Residents and community advocates in Long Island City, Queens are pushing a decidedly noncorporate vision for land where Jeff Bezos and Amazon sought — and ultimately failed — to build a new corporate headquarters five years ago.
The new proposal, which is known as the Queensboro People’s Space, would keep a sprawling, city-owned building in the thick of a rapidly developing community out of the hands of for-profit developers and create a permanently affordable space filled with a food co-op, community garden, art studios and a garage for street vendors.
The stakes for the project hardly rival those attached to Amazon’s 15-year, $3.7 billion “H2Q” venture, which was planned for the same area and abruptly canceled in 2019 amid community uproar. But conversations around the new initiative also sound themes about neighborhood identity and who gets to remain in a changing place.
“So it’s really a tale of two cities,” said Jenny Dubnau, a local artist and leader of the Western Queens Community Land Trust, which is trying to make the People’s Space project a reality. “And we want to make sure that when the city does all their upzoning, which they seem to be doing a lot now in Long Island City, that this site, this beautiful old building, remains serving the needs of the community.”
The land trust was formed by neighborhood residents, activists, academics and artists after the Amazon deal collapsed. Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the company’s pullout the “greatest tragedy” he’d seen since serving in government. Now the land trust is looking to keep this swath of the property out of the hands of for-profit builders for good.
Earlier this month, the land trust hosted a block party touting the project outside the building, which is a nearly 600,000-square-foot structure located at Vernon Boulevard and 44th Drive. The building now hosts personnel from the city’s Department of Education. To its north are the Queensbridge Houses, which are by some measures the largest public housing development in the country. An expanding sea of luxury high-rises is located to the building’s south.
City Councilmember Julie Won told the block party crowd “we are making progress” on People’s Space and that she was pushing legislation to “curb real estate speculation.” And Rep. Nydia Velasquez, a Democrat who represents the area, has also voiced support, saying in a statement, “This can get done.”
But the path forward is hardly clear. The city controls the building and its disposition, and isn’t tipping its hand amid an ongoing discussion about new zoning for the area, which will likely stretch into 2025. Won announced a broad land-use plan for the neighborhood, known as One LIC, last fall.
According to that plan, Long Island City is the city’s fastest-growing neighborhood and the area’s median monthly asking rent has grown from $4,000 for a two-bedroom apartment in 2020 to $5,300 in 2022, far outpacing the rest of the city, where the median rent rose from $2,300 to $2,600 over the same stretch.
“We’re working closely with our city partners, Councilmember Won, and the Long Island City community to engage stakeholders and identify priorities for the neighborhood, including for publicly-owned sites,” Casey Berkovitz, a spokesperson for the Department of City Planning, said in a statement.
He added: “We look forward to continuing these conversations and exploring ideas that bring the most benefits to the community.”
In land we trust
Although community land trusts like the one at work in Long Island City aren’t widely used in New York City, the model has been gaining steam.
In a 2023 report, the Pratt Center for Community Development defined community land trusts as “democratic community organizations that take land off the speculative market and collectively steward it for affordable housing, community space, small businesses, or other local needs as defined by community members themselves.”
The report said use of community land trusts had grown significantly in the last 15 years. At least 20 of them now operate across the five boroughs, author Sylvia Morse said in an email. Five own land and another four have a land transfer in process.
That report says community land trusts have “deep roots in Black and indigenous cultures” and that “multiple layers of public oversight and community control ensure that land is never sold for profit.”
After the Amazon project failed in 2019, the Western Queens Community Land Trust’s organizers saw an opening. It honed in on the DOE building where it envisions the People’s Space, situated just a short distance from the East River, and commissioned a 2022 feasibility study by Bagchee Architects.
The study states that along with low-income residents in the area, community spaces, artist studios, manufacturing and commercial spaces “are in danger of displacement due to a skyrocketing real estate market that has far outpaced incomes.” It concludes that the land trust model would help mitigate the disadvantage to less-monied interests.
Laura Wolf-Powers, a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College and a member of the land trust’s steering committee, said the proposed Queensboro People’s Space was structured so that commercial rents would range from $18 to $25 per square foot, versus $35-45 per square foot for similar spaces rented by commercial firms in the area.
She says such projects aim to create affordable space “for people in the lower 80% of the wealth distribution, because those are the people whose livelihoods and residential situations are most at risk.”
In Long Island City, though, it isn’t yet clear whether the city is prepared to keep the DOE building off the for-profit market.
Christine Curella, a former official with the city’s Economic Development Corporation who is not involved in the People’s Space project, said the city could not continue to rely on “winner-take-all real estate and economic development.”
“If the project can demonstrate funding, committed employers, and a mixed-use model at this scale, it would unlock real value for neighborhoods and the city, not just for investors,” she said.
Passionate interest in the outcome
The project’s backers acknowledge that the land could very well go to for-profit developers.
In a statement, Velasquez said “we need cooperation from the city and its agencies to commit public land to non-profit development. I have raised this issue with city leaders and will continue to work to make the Queensboro People’s Space a reality.”
Even still, the idea has already gained traction with a number of organizations and small-business owners, some of whom have signaled an interest in occupying the space.
These include the Street Vendors Project. The organization’s Managing Director Mohamed Attia said the city requires street vendors — who are mostly immigrants and people of color — to keep their carts at city-licensed sites, but that a number of the area’s sites had closed in recent years.
Another organization that has signed on is the nonprofit Hot Bread Kitchen. Margo Slivin, the organization’s senior brand director, said “an affordable commercial kitchen” at the site would “activate income and wealth generation that stays in the local community.”
Similarly, Biotech Without Borders, which defines itself “as a member-led community biology lab,” has signed on for 4,700 square feet of space at the site. Danny Chan, a board member and the organization’s former president, said the group invites inventors, small businesses and others to become members if they’re in need of lab access.
And others have a passionate interest in the outcome. A central figure pushing for the project is LaShawn “Suga Ray” Marston, a local resident who engaged in a widely publicized hunger strike last year in order to generate attention for the cause. Marston said the hunger strike was an extreme measure necessitated by an extreme situation.
“Young people are dying in my neighborhood, because they don’t have creative outlets to explore who they are and what they feel and what they’re experiencing,” he said. “And so they turn to the streets and they’re dying and they’re going to prison for long periods of time. And it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Hannah Berson, another member of the land trust, said that as the number of high-rises in the area rose, she worried about the luxury amenities they promised, such as private dog runs, and what that meant for working-class families who have lived in the neighborhood for generations.
“You can see it as you take the N train and it curves up on the elevated line from Queens Plaza,” Berson said. There are beautiful, bright gym facilities, pool tables, lounge areas, rooftop areas, and you know, good for people that they get to enjoy those things, but it’s pretty clear that those kinds of spaces are not really meant for the community as it’s been here.”
“The affordability crisis,” she said, “is coming for Queens.”
City planners are hosting a town hall on Long Island City’s future at 6:30-8:30 p.m. on June 24 at CUNY Law School. Register here.
