Downtown Jamaica is finally recovering, and small projects like this six-story mixed-use building planned at 172-18 Jamaica Avenue signal the return of new development.
Property owner Tamal Monsur hopes to fill a stretch of long-vacant lots between 172 and 173rd Streets—halfway between downtown Jamaica and Hollis—with 20 apartments. A new building application was filed yesterday for the 20,252-square-foot project, which will include 2,620 square feet of ground floor retail.
The 20 apartments will be spread across 17,432 square feet of residential space, yielding an average unit size of 871 square feet. Apartments will begin on the second floor, with four each on levels two through six, followed by a roof deck.
There will also be a 3,500-square-foot parking lot with 11 outdoor spots, which is slightly more than the zoning code requires.
Maspeth-based Architects Studio will be responsible for the design. They’re handling several other projects in the neighborhood, including two small apartment buildings around the corner at 90-34 and 90-31 171st Street.
Monsur, who’s doing business as an LLC headquartered near Madison Square Park, paid $1,420,000 for the three vacant plots in January, public records show.
As we’ve noted before, Jamaica Avenue was upzoned in 2007, but most of the residential blocks to the north and south, stretching east of this site, were downzoned from R6 to R4-1 and R-5. That downzoning may have hurt small developers aiming to build market-rate construction on the fringes of eastern Queens, one of the last bastions of affordable rents for middle- and working-class New Yorkers.
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