Flushing LIRR housing project relegated to back burner

A massive project that would upgrade Flushing’s Long Island Rail Road station at Main Street and create new housing units around it is now taking a back seat to higher-priority projects like Flushing Commons, the Macedonia Plaza and Willets Point, city officials told the Daily News. The plan, first proposed by the Flushing Willets Point Corona Local Development Corp. during the fall of 2009, calls for new station elevators and a platform extension, plus housing and commercial space on a parking lot adjacent to the station and currently owned by the city’s Department of Transportation. The DOT and the local community board have already given the go-ahead on the project, called the Flushing Transit Oriented Development Plan. But it still needs approval from the city’s Economic Development Corp. and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which doesn’t currently have plans to develop on the site. “We will fully engage the community in any planning process should the city determine a future development project is viable there,” said Eric Bederman, a spokesperson for HPD. [NYDN]