Community Board 6 Approves New Rego Park Apartment Building

REGO PARK, QUEENS — A new apartment building planned for Woodhaven Boulevard in Rego Park got approval from Queens Community Board 6 — but only on the condition that the developer lower its height by one story.

Community board members voted Wednesday night to approve two rezoning measures needed for the proposed development at 68-19 Woodhaven Boulevard to move forward.

The proposal calls for a 92-unit apartment building with retail space and a community facility, likely a medical office or daycare, on the ground floor and a parking garage with 81 spots priced at a "competitive" rate, a representative of the developer told the board Wednesday. Of the apartments, 28 would be permanently affordable.

The wedding center, florist and auto repair buildings now occupying the property would be demolished.

The board's approval is contingent on the developer, 68-19 Rego Park LLC, altering plans to make the building seven floors rather than the eight stories originally proposed, as well as paying for periodic inspections of neighboring buildings during construction and providing a plan to mitigate construction damage to those properties.

The developer also agreed to price 18 of the 28 affordable apartments at 60 percent of the area median income, in response to concerns about affordability raised by members of the Queens Community Board 6 zoning committee.

Original plans called for all the units to be priced at 80 percent of the area median income.

HANAC, an Astoria-based nonprofit, will handle administering the affordable units. Under the board's conditional approval, members asked that HANAC provide periodic reports on that process.

The vote came after members of the public and some on the community board voiced concerns that the building was too tall for the area, that the demolition and construction process would cause damage to neighboring properties and that the additional residents would overload the local buses and make it harder to find parking.

In a written comment read aloud by Queens Community Board 6 Chair Alexa Weitzman, the Spataru family called it "a disaster for our street."

“An eight-story is completely out of line and should not be allowed,” another speaker, Anne Walters, said.

“When does it end?" said Norman Leibowitz, Queens Community Board 6's former vice chairman of land use. "It’s just too many people.”

Board members accounted for some of the concerns in the amendment to their vote, calling for a shorter building and measures to prevent demolition and construction.

Frank St. Jacques of the real estate law firm Akerman LLP, who spoke on the developer's behalf at the community board meeting, said the developer agreed to all the conditions of the vote.

In public records, the developer is known only as 68-19 Rego Park LLC, but the realty group Cushman & Wakefield has identified the person who bought the property as Giuseppe Zuccarella.

Zuccarella paid $5.35 million for the site in 2019, records show.