Queens health club requested rezoning in order to apply for BSA special permit after operating without a valid certificate of occupancy for seventeen years. On January 18, 2011, the City Council approved Lucille Roberts Health Club’s rezoning proposal for five lots along Bell Boulevard between 42nd Avenue and the Long Island Railroad right-of-way in Bayside, Queens. The approval changed the area’s commercial overlay from C1-2 to C2-2, but left the underlying R6B zoning unchanged. Lucille Roberts has operated a gym at the site for seventeen years without a valid certificate of occupancy. The company requested the rezoning so it could apply for a special permit from BSA. The site is surrounded by a restaurant, hardware and paint stores, and a spa.

Lucille Roberts began leasing a single-story building at 41-19 Bell Boulevard in 1993. The site was zoned C4-2, and Lucille Roberts applied to BSA for a special permit to operate a gym. While the application was pending, the City rezoned the area R6B/C1-2. The special permit was not available within a C1-2 commercial overlay and BSA dismissed the application. Lucille Roberts continued to operate the gym illegally. In 2004 it requested a use variance from BSA, but withdrew the application because it could not demonstrate that the gym would be the only use that would yield a reasonable economic return. (read more…)

New district created to curb development of Queens “McMansions.” On March 14, 2005, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the Bloomberg administration’s largest proposed down-zoning to date and a new citywide zoning district to be applied first to Bayside, a Queens neighborhood characterized predominantly by single-family detached homes. The approved 350-block down-zoning of Bayside, commenced at the urging of Council Member Tony Avella and local residents, seeks to end the rising development in Bayside of semi-detached homes, apartment buildings and oversized single-family homes referred to by the community as “McMansions.”

The Planning Department proposed to down-zone an area bounded generally by Francis Lewis Boulevard and Clearview Expressway to the west, the Cross Island Parkway to the east, 24th and 26th Avenues to the north and, on the south, by the Long Island Expressway. (read more…)