HUNTERS POINT — Community Board 2 shot down a developer's plan to build apartments at the former Paragon Paint Factory site on Vernon Boulevard, saying the city needs to further study how the already-growing area should be developed.
Simon Baron Development and CRE Development applied for a variance to build residential housing on the site at the corner of Vernon Boulevard and 46th Avenue, which is currently zoned for manufacturing.
They want to refurbish the well-known green Paragon Paint warehouse and turn it into apartments, as well as construct three new buildings around it that would measure 28, 13 and 8-stories, containing 344 apartments total.
The project — designed by SHoP Architects — would also include 13,000-square-feet of retail space, plus a 18,074-square-foot park that would run between two of the buildings on Vernon Boulevard and lead to the Anable Basin waterfront, according to the plans.
While CB2 praised some aspects of the proposal, Chair Pat O'Brien said they want the city to come up with a comprehensive plan for how the northern end of the Hunters Point waterfront should be developed, instead of approving projects "on an ad hoc basis."
"I can say that I really like this project, if it were in a vacuum," O'Brien said at a meeting Thursday, where the board voted to recommend against the plan.
"[But] it's not in a vacuum, rather to the contrary — it's in an area that is being so extensively and overly developed that you can't get on the train, you can't find medical facilities, you can't send your kid to a school."
Matt Baron, president of Simon Baron Development, argues that the project would be a boon for the neighborhood, creating a park that's roughly the size of a city block and opening up the area to the waterfront.
Just over 100 of the apartments included the plan would be affordable, and the development would bring additional foot traffic to existing businesses along an otherwise sleepy stretch of Vernon Boulevard.
"I think we did spend a lot of time trying to think about how we can add back to the community with this project," he said.
They've also spent the last few years cleaning up the property, as the abandoned paint warehouse was an environmentally contaminated site included in the state's Brownfield Cleanup Program.
"This site itself has been vacant and abandoned for over 20 years, and has been designated by the state as hazardous to human health," he said.
"We don't feel like we're taking anything away from the community. We think we're giving something back."
Meir Newman, who owns a building on the same block as well as a stone and tiles store across the street, spoke in support of the developers on Thursday, saying the Paragon site had previously been "a disaster."
"Thank you for cleaning it up," he said. "All those people that oppose it — nobody has ever stepped up and cleaned this site. Finally somebody's doing it."
But other residents spoke against the plan, saying the proposed 28-story tower would loom over the rest of the area, which has already seen an enormous amount of residential growth.
"It's simply too dense and too high for the context of the neighborhood," one man told the board, describing Long Island City as a neighborhood "under siege with construction."
"We support development, obviously, but there are limits, and the Paragon Paint building reaches that limit," he said.
Jenny Dubnau, an artist who lives in the neighborhood, said she worried that yet another luxury building would push out existing residents and businesses.
"Our manufacturing zones are precious, and each zoning variance granted that puts a manufacturing spot to residential causes all the surrounding rents to skyrocket," she said.
CB2's recommendation against the plan is only advisory, and the city's Board of Standards and Appeals will need to approve the developers' application in order for the project to move forward.
O'Brien said the board also plans to ask the Department of City Planning to do a formal study of the area around the old factory and to the north, to come up with a "more comprehensive plan as to how all of the waterfront area there should be developed."
