An open letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg:
Thank you for your recent letter regarding North Flushing's rezoning. The city has experienced unprecedented growth in every borough, but encouraging all of this development in Queens is wrong. Most neighborhoods, especially in eastern Queens, are not very accessible to modes of public transportation, so residents there have many cars. Encouraging builders to convert one-family homes into multi-family homes has adversely affected those neighborhoods' quality of life.
You stated in your letter that you are discussing these issues with Department of City Planning Director Amanda Burden, of which I am glad. We would like to discuss them with her, too. The residents here would like you both to come and tour Flushing and other Queens neighborhoods to see how DCP has negatively affected our communities. If “the City Planning Commission works to ensure that development is responsible and benefits all New Yorkers,” then why am I still trying to figure out how I benefit from a builder ruining my street so he can make a profit?
I look forward to your response on this increasingly pressing matter.
Rose Giordano-Forkan
Flushing
