Grubby Land Grab

Dear Editor:

I am firmly against the proposed upzoning on Beach 108th Street, in Rockaway Park, Queens by Alma Realty.

An additional four high rise buildings would have devastating impacts on this barrier beach peninsula. Adding thousands of people to an already underserved community which is suffering from a lack of classroom seats, no trauma center, a hurricane flood zone with inadequate evacuation plans, inadequate functional roads…already impacted by ongoing construction, new traffic patterns, reduced driving speeds, local and continual, unfixed flooding, red light cameras, unnecessary bike lanes (especially on narrow Rockaway Beach Blvd. between Beach 149th and 108th Street) makes zero sense. This is not about development, which implies improvement….this is about greed.

Our summer community has hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of visitors from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Residents are frozen during summer months, unable to drive and/or park because of the conditions that now exist. Currently, the increase in construction projects in Rockaway (Edgemere, Arverne, Far Rockaway, etc.) have proven our roads cannot adequately provide reasonable egress for our residents, let alone visitors.

This project is wrong, ill thought out and potentially dangerous. Our community was Ground Zero during Superstorm Sandy. A barrier beach peninsula protects the mainland from environmental disaster. How are we to protect the residents of a barrier beach should another hurricane come if all three roads leading out are overly congested, closed due to construction or reduced to one lane by poor government planning.
No, no, no, a thousand times no to this overdevelopment, greedy, grubby land grab.

Marina Callaghan