196 blocks of Cambria Heights down-zoned. On July 27, 2005, the City Council unanimously approved a down-zoning, impacting 196 blocks of Cambria Heights, Queens. It is the first rezoning initiative in this neighborhood since 1961 and the fifth Queens neighborhood down-zoned by the City in 2005.

Designed to closely match the size of existing development, the down-zoning’s new residential districts (R2A, R3A, R3-1, and R4B) decrease the size and density of asof- right buildings. The existing commercial overlay district along Springfield and Linden Boulevards would be decreased in depth to prevent commercial uses from expanding away from these Boulevards onto smaller residential side streets.

The total area rezoned is bound generally by Murdock Avenue, Cross Island Parkway, 121st Avenue and Springfield and Francis Lewis Boulevard. Seventy percent of the area had been zoned R2, permitting only single-family detached housing. The new R2A zoning replaced this zoning, decreased the permitted size of new single-family structures and was proposed to more closely match the existing scale of Cambria Heights’ homes.

At the July 26, 2005 vote of the Council’s Land Use Committee, Council Member Leroy G. Comrie, Jr. thanked the Committee members for support on the down-zoning, adding that “Queens is the next frontier for over-development.”

ULURP Process: The Planning Commission, as lead agency, issued a negative declaration on April 11, 2005. Community Board 13 and Borough President Helen Marshall approved. No one opposed the rezoning at the Planning Commission’s June 8, 2005 hearing and the Commission unanimously approved, finding that the proposed districts more closely matched existing development.

Council: Cambria Heights Zoning (July 27, 2005); CPC: Cambria Heights Zoning (C 050400 ZMQ) (June 22, 2005). CITYADMIN