Real Estate
Astoria's Innovation QNS Developers To Host Community Town Hall
Residents with questions or concerns about the neighborhood-reshaping Innovation QNS proposal can ask them at a forum this month.
ASTORIA, QUEENS — The developers behind the enormous Innovation QNS project will host a community town hall later this month, giving residents the chance to learn more and ask questions about the proposal.
It will be held between 4-7 p.m. on April 20 at the Museum of the Moving Image, on 35th Avenue and 37th Street. All ages will be welcome, with live translation to Spanish, Greek, Mandarin, Bengali and ASL available upon request.
The $2 billion Innovation QNS proposal would rezone five blocks from 37th Street to Northern Boulevard, between 35th and 36th avenues — bringing 12 new buildings with 2,800 apartments, offices, a grocery store and other amenities to an area currently dominated by parking lots and industrial buildings.
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Its developers are a joint team of Silverstein Properties, BedRock Real Estate Partners and Kaufman Astoria Studios, whose campus includes the museum where the town hall will be hosted.
The April 20 forum will include two separate, 90-minute sessions to accommodate different schedules and venue capacity. Developers will make a presentation of their plan before answering residents' questions.
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The planned meeting comes weeks after City Councilmember Julie Won took the developers to task over a lack of outreach to neighbors, especially Spanish and Bangla speakers, she said. First unveiled in 2020, the project is now in the early stages of the yearlong public review process that will end with a final vote by the City Council — where Won's position will be influential.
It has been met with pushback from community board members, however, who have raised concerns about the affordability of the apartments, the heights of the new buildings, and the disappearance of a public school from the original proposal.
Backers say the project would help revitalize an "underutilized" area of southern Astoria; besides the housing and offices, Innovation QNS would include a new movie theater replacing the existing Regal UA Kaufman Astoria, two acres of open space, and 200,000 square feet of commercial space.
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