway, Stamatiades wants the area to become a haven for young New Yorkers. He lives with his wife, Connie, in a little white house under the train tracks next to a church that used to be the funeral home he owned. A community advocate, he’s a board member of the Queens Library, member of Queens Community Board 1, and executive director of the Dutch Kills Civic Association.
“It’s important to help your neighborhood out,” he says. “This is a small town in a big city. The entire area benefits if every person picks up a piece of paper. Before the zoning change, your neighbor could leave and any business could come in and knock down the house and put anything they wanted in. One older lady had a chicken coop business move next door to her.”
The new zoning reflects the Department of City Planning's approach to working with communities to better meet their unique goals. In the case of Dutch Kills, residential and mixed-use commercial/manufacturing development was applied at appropriate scale.
On Northern Blvd. near major transportation hubs, up to 12 stories was allowed. Inland, up to seven stories on wider streets was approved, and on smaller, streets, downzoning was implemented to avoid any further out-of-context monstrosities like some recent hotels.
“This zoning was meant to set the table to allow good things to happen, like reinvestment,” says John D. Young, director of the Queens office of City Planning. “Dutch Kills is two stops from Manhattan and it lies just north of the bustling subway and bus interchange that is Queens Plaza. This defines what we call transit-oriented growth, which allows the city to grow near transportation hubs in proximity to economic centers.”
One business thriving in the area is *Astoria Seafood Market on 37th Ave. Owned by Spiro Chriss, it sells wholesale to area restaurants. His seafood soup, made fresh daily, is known as a delicious cure-all for any ailment.
“We need parking lots here,” says Chriss, echoing a common complaint. “This is a solid, working-class area.”
In some cases, individual business and house owners in areas that allow for *higher structures can build up if they want, meaning two or more stories, to generate income from rentals or condominiums.
Joey Florio grew up in the neighborhood. He lives there with his family now. He can’t walk two blocks without meeting half a dozen people he knows.
“This allows people to make the most of what they got,” he says. “Under the old zoning, we had the opportunity to go up nine stories. We chose not to and we’re happy. No one loves the hotels, but they were built legally and that’s that.”
Stamatiades remembers the last time the neighborhood was a good real estate story. It was 1975. His sister-in-law was looking to buy a house in the area. She found a two-family for $25,000 but wanted it for less. Two weeks later, a magazine article called the area “Black Gold” for its proximity to Manhattan. The next day, the owner raised the price to $40,000.
“She didn’t get it,” says Stamatiades. “You got to act fast when things happen here.”
Lovely. Nathan Kensinger is a great asset to Curbed
Click on pics to enlarge.
Exploring Queens Plaza's New Dutch Kills Green Park
by Curbed Staff
Welcome to Camera Obscura, Curbed's new series of photo essays by Nathan Kensinger. Every other week, Kensinger will explore one of the city's less-known corners, beginning with the new parks built during the Bloomberg administration. First up, Queens Plaza's Dutch Kills Green.
[Dutch Kills Green opened in April at the eastern end of Queens Plaza. All photos by Nathan Kensinger.]
Queens Plaza, a maze of traffic and elevated trains located at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge, has recently undergone a $45 million makeover. Its traffic patterns have been rerouted, a bike path has been added, and its landscape has been redesigned. The largest new addition to the plaza is a park named Dutch Kills Green, which is located atop a former parking lot on the plaza's eastern end. This 1.5-acre park is an island surrounded by elevated subway trains and a nonstop flow of cars, buses and trucks. It borders several abandoned and empty buildings. The park houses a native-plant wetlands, a collection of artist-created benches, a small amphitheater, and two Dutch millstones from the 1600s.
This new park replaced a commuter parking lot with a wetlands.
Several artist-created benches sit within earshot of the overhead trains:
A pair of centuries-old millstones that were once buried in a nearby traffic island are now displayed at the park:
Dutch Kills Green is just one part of Queens Plaza's $45 million makeover. A larger redevelopment plan for the area includes the DOH office tower at Gotham Center.
As part of its makeover, Queens Plaza traffic patterns were rearranged and its traffic medians decorated with broken stones:
Pedestrian footpaths lead through jagged rocks between multiple lanes of traffic:
Drivers navigate narrow passages between rocks and trees.
New plantings and sculptural landscaping have been inserted throughout Queens Plaza.
Underneath the elevated tracks, the landscaping does not appear to have been completed.
Back in Dutch Kills Park, the first piece of graffiti has appeared, creeping in from several empty buildings across the street:
—Nathan Kensinger
Official Site: Nathan Kensinger Photography [kensinger.blogspot.com]
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/0...green_park.php
Whoever did that landscape architecture for that area under and around the subway bridge did an amazing job....
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