10,000-Year-Old Legacy Of Biodiversity Endangered By Queens Development Project
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Though the entire world was dominated by Covid this year, North Queens was certainly the first section of the city to truly feel its effects. The largely Asian population faced Covid-19 induced discrimination and small shops suffered from a severe drop in business, a struggle they continued to combat throughout the remainder of the year.
Despite the hardships, North Queens pushed through and celebrated many good times â award ceremonies honored its leaders, DJs played free concerts for neighbors, activists took a stand and more.
Hereâs a look back at what the first six months of the infamous 2020 looked like in North Queens.
Clifford Michel/THE CITY
The base parts for the New York Wheel, an unfinished $650 million waterfront Ferris wheel once touted as Staten Island’s answer to the London Eye, have sat on prime public land untouched since 2017.
Staten Island’s current elected officials have stuck by the project, seen as the linchpin of the so-called North Shore Renaissance around the St. George Ferry Terminal, even after its initial developer declared the wheel dead two years ago.
But now several candidates running for City Council and borough president are breaking ranks and pledging to push City Hall and the city Economic Development Corporation to abandon the project, once slated to rise 630 feet with sweeping views.
Despite months of community opposition and numerous protests, the City Council last week gave the Special Flushing Waterfront District the green light, approving a plan that would rezone 29-acres of Downtown Flushing for luxury condominiums, hotels, offices, stores and a new road network.
But its adversaries are not giving up the fight yet.
âCity Council has allowed a massive takeover of 1,700+ luxury apartments and a privatized waterfront with vastly inadequate and unenforceable âconcessions,ââ MinKwon Center for Community Action, one of the leading protesters, said in a statement following the 39-5 vote.
The activist organization is continuing to pursue a June lawsuit challenging the proposalâs omission of an environmental impact statement, which they say should render it and its approval illegitimate. Rather than completing an EIS, the developers conducted a less thorough environmental assessment.
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