“West Side Stadium” And “NYC2012” Sounded Appropriately Grandiose, But “Airport Village” Still Has A Ring To It . . . Right?

The problem remains that West Side plans failed, that Olympic thing was a wash, and you wouldn’t want to hitch your wagon too soon to volatile projects like Atlantic Yards or Coney Island. So where do you go for the great blank slate with which to solidify your place in history? Jamaica, Mon:

A plan to transform downtown Jamaica, Queens, into a vibrant “airport village” while preserving the quiet, low-scale character of neighboring side streets cleared an important City Council committee yesterday, all but ensuring final approval next month for the single largest rezoning of the Bloomberg administration.

Covering a 368-block area that sweeps northeast from the AirTrain transit hub, the rezoning would expand the neighborhood’s commercial core by allowing hotels and office towers to rise on underused industrial land surrounding the train station, officials said. At the same time, it would encourage new, denser housing and retail development in some areas and limit residences to one- and two-family homes in others.

“We’ve all been aware for so long of the potential of Jamaica,” Daniel L. Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, said of the plan, intended to create a regional business center minutes from Kennedy International Airport. “You go to cities around the country and around the world and they’ve got major commercial centers near their airports. We don’t have anything like that.”

. . .

The plan, officials said, is in keeping with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s approach to economic development of enhancing secondary business districts and creating mixed-use 24-hour communities in all five boroughs.

City officials and community development advocates have high hopes for the rezoning package, which was approved with modifications by the City Council’s Land Use Committee. The City Planning Commission must now accept those changes before resubmitting the package to the Council for final approval, expected on Sept. 10.

“It’s going to make great use of the train-to-the-plane,” said Councilwoman Melinda R. Katz, chairwoman of the Land Use Committee. “Basically, this is really an example of something that is good for the borough of Queens and good for the city of New York,” she said, but added that it was important to accommodate some of the concerns in the neighborhood that the zoning would allow for too-large buildings on Hillside Avenue.

Indeed, said Amanda M. Burden, the city planning commissioner, working to address concerns that made the rezoning effort complex and time-consuming. “This has been a marathon four-year effort,” she said. “Jamaica already is a retail destination,” she said, “but around the AirTrain you just couldn’t build.”

But with the land, now zoned for manufacturing, soon to accommodate buildings as high as 29 stories, officials envision three million square feet of commercial space bringing 9,600 jobs to the hub, as well as 5,200 new residences, 770 of them subsidized.

To accommodate that growth, officials said, they are working to bring in schools, sewers, parking spaces and other infrastructure improvements, including lighting and trees along Hillside Avenue.

Carlisle Towery, president of the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, said that the rezoning would help attract private investment to build on other developments that are helping create a regional center. Queens County civil courts have clustered nearby, he said, while a Food and Drug Administration laboratory and a Social Security Administration office are federal anchors.

Earlier: Sure It’s A Vacant, Dilapidated Building, But It’s My Vacant, Dilapidated Building!