Chetrit eyes mixed-use project at 8-acre site in Queens

The Chetrit Group — which backed out of a high-end condo conversion at the Sony building earlier this year — has proposed a mixed-use project at an eight-acre industrial complex in Queens.

The property at 57-46 56th Street in Maspeth is home to several warehouses, and it straddles tracks used by the Long Island Railroad, Crain’s reported. Chetrit‘s plans, while still in the early stages, are likely to fit with the low-rise housing nearby, the developer said, although it would necessitate a rezoning. That could be an uphill battle since the site is located in an Industrial Business Zone, which Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would protect from residential development.

The developer, though, may find an ally in City Council member Elizabeth Crowley, whom the Chetrit Group met with in 2013 and 2015 about rezoning. She has recently pushed the mayor to support the development of permanent, low-income housing.

“We need affordable housing, not another shelter-hotel,” she wrote in a letter to the mayor this summer. “In recent months, two real estate developers who are eager to build residential housing units in Maspeth and Woodside have approached me, looking to start a conversation about a zoning change.”

This wouldn’t be the Chetrit Group’s first ambitious outer borough’s project: it’s teamed up with Keith Rubenstein’s Somerset Partners [TRDataCustom] to develop as many as six, 25-story residential towers in the South Bronx.  [Crain’s] — E.B. Solomont