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- SERVING CORONA, EAST ELMHURST AND JACKSON HEIGHTS -

The Official Word

Announcements From the Public Officials of District 25



CB#3 Announces the Great Tree Hunt Game

Last April, Queens Community Board 3 opened its website for public access – http://www.cb3qn.nyc.gov. The site provides residents with resources to more effectively engage in local governance.

To promote awareness and site use, the Board is developing The Great Tree Hunt Game. The game will have teams of players searching the community for tree resources with different point values: the tallest tree (80 points), the widest (80 points), walnuts (30 points), empty tree pits (120 points), trees infected by the Asian Longhorn Beetle (500 points), etc. Tree resource Info will be sent via cell phone email to a "District 3 Tree Resource Database." These resources will populate a "District Tree Resource Map" and a "Great Tree Hunt Game Scoreboard" that will regularly increment each team’s points. The teams with the most points at the end of the day receive prizes.

Our technical developer, Jay Hasen, has only a few months to fashion the technology (it’s his college internship project). Jay is going to devise technology to capture tree resource information (location, photo, and tree metrics), email it to the database, then a map, and finally a scoreboard. This is a challenging task and Jay could use some assistance. GPS, GIS, and database assistance are sought.

If you’d like to help Jay out, communicate with me (toml@communisphere.com) for his address, or come to CB 3’s Technical Advisory Committee meeting next Wednesday, 7 PM at the Board’s district office – see http://www.cb3qn.nyc.gov/?p=1632 – where The Great Tree Hunt Game is on the agenda. NOTE: We especially want youth to attend, to help develop the game and help with local governance.

Items on agenda include:

1. Public Engagement - The Great Tree Hunt Game will be outlined.
2. Email Addresses - Progress report on obtaining member-name@cb3qn.nyc.gov addresses.
3. Website Access - 508, Civic Groups, Public Access Points, Member Training.
4. Content Additions – Website Administration Committee report. New content to be placed on site.
5. Pay Telephone Applications
6. Website Marketing – CB 3 stationary, www.nyc.gov listing, post office table…
7. New Home Page Design Contest

For the meeting’s full agenda see http://www.cb3qn.nyc.gov/index.v3page?c_v=evt&c_eid=32633&c_mid=0&p=1623.

Hope to see you on Wednesday.

Tom Lowenhaupt

Chair, CB 3’s Technology Advisory Committee



City Planning: Rezone Corona for Growth Balance

Department of City Planning Director Amanda M. Burden announced...that the City Council has voted unanimously to approve the Department's proposal to rezone 120 blocks in North Corona in Queens in order to balance future growth and preserve neighborhood scale. The Department's initiative is designed to accommodate the area's growing population by encouraging the production of moderate density housing on certain wide streets with good transit and highway access. This carefully balanced zoning will also prevent out-of-character development on the area's side streets…

She noted that between 1990 and 2000, Queens Community District 3 grew from 128,900 persons to 169,100. These 40,000 new residents represent the largest numerical increase of any district in the city, yet only 1,120 new housing units were added during that same period. The rezoning area comprises one-quarter of Community District 3. The housing shortfall in the district has contributed to increased pressure on existing housing stock caused by overcrowding and unchecked subdivision of single family homes into smaller multiple family dwellings.

Providing gradually increasing density along avenues leading to the No. 7 train will increase opportunities for new housing construction in appropriate locations, easing the strain on existing housing. The increased density along portions of Astoria, Northern and Junction boulevards is expected to encourage residential and mixed retail/residential development. At the same time, the Department's plan provides for maintaining the established scale of development on neighborhood side streets.

The plan encompasses 120 blocks bounded by 32nd Avenue and Astoria Boulevard to the north, 114th Street to the east, Roosevelt Avenue to the south and a western boundary defined by a stepped line beginning at 89th Street at Roosevelt Avenue and ending at 93rd Street and 32nd Avenue.

Unlike the existing zoning, the Department's new zoning plan better mirrors the way the North Corona has developed. For instance, the 1961 zoning designations did not distinguish between wide and narrow street contexts, potentially allowing high-rise developments on side streets between Roosevelt and 35th/34th avenues where lower rise buildings predominate. In addition, although commercial development is concentrated on Northern Boulevard, Roosevelt Avenue, 37th Avenue and Junction Boulevard, stretches of these streets currently have zoning that does not allow new commercial or mixed-use buildings. On the other hand, the commercial overlays along Northern Boulevard and portions of 37th Avenue extend well into the residentially developed side streets and allow out-of-context commercial uses along these narrow streets. The new zoning corrects such mismatches.

To ensure that future development is compatible with neighborhood character, the Department's plan provides for contextual and lower-density residential districts for side streets in this area. The additional development controls afforded by the lower density contextual zoning, such as building height limits, front building wall line-up requirements and restrictions on curb cuts, would prevent out-of-scale buildings allowed under the existing zoning and reinforce the established patterns of development.

Ms. Burden credited Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and her Zoning Task Force as well as Queens Community Board 3, which had requested a land use and zoning study in 1980 and 1991, for their cooperative work in seeing this project through the public review process to today's approval…



Homepage of the Community Gazette for District 25










THE OFFICIAL WORD
FOR DISTRICT 25

CB#3 Announces the Great Tree Hunt Game
(Mar 29, 2004)

City Planning: Rezone Corona for Growth Balance
(Nov 04, 2003)

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