Locals Spar Over Apartment Building Slated To Replace Family Home

REGO PARK, QUEENS — A block of Rego Park that was once lined with multi-family homes is now one development closer to becoming a row of apartment buildings.

Plans were filed with the Department of Buildings last Friday to build a 25-unit, 7-story apartment building at 97-46 64th Avenue, the current site of a multi-family home which has been slated for demolition since July, records show. New York YIMBY was the first to report this story.

News of the planned development prompted an argument among neighbors on Facebook, some of whom lamented new apartment buildings in Rego Park and Forest Hills, while others celebrated the additional housing.

"The house on the other side of that existing apartment building is also gone and something else is going up. This was once a block of quaint multi-family homes that all fit together. No more," wrote one neighbor.

Another echoed a similar sentiment in agreement: "It’s a travesty for our cherished community," adding that development degrades neighborhood "quality of life standards, open spaces, and greenery" by increasing the burden on infrastructure, local roads, and schools.

Others, however, disagreed. "Additional housing is a travesty?" one person questioned.

Another argued that construction would bring down the price of housing overall: "If you look at cities like New York and the Bay area, rents remain stubbornly high not only because they're places people want to live, but because the lack of construction and NIMBYism which also increases building costs."

These back-and-forth arguments are not new in Rego Park and Forest Hills; suburban-like areas of central Queens that have seen a housing boom in the last decade, especially as parts of northwest Queens become increasingly unaffordable.

While not mentioned explicitly in this Facebook thread, neighbors in and beyond Rego Park and Forest Hill sometimes use the anti-development language of "preserving neighborhood character" as a veiled way to oppose low income housing.

Neighborhood character has come up many times in the ongoing fight against another apartment building in Rego Park which would necessitate the demolition of a historic theater-turned-synagogue and several businesses.

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