OneLIC Round 2: Residential development in the LIC IBZ

OneLIC Round 2 meeting references land use opportunity around introducing residential development in the Long Island City Industrial Business Zone (IBZ)

I attended the OneLIC Round 2 Focus Area Meeting on Housing last night at the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement. This meeting gave us our first clues on what the proposals coming out of the plan might look like – and the most interesting one centers on the Long Island City Industrial Business Zone (IBZ).

Meeting Overview

New York City Council Member Julie Won kicked off the meeting, discussing the challenges of rent burdened households in our region.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards was also in attendance. He emphasized the importance of community involvement and holistic thinking in addressing housing concerns. He encouraged attendees to consider investments in various aspects, such as Queensbridge Houses, infrastructure, and community spaces. Drawing inspiration from rezonings like Far Rockaway (which he considers to be successful), Richards urged the community to be actively involved in the decision-making process, saying, “If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.”

Alexis Wheeler from the Department of City Planning highlighted the significance of having elected officials like Won and Richards willing to advocate for the community.

Bahij Chancey from the architecture and urban design firm WXY led the remainder of the meeting. He shared the latest revised goals of the OneLIC effort:

• Protect existing affordable housing and generate significant new housing, especially affordable housing that serves diverse types of households and family needs.

• Invest in existing parks and deliver new open space along the waterfront and in the core that is high-quality, resilient, sustainable, and accessible.

• Enhance connectivity with multi-modal transportation, improve safety for pedestrians and bikers, and improve logistics for deliveries, loading zones, and truck access.

• Plan for a more resilient and sustainable Long Island City by addressing existing challenges, planned development, population growth, and climate change.

• Protect existing affordable housing and generate significant new housing, especially affordable housing that serves diverse types of households and family needs.

• Invest in existing parks and deliver new open space along the waterfront and in the core that is high-quality, resilient, sustainable, and accessible.

• Enhance connectivity with multi-modal transportation, improve safety for pedestrians and bikers, and improve logistics for deliveries, loading zones, and truck access.

• Plan for a more resilient and sustainable Long Island City by addressing existing challenges, planned development, population growth, and climate change.

• Support existing businesses and the creative community, increase local job growth, and improve access to diverse, quality jobs and training.

• Invest in neighborhood services, education, and community programs to improve access for marginalized communities and promote public safety.

• Increase the knowledge and capacity of planning partners (including residents, local business owners, community-based organizations, city agencies and others) to effectively and equitably work together to shape the future of the neighborhood.

Insights and Opportunities

Chauncey also shared insights and opportunities gathered through the process so far related to housing and land use/zoning.

Here are the insights and opportunities related to housing:

• Affordability/housing

  • More housing for families, multigenerational living is needed

  • Flexible live/work spaces are needed

  • Residents would like new housing with shared amenities

• Resilient housing strategies

  • Climate change and flooding issues should be addressed prior to building more housing

• Property ownership

  • More pathways to home ownership should be identified and provided

  • Prioritize community land trusts and non-profit developers through funding, first priority for purchasing buildings, and exclusive rights to develop on public land

• Public housing

  • New, public housing to guarantee deep affordability is needed

  • Channel more capital and programming funds to NYCHA through a rezoning

Here are the insights and opportunities related to land use and housing:

• Building height and bulk

  • Densifying can allow for a range of affordability levels, focusing on underutilized parcels, upzoning and/or adaptive reuse

  • If the waterfront allows for higher density, there should be a transition area to meet the contextual neighborhood scale

  • Explore height bonuses for developers to create more open space

• Future development and real estate

  • Shoring up the capacity of new and existing infrastructure, transportation, and open space should be prioritized before building new housing

  • New housing provisions could meet advanced sustainability metrics, like net-zero carbon emissions and use renewable energy sources

  • New development and density should be focused around transportation nodes

• Land use, manufacturing, industry, and IBZ

  • Create a more walkable, mixed-use neighborhood with active ground-floors

  • Preserve existing industrial land uses (IBZ)

  • Revisit IBZ rules to allow for residential alongside industrial uses and loosen restrictions of contextual rezonings

  • Locals question the need for/interest in a rezoning

IBZ

Looking through these insights and opportunities, it seems that most are ones we’ve seen before and were anticipating. The only ones that are new and potentially controversial are those around the IBZ. Indeed, in our smaller group breakout discussion that the meeting, that’s what our table (moderated by Chauncey) spent the most time discussing.

IBZs are designated areas in New York City aimed at supporting and promoting industrial and manufacturing activities. The IBZ program, initiated in 2006, aims to provide certainty on land use policy by committing not to support rezoning for new residences within these zones. The IBZs consist entirely of manufacturing-zoned land, and only manufacturing districts may be designated as IBZs. There are a total of 21 IBZs distributed across Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. These zones offer a range of benefits to businesses, particularly through the provision of a one-time tax credit known as the Industrial Business Zone Relocation Tax Credit. This credit, amounting to $1,000 per relocated employee, with a cap of $100,000, is available for industrial and manufacturing firms moving into one of the IBZs in the city. Businesses relocating within an IBZ are also eligible for this incentive. The LIC Industrial Business Zone (LIC IBZ) is one such zone located in Long Island City, comprising five sub-areas suitable for a variety of manufacturing and industrial companies.

The proposal to “revisit IBZ rules to allow for residential alongside industrial uses and loosen restrictions of contextual rezonings” is currently prohibited by the City. Time and again, the City has committed to not allowing residential development within IBZ boundaries. Here are two examples in no uncertain terms:

• North Brooklyn Industry and Innovation Plan: “The City has committed not to initiate rezoning for residential use”

• East New York Industrial Business Zone Plan: “The Administration and City Council is strengthening the prohibition of residential uses in Industrial Business Zones to curb real estate speculation. Going forward, no private applications for residential uses in IBZs will be supported by the Council or Administration.”

A 2018 article by urban planner Jenna Davis, then at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, clearly outlined the arguments for and against allowing residential development to encroach into IBZ boundaries:

“As cities began to implement these industrial preservation policies in the early- to mid-2000s, it became evident that industrial preservation policies carried a series of tradeoffs (Dempwolf, 2010; Lester, Kaza & Kirk, 2013). As scholars have pointed out, industrial uses generally contribute less to the tax base than other uses (e.g. residential or commercial uses), and relatively cheap industrial land can provide an ideal site for future housing development–an asset in built-out cities, such as New York City or San Francisco, which have limited land to support increased housing development. Some critics have thus charged that industrial preservation policies have a marginal positive benefit on the municipal tax base and can detract from housing production goals.

On the other hand, industrial preservation advocates have pointed out that industrial land supports critical urban service functions and that industrial businesses often provide solid middle-class jobs to people of color and workers with limited formal educational credentials. Citing studies that indicate that the decline of manufacturing jobs is linked to a rise in income inequality, industrial preservation advocates have contended that the decline in urban industrial land will exacerbate existing income inequalities (Friedman, 2009). To advocates, then, the decline of industrial land does not just threaten industrial businesses, but erodes a critical source of middle-class jobs in an increasing bifurcated labor market (Lander & Wolf-Powers, 2004).

These tensions are particularly salient in New York City, where former industrial districts, such as Gowanus and Greenpoint in Brooklyn or Long Island City in Queens, have become ripe targets for renewed residential and commercial development in recent years.”

It’ll be interesting to see, if the OneLIC plan formally recommends this rezoning of the LIC IBZ, how that proposal is received by the community and by the City at large. The next major step here is a Round 3 Focus Area Meeting in April, at which finalized community recommendations will be presented.