Queens Housing Development Pushes Forward Thanks to City Charter Revisions

Housing advocates and developers have found an unlikely ally — well, sort of — in City Councilmember Vickie Paladino.

The northeast Queens lawmaker voted Tuesday to approve a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application that could create almost 250 units of senior housing in the Bay Terrace section of the borough.

Barone Management and Apex Development Group have been planning the eight-story project at 217-14 24th Avenue since before the ballot measures offering an alternative to ULURP were approved by voters in the November general election.

Barone and Apex did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Paladino stated in a video posted to her Facebook account that without the ballot measures offering the developers recourse through the Affordable Housing Appeals Board, she would not have voted in favor of the project and feared losing a seat at the table.

“Now I’m faced with a decision,” Paladino said. “If I vote no, the project is taken completely out of my hands and it gets handed to [Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and Mayor Zohran Mamdani] on appeal, and we already know that they want this project to be bigger with lower income [threshold for residents], and it could even have a component of transitional housing. That is not what we want for Bayside.”

While Paladino wants a smaller development with more parking and market-rate housing, the appeals board does not have the authority to change the scope of the project.

But the project has grown in scope since a filing in December, which showed that it would have just 183 dwelling units.

To housing advocates, Paladino’s reversal on the project showed that deference to the local City  Council members by other lawmakers was officially over. Critics of council deference had blamed the practice for forcing developers to delay or even abandon certain projects, such as One45 in Harlem.

“Something unthinkable happened today: Vickie Paladino voted to approve new housing in her district,” Open New York Executive Director Annemarie Gray said in a statement. “Prior to the passage of four pro-housing ballot proposals in November, this never would’ve happened. But these charter reforms have changed the rules of housing in New York, ensuring that every neighborhood does its part to build more housing.”

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