The city is looking to redevelop three sites in Long Island City that nearly became Amazon’s second headquarters. As first reported by Crain’s New York, the Adams administration will release a request for expressions of interest (RFEI) this spring to redevelop 44-36 Vernon Boulevard, a longtime Department of Education property. The city is prioritizing proposals that include commercial, industrial, and community-serving tenants for the six-story building. The 672,000-square-foot warehouse was once slated to be part of Amazon’s “HQ2,” a sprawling campus for the retail giant, but the company withdrew its plan in 2019 after strong opposition from residents, elected officials, and community groups.
Amazon first revealed plans to build a huge campus along the Queens waterfront in November 2018. The agreement between the city and the company included the creation of a complex on city-owned and private land in LIC, the latter of which is owned by the plastics company Plaxall.
The announcement quickly sparked pushback from local officials and advocate groups after learning that the city offered the corporation—one of the world’s most valuable—roughly $3 billion in grants and incentives. Additionally, at a subsequent City Council hearing, Amazon officials announced that the company would combat efforts by its NYC workforce to unionize.
The company would have displaced 1,000 public school staffers from the Department of Education building, which houses three divisions: the Office of Pupil Transportation, the Division of School Facilities, and the Office of Food and Nutrition Services, according to Crain’s.
Since Amazon withdrew, community groups have rallied to repurpose the building into an “incubator” for local businesses and artists.
Now, as the city continues with its efforts to rezone a large swath of the Queens waterfront neighborhood, the DOE building is being looked at as a potential site for redevelopment. The city is also looking at two adjacent city-owned parking lots at 44-59 45th Avenue and 4-99 44th Drive, currently under the ownership of the Transportation and Small Business Services departments.
Responses to the RFEI are due by late summer 2025 and will give the city a better sense of what projects are realistic for the site. It could also lead to a request for proposals (RFP) for the EDC to find a development team for the project.
The RFEI would solicit ideas for adaptively reusing the building, asking respondents to come up with plans to redevelop all or a portion of the building for adaptive reuse. According to the city, the building needs extensive repair and upgrades, which “could cost several hundred million dollars, which is expected to be similar to the costs of constructing a new building on the site.”
Before Amazon was proposed for the site, developer TF Cornerstone had won a city RFP to build a 1.5 million-square-foot, 1,000-unit mixed-use project. However, the plan never materialized, and the developer has since relinquished control of the lots as part of the new rezoning process.
Unveiled in October 2023, the LIC Neighborhood Plan calls for a rezoning to build 14,000 new homes, including 4,000 affordable units, schools, parks, and NYCHA enhancements, and up to nine acres of waterfront open space across the area.
The plan would allow for high-density mixed residential, commercial, and light industrial uses along the waterfront, stretching from roughly 46th Road, south of Anable Basin (where the DOE building is located), to 44th Avenue, and enable high-density housing around Court Square.
North of the Queensboro Bridge, between 21st and 23rd Streets, the proposed zoning changes would allow for the development of high- and medium-density mixed-use residential, commercial, and light manufacturing buildings.
Along 44th Drive, the proposal would permit medium-density residential, commercial, and light-manufacturing developments, and in a section of the LIC Industrial Business Zone (IBZ), high- and medium-density manufacturing, commercial, and community facility uses could be constructed.
The plan includes incorporating Mandatory Inclusionary Housing across the zoning area and mandating income-restricted affordable housing as part of every new development. This component could create 4,000 affordable homes at an average of 60 or 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), three times as many built in the last 10 years in LIC for individuals earning less than 120 percent of the AMI.
The plan has already been reviewed by the public and adjusted over three rounds of “focus area meetings” and two past town halls mediated by Council Member Julie Won, the DCP, and architecture firm WXY Studio.
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