Variance granted for former bus garage site

New residential/commercial building approved after substantial height reduction. TTW Realty LLC, owner of a 60,000-square-foot lot at 19-73 38th Street within a manufacturing district in Astoria, applied for a use variance to construct a ten-story, mixed-use development containing retail and community facility space at street level and 108 residential units above. The proposed 150,000-square-foot building would contain 195 parking spaces, accessory to the proposed uses.

In its BSA application, TTW explained that in 1997 ten underground storage tanks, 1,860 tons of contaminated soil, an oil-water separator and 18 hydraulic bus lifts were removed from the former bus garage site, leaving the site’s soil in extremely poor condition. Construction on the site would require further soil clean-up and very deep foundation piles, substantially increasing costs. TTW also submitted two estimates, both claiming a $3 million cost to remediate the site along with feasibility studies for as-of- right uses.

BSA questioned TTW’s feasibility analyses because the remediation cost remained constant for each different development proposal. As a result, TTW submitted new analyses, listing the remediation cost as $700,000 for a one-story manufacturing building and $1.2 million for a one-story retail building. Both development projects would be economically infeasible according to TTW.

BSA agreed that the costs created a hardship and approved the building’s uses after TTW reduced the size of the project to a four-story development with 84 units, commercial and community facility uses, and 219 parking spaces. BSA noted that the amount of accessory parking was not excessive due to the high demand for spaces in the immediate area.

BSA: 19-73 38th Street (218-03-BZ) (July 12, 2005) (Gerald J. Caliendo R.A., for TTW). CITYADMIN