By Sophia Chang
Civic leaders from Douglaston and Little Neck plan to announce their joint campaign to apply for a controversial downzoning plan for their neighborhoods at a meeting Tuesday at MS 67.The initiative to downzone these two communities is spearheaded by the Douglaston Civic Association and the Little Neck Pines Civic Association, whose leaders hope to stop overdevelopment by applying for the same rezoning proposal that Bayside residents are now facing.”What Bayside does in their area is their business,” said Bob Nobile, president of the Little Neck Pines Civic Association. But many residents of the eastern-most neighborhoods in Queens have been watching the proposal to rezone Bayside with interest. City Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside) has worked with the Department of City Planning to put forth a proposal to downzone 350 residential blocks in Bayside that would hold developers to the strictest building regulations in the city, in large part through a new single-family, detached residential zoning called R2A created just for this plan.Though some Baysiders have decried the R2A designation as unnecessarily harsh and architecturally restrictive, Nobile said his civic association thought the strict zoning would be good for Little Neck, a community that draws plenty of people thanks to a school district generally considered to be the best in the city, low crime rates, and good quality of life.”We fully support the R2A (proposal),” he said. “No matter what you tell people what to build in northeast Queens, they're going to come. We have the best schools, low taxes, and a lot of nice people. If you tell them they can only build a shack, they'll happily build a shack.””We're trying to downzone in order to reduce overdevelopment, minimize McMansions and maintain the character of our community,” said Eliott Socci, president of the Douglaston Civic Association. “For portions of Douglaston, I think R2A is a good fit.”Both civic leaders said they would seek to change all current R2 zones in their neighborhoods to the new R2A zoning. Socci also said his civic association was considering a request to make other residential zoning designations in the area stricter as well.Avella said he would support the two civic associations as he had supported the Bayside application.”I want to move ahead on their concerns as quickly as possible,” he said. With College Point and Whitestone also slated to be downzoned, he said, “my thinking is most low-density neighborhoods in Queens are going to want R2A. I'm not going to be happy until my entire district is looked at.” Avella said he could not give a timetable as to when Little Neck and Douglaston would be able to begin the complicated process of applying for downzoning, but the push to rezone Bayside began nearly two years ago and the application was submitted to the city in September. Bayside could be rezoned as early as May, pending City Planning approval and a City Council vote.Unlike the outcry over the downzoning plan in Bayside, where residents contended they had not been adequately informed of the city's plans, Nobile said he expects no controversy in Little Neck and Douglaston because the civic associations would emphasize informing the public.”We're going to tell everybody this is what our intentions are and we want everybody to know if their area is going to be rezoned,” he said. “We're not going to do what Bayside did.”The meeting of the two civic associations at MS 67 will feature a discussion with Mayor Michael Bloomberg about zoning.Reach reporter Sophia Chang by e-mail at news@timesledger.com, or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.Zoning meeting with Mayor BloombergTime: 8 p.m., March 15Location: MS 67 at 51-60 Marathon Pkwy.
