The one where a 389-apartment Flushing tower cleared committee, and a Hell's Kitchen cafe lost two chairs

A mixed-use project that would put roughly 389 apartments across two buildings in Flushing Queens got its hearing and its votes in the same afternoon. The 147-14 Northern Boulevard rezoning, in Councilmember Sandra Ung's district, asks the city to flip an R5 residential district with a C1-2 commercial overlay to a denser R7X district with a C2 overlay, paired with a zoning text amendment mapping a mandatory inclusionary housing area carrying both Option 1 and Option 2. Of the 389 units, the applicant anticipates about 97 would be permanently affordable. Ung backed the application, and the subcommittee moved it forward.

The vote itself was a small piece of theater. Chair Farrell called for a tally and got five in the affirmative, zero against, zero abstaining, then held the roll open. Three more members, Councilmember Salaam, Minority Leader Carr, and Councilmember Jay Sanchez, arrived and added their votes, pushing the count to eight to nothing. With that, the Northern Boulevard rezoning and the day's two sidewalk cafe items were referred up to the full Land Use Committee.

The smaller story was Chalong, a restaurant in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in Councilmember Wilson's district. The owner asked to place two tables and four chairs on the sidewalk. To answer the community board's concerns, the subcommittee recommended cutting that in half, to one table and two chairs, and approved the application with that modification. No member of the public showed up to testify on it, in person or over Zoom, so the chair closed the hearing and laid the item over for the vote.

Nothing was contested here. There was no opposition testimony, no fight over affordability, no override of staff. This was a clean afternoon of a subcommittee doing intake, holding hearings, trimming a cafe footprint, and sending a Queens project with 97 affordable units on to the next stop. The real test for Northern Boulevard comes at the full Land Use Committee, where the density jump and the MIH terms will get a closer read.