The Astoria Houses consist of 24 buildings, parkland and parking lots covering a 1.14 million square foot lot, in Queens. The sheer size of the lot and unused FAR give the site a development potential of 1,647,585 square feet of additional housing.

Halletts A Development Company, LLC, a subsidiary of the Durst Corporation, plans to develop between 2.4 and 3.4 million square feet of mixed use, residential and commercial, facilities on private as well as public lands including former park land, city streets and NYCHA property.

Part of this development will take place on property owned by NYCHA and occupied by the NYCHA, Astoria Houses even though the Astoria Houses are not officially part of NYCHA’s NextGen program. Three parking lots and one playground are marked for redevelopment as housing under the Durst Plan.

The City Planning Commission (CPC) approved the disposition of part of the lot on August 21, 2013. On October 6, 2015, an easement was granted on behalf of NYCHA and the City of New York to Halletts A Development Company LLC.

To facilitate “large-scale development” on the development site, the CPC and City Council made a number of concessions in 2013, including: 

·       An amendment to the city map, disposing of city parkland and streets, along the waterfront, for development (C 130068 MMQ).

·       An amendment to the zoning map, increasing the zoning of the area to allow for denser residential development. (C 090484 ZMQ).

·       An amendment to the zoning text resolution (N 090485 ZQR)

·       2 special permits; One is a Large-scale special permit, allowing for the transference of development rights throughout the project C 090486 ZSQ, another to remove distance restrictions between buildings, C 130244 ZSQ

·       And other special authorizations for building bulk (size and shape), N 090487 ZAQ, N 130245 ZAQ, N 130246 ZAQ(N 090488 ZCQ.