| Our Statement on the Flushing Rezoning VoteThe MinKwon Center strongly condemns the vote by New York City Council to approve the Special Flushing Waterfront District (SFWD) rezoning proposal last Thursday. City Council has allowed a massive takeover of 1,700+ luxury apartments and a privatized waterfront with vastly inadequate and unenforceable "concessions". SFWD is not only a disaster for the majority of current Flushing residents, it reveals systemic issues with the City's ULURP process that favors the profits of millionaire developers over the needs and experiences of everyday people.
Despite the vote, the struggle against displacement, pollution, congestion, and houselessness that SFWD would exacerbate is not over. In June 2020, the MinKwon Center joined a community-led lawsuit against the Dept. of City Planning and City Planning Commission to challenge the proposal's omission of an Environmental Impact Statement, rendering it illegitimate from the start. We will press on with every legal channel to halt this rezoning and participate in an upcoming city-wide campaign to overhaul the current land use process into one that enforces meaningful community engagement and preservation. Our commitment does lie in government structures that were never designed to serve us, but in the thousands of local Flushing and NYC residents who spoke out and organized themselves against SFWD, far outweighing the handful of corporate interests and unscrupulous Council Members who voted to sell us out. |
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