Community Sues New York City Council Over Flushing Rezoning

Undeterred by the New York City Council's vote to approve the Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD) in December 2020, a coalition of organizations and individuals representing the diverse community of Flushing have amended their lawsuit against Mayor Bill de Blasio's City Planning Commission (CPC) and Department of City Planning (DCP) by adding the City Council as a respondent. The groups filing suit are Chhaya Community Development Corporation (Chhaya CDC), MinKwon Center for Community Action, and the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce. They are joined by local activist Robert Loscalzo.

"Chhaya CDC and the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean community we serve in Flushing was deeply disappointed in the City Council's decision to approve this unlawful rezoning and special district without looking at a complete Environmental Impact Statement. We know this project will add to the predatory speculation happening in the local housing market and force more families to live in overcrowded housing conditions. We know this plan will cause local small businesses to get forced out due to rising commercial rents. We know this plan will add 4,000 more residents to downtown Flushing without addressing the already overcrowded schools, hospitals, and transit system. We would have been able to discuss this more broadly as a community had the Department of City Planning required the developers to do an Environmental Impact Study like they were supposed to. We cannot in good conscience let this project move forward," said Will Spisak, Director of Housing Justice Chhaya CDC.

The lawsuit will now petition the courts to overrule the City Council's decision to approve SFWD. Court filings indicate the City Council was unable to understand the real potential size and scale of the luxury development due to an improper and unlawful omission of an Environmental Impact Statement. As a result, the developers’ application for a change in the law was deceiving and illegitimate before it came to the City Council for its vote.

"Elected officials of City Council, especially Peter Koo of District 20 and members of the Land Use Committee, should have worked in the best interests of their communities when it became obvious how SFWD failed to meet basic standards of public input and environmental review," said John Park, Executive Director at the MinKwon Center. "Instead, they operated with the same lack of accountability as the developers who rammed through their lucrative proposal during a global pandemic and one of the worst recessions our City has seen in decades. We will not accept or normalize a City government that has prioritized an illegal playground for the wealthy over the extreme hardship of our communities. We will continue to pursue our legal path to challenge and overturn this disastrous rezoning."

The lawsuit describes the slight-of-hand that the City Planning Commission used to incorrectly certify the developers’ application to start the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) without an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). An EIS is needed any time that a change in land use has a potentially significant impact on the environment, including the people that live in a neighborhood. The process of producing an EIS includes a rigorous evaluation of how the rezoning would potentially impact the environment, infrastructure, local economy, and social conditions, as well as a discussion of alternatives and mitigations. When an EIS is produced, City agencies hold a hearing on its initial scope of review and another to gather public comments on the draft. By declaring the application complete without an EIS, the City foreclosed all discussion of alternatives, mitigations and public feedback on the environmental evaluation.

"The Mayor and City Council not only pushed through a defective luxury development that will exacerbate displacement in our working-class immigrant community, but intentionally violated City and State law by denying our community a comprehensive environmental review," stated John Choe, executive director of the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce. "Our local residents and small business owners are sick and tired of being marginalized and ignored by our government, which is why we have signed on as plaintiffs in this groundbreaking lawsuit to stop the Special Flushing Waterfront District. Mr. Mayor, we'll see you in court!"

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the groups by TakeRoot Justice, a non-profit legal services provider that supports grassroots groups. TakeRoot Justice provides legal, participatory research and policy support to strengthen the work of grassroots and community groups in New York City to support community-based partners to dismantle racial, economic and social oppression.

“Requiring no Environmental Impact Statement means that there were no public hearings or any other opportunities for the public to formally participate in determining the scope of environmental analysis for this project,” said Petitioner Robert LoScalzo. “In deciding to proceed in this exclusionary way, DCP deliberately ignored the impacts of an entire 20-story building that the rezoning will allow, while assuming a ‘baseline’ amount of development inconsistent with the Department’s own analysis of just a few years ago. This proposed rezoning will load more passengers onto the already-stressed number 7 subway line and further congest Flushing’s vehicular traffic – and it will do so, above and beyond similar impacts due to the nearby Willets Point development and the LaGuardia AirPort AirTrain. The public will have to live with the long-term consequences of all this development in close quarters, and City Planning should have ensured public participation in scoping the environmental analysis, instead of shamefully bending over backwards to avoid it. Our recourse now is the courts.”

The petition and supporting documents can be accessed on the court’s website here.