[NYguy]

http://www.politico.com/states/new-y...lopment-109392

Study highlights challenges, potential for Sunnyside Yard development





By SALLY GOLDENBERG
02/06/17

Sunnyside Yard, a 180-acre parcel in Queens that has intrigued and eluded developers and planners for nearly a century, has been given a blueprint for growth, but any plan to build on the site would face enormous challenges.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration on Monday released a $2.5 million study it commissioned from 11 private consultants to figure out what could be built if the rail yard were to be decked over and primed for development.

...The consultants sketched out three development possibilities that would yield anywhere from 14,000 to 24,000 housing units, up to 5,300 parking spots and 500,000 to 900,000 square feet of retail. The proposal with the least amount of residential space —14,000 to 19,000 units — would include approximately 5 million square feet of Class A and creative office space.

The designs all call for at least 10 schools, land set aside for mixed-use space, and rent-regulated housing for low- to moderate-income tenants.

Each plan would use at least 20 million square feet of floor area, while preserving between 31 and 52 acres for open space.

And, the authors noted, they are all designed to take into account improvements Amtrak laid out for Sunnyside Yard in its 2014 master plan.

.....The Regional Plan Association's Chris Jones said the study shows a "financially feasible" pathway to developing Sunnyside Yard, "but there's obviously a lot of really big hurdles that you'd have to get over for any of them."

He said the rail yard has held the ambitions of planners since at least 1929, when a plan was conceived for a giant skyscraper on the site. A rendering of the fleeting goal hangs in his office.

"There's no other location like it left in the city that has that much acreage, that's that close to the Manhattan central business district and that has a number of train lines connected to it," he said in an interview. "In that sense there's nothing else that has the same potential as Sunnyside Yards. But there are few places that have as many of the challenges either, or else it would've been done already."