Longtime Astoria Parking Lot Inches Closer To Affordable Housing

ASTORIA, QUEENS — The city is inching closer to building a large senior housing development on a parking lot steps from Broadway in Astoria, officials said this week, also revealing new details about the project.

The proposal includes a new 11-story, fully-affordable building and a five-story community center to be built on a city-owned parking lot on 31st Street, just south of Broadway. First announced in early 2021, it has been awaiting financing since then, but is now set to begin its monthslong public review in early 2023, officials told Community Board 1 in a Monday meeting.

Once built, it will include 134 affordable units for senior citizens, who will pay 30 percent of their incomes to live there. Known as IKOS Senior Living, the project is being led by the city's housing department, the company Mega Development, and the social services nonprofit HANAC, which will manage the facility.

First, the city must get permission to change the zoning of the L-shaped site — which also wraps around to 32nd Street — to a new, denser scheme. Besides the development site, the city also wants to extend the rezoning to the corner of Broadway and 32nd Street, plus the former Rite Aid building on the opposite side of 31st Street, which city officials see as a potential future site for affordable housing.

"It's a single-story building that has a massive parking lot, that's directly adjacent to a subway station," said Joy Resor, an associate borough planner at the Department of City Planning, during Monday's meeting — though she stressed that there were no imminent plans to build on the site.

Board members applauded the senior housing development, though some were surprised by the request to include the Rite Aid site in the rezoning.

One member, Gerald Caliendo, suggested that the city should go even further, saying he has argued for rezoning all of 31st Street from Broadway to Queens Plaza.

"Why only 400 feet?" he said, referring to the length of the new rezoning.

The new building will also include 6,800 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, plus an outdoor open space open to families who are part of HANAC's programs.

Consisting of 106 studios and 28 one-bedroom apartments, the building will also include an exercise room, game room, computer library and offices with social services for tenants — some of whom will be formerly homeless.

Around the corner, on the part of the site facing 32nd Street, developers will also build a new IKOS Community Center: a five-story building that will be wedged between a set of rowhouses and the restaurant space home to Salvatoria Kitchen & Bar.

Designed by SLCE Architects, the main residential building will be clad in brick and metal panels, towering over the Broadway N-W train station, according to renderings shared by the city.

Related coverage: Astoria Parking Lot To Become Affordable Housing For Seniors

Correction: an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that all of the new apartments would be studios.