CB 6 Votes To Limit Hotel, City Development In Forest Hills

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS -- A proposal to limit hotel development in parts of New York City, including Forest Hills, has the blessing of Community Board 6 on one condition - those same restrictions must apply to government-funded projects, too.

The NYC Department of City Planning has proposed a change to the hotel zoning rules for light manufacturing - M1 - districts that would require all new hotel developments within the districts to undergo a special permit review. The process takes about two years.

Before City Council decides whether to enact the proposal, it's being put through a lengthy Uniform Land Use Review Procedure that allows each borough's president, community boards and the City Planning Commission to casts their vote.

Community Board 6 voted unanimously in favor of the proposal at their June meeting, but members took issue with the last paragraph, which exempts any "transient hotel operated...for public purposes by the city or state of New York" and its contractors from the lengthy special permit review process, said Planning and Zoning Committee Chair Steven Goldberg.

"It could include a homeless shelter, it could include a prison, it could include anything that the purpose is under contract to a city or state agency," Goldberg said. "If that is the case, there is no special permit process."

That's why the board's vote in favor of the project under the condition that "any transient facility, whether its for public or private use, be subject to the special permit procedure," he said.

M1 districts make up less than 3 percent of the Community Board 6 zoning district, which covers Forest Hills and Kew Gardens, city records show. That small portion can be found at the very edge of Forest Hills between Union Turnpike, Metropolitan Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard.

"This isn't changing the land use of a light manufacturing district," Goldberg said. "In some areas in New York City this is burdening communities because there are hotels sprouting up all over the place."

CB 6 District Manager Frank Gulluscio said such was the case particularly for Queens neighborhoods surrounding John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports.

"They've been inundated with these small little boutique hotels," he said. "This particular text amendment came out of that."

To read the proposed amendment in full, visit the NYC Planning website.

Lead photo courtesy of the NYC Department of City Planning.