City Seeks Proposals for Development of Former Flushing Airport

The sands of time may have changed a patch of wetlands in College Point, Queens, into an airport and then back into wetlands, but Mayor Eric Adams is hoping it will soon be turned into housing.

The New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) released a request for proposals last week for developers interested in building apartments on the city-owned land that has been reclaimed by nature since the Flushing Airport was decommissioned in 1984.

Bordered by 20th Avenue to the north, Linden Place to the west and commercial developments lining the Whitestone Expressway to the east, the somewhat wedge-shaped, 80-acre plot is overdue for redevelopment, according to the city.

“At long last, Mayor Adams and NYCEDC will put this massive public asset to work for the benefit of Queens residents and the entire city,” EDC President and CEO Andrew Kimball said in a statement. “New Yorkers want a safer, more affordable city, with open space and community amenities, and the development of neglected, underutilized sites like the former Flushing Airport in Queens will deliver just that.”

Kimball and First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer said the request for proposals is the direct result of Adams’s August executive order requiring city agencies to review all land owned or controlled by the government to see if it could support housing development, in an effort to meet a goal of adding 500,000 housing units to the current supply by 2032.

The deadline for proposals for the Flushing Airport is March 20, 2025, and the city is expected to name a developer in 2026. 

The Flushing Airport opened in ​​1927 when it was leased to private operators. It was New York City’s busiest airfield until LaGuardia Airport opened in 1939.

Since late Mayor Ed Koch decommissioned the airport, the land has been eyed by people such as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in 2004 wanted to use the land for a 585,000-square-foot distribution center for Korean wholesalers who were priced out of Midtown.

Queens Community Board 7 shot down that proposal, and Bloomberg returned with plans to turn it into a park in 2013 to trade some of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park for the construction of the New York City Football Club stadium, but that also went up in smoke, the Guardian reported. NYCFC’s stadium is now planned for nearby Willets Point.

In 2019, it was considered as a potential location for a school, but that plan also fell through, according to the Queens Eagle.

The latest push for the site comes as Torres-Springer recently replaced Sheena Wright as first deputy mayor while Adams and his administration battled a federal corruption probe for which he was indicted in late September.

Despite his legal problems, some semblance of the mayor’s other housing initiative, the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, is expected to go before New York City Council for a vote on Thursday, more likely in the form of the council’s own proposal known as the City for All.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.