REBNY floats LIC housing plan

Real Estate Board of New York chairman Stephen Ross has been in “secret talks” with the Bloomberg administration about a plan that would result in the city handing over a 24-acre Long Island City parcel to REBNY, which would form a nonprofit corporation to build 5,000 units of middle-class housing on the site. The city has already said it plans to build moderate-income housing on the Queens waterfront land. Some community members have expressed outrage at the talks, saying they are being kept out of what was supposed to be an open planning process, and that the private developers represented by REBNY would not necessarily be acting in the best interests of the community. more [NYT]