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Queens Chronicle February 15, 2007 by Colin Gustafson Forest Hills Hotel Still Planned, But in Limbo |
 Last November, the developer unveiled plans to erect a 15 story hotel, with a spa, restaurants, high end shops and up to 150 rooms, at the corner of Austin Street and 70th Road. Located in the middle of one of Queens’ busiest shopping strips, the five star lodging would create hundreds of jobs and lure countless tourists, Elias said. “My goal is to turn this (neighborhood) into a mini Manhattan,” he said, “to create the old synergy that brought people — not just the local people, but the out of towners ... like when we hosted the U.S. Open.” But realizing this vision has not been easy. Last year, Elias proposed adding public parking spaces below the hotel in anticipation of the increased traffic flow it would generate. But those plans hit a snare when city officials resisted creating new municipal spots in the area, he claimed. The Department of Transportation did not return calls. Elias has since vowed to allot a portion of the new spaces in his proposed underground lot for community use at fees equal to municipal rates. “The city told me they were no longer in the business of municipal parking,” he said. “So we will create our own.” A potentially bigger hurdle for the developer is zoning. The block’s current C8 2 zoning allows commercial and manufacturing uses, but not the residential uses necessary to build a hotel. Under Elias’ plan, the entire block would likely have to be rezoned C6 to allow both residential and commercial uses. Elias met with Queens City Planning officials in December to discuss the matter. But Queens Planning Director John Young said Elias would have to reconsider the scale of his project, if he expected it to pass muster with the City Planning Commission. “His requests seemed very ambitious for a very constrained site,” Young said. “Based on the commission’s past actions, we told him a smaller scale project resembling the surrounding structures would be more likely to work.” Under a rezoning, Young added, the hotel would likely have to match nearby structures — many of them one and two story retail spaces that would be dwarfed by a high rise hotel. But Elias contended that his building should be allowed to match the size and dimensions of nearby residences, like The Windsor, a 21 story condominium tower two blocks away. The hotel would be designed in the Tudor style to match the historic Station Square apartments, many of them part of a former hotel. Additionally, the building would be the borough’s first “green” hotel by relying on solar energy to power its internal heating and cooling systems, Elias said. It may also house a large catering hall. Still, all of these plans, he added, hinge on two factors: being able to amass enough public support for the project and negotiating a compromise over zoning with city officials. So far, Forest Hills Councilwoman Melinda Katz, who chairs the city Land Use Committee, has yet to weigh in publicly on the project. Community Board 6 District Manager Frank Gulluscio said he expects the hotel to gain support from retailers and much of the community, but is waiting for the developer to submit plans before the board decides whether to favor it. In the meantime, the developer plans to lobby other community leaders while preparing to return to the Planning Commission with a new rezoning proposal. “The thing is, if we don’t get enough usable square footage for the hotel, it won’t justify building it, unfortunately” Elias said. “So now it becomes a matter of getting enough momentum to make the city see things our way.”
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