Forest Hills Rezoning Plan Advances for 389-Unit Development

• Two Queens Boulevard rezonings cleared City Planning's June 1 review and head to public hearings.
• Benenson Capital's 100-12 Queens Blvd. would rise 21 stories with 389 apartments in Forest Hills.
• Sipos Realty's 50-02 Queens Blvd. would add 257 units in a nine-story building in Woodside.
• Together: 640-plus apartments, more than 160 of them income-restricted.

Two stretches of Queens Boulevard are lined up to grow taller. On June 1, the City Planning Commission reviewed rezoning applications for 100-12 Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills and 50-02 Queens Boulevard in Woodside, sending both into the public hearing phase of the city's ULURP land-use review. Approved together, they would put more than 640 new apartments on the borough's central spine, including over 160 priced below market.

Both sites are doing the same thing: trading a single-story commercial use that has sat on Queens Boulevard for decades for residential density next to transit. That is the whole pitch.

Benenson Bets 21 Stories on a Forest Hills Corner It Has Held Since 2001

The bigger of the two is at 100-12 Queens Boulevard, between 67th Road and 67th Avenue, where Benenson Capital Partners wants to replace two one-story retail buildings, currently home to a CVS and the chicken shop Roast & Co, with a 21-story, roughly 280,800-square-foot tower. The plan calls for 389 apartments across 264,616 square feet of residential space, with 97 of those units permanently affordable, plus 16,184 square feet of ground-floor retail and 38 parking spaces in the cellar.

Benenson has owned the corner since 2001, so this is a long-held site being cashed into housing rather than a fresh land play. The applicant of record is 100 Queens Blvd Co. LLC. Rachel Loeb, Benenson's chief investment officer and the former president of NYC Economic Development Corporation, made the density case directly in the filing: the site sits "on a heavily trafficked, über-wide arterial thoroughfare and in the immediate proximity of transit." Benenson, a firm founded in 1905 and run by three generations of the family, holds more than 125 properties across the U.S. and Canada.

Local Councilmember Lynn Schulman has already reached an affordable-housing agreement with the developer, the kind of pre-vote deal that tends to smooth a project's path through the Council, where the member's position usually decides the outcome.

Woodside's First Big Build in 85 Years Sits on a P.C. Richard Store

Six miles west, at 50-02 Queens Boulevard in Woodside, Sipos Realty is seeking a rezoning for a nine-story, roughly 261,100-square-foot mixed-use building with about 257 apartments, 64 of them income-restricted, plus commercial and community space. The applicant is listed as 5002 Woodside Development LLC.

The site currently holds a P.C. Richard & Son, and Sipos expects the appliance chain to take retail space in the new building. For Sipos, a family firm that has owned the parcel since the mid-20th century, it would be the first major development in more than 85 years. Earlier versions of the plan ran larger, north of 340 units and as tall as 14 stories, so the application heading to a hearing is a scaled-back version of the developer's opening bid.

What the Numbers Say About Queens Boulevard

Both projects lean on the same logic that the city has been pushing since the City of Yes housing reforms: build density where the trains already run. Queens Boulevard carries the E, F, M, and R lines beneath it, and both sites sit within walking distance of a station. The pattern is familiar in this corridor. Madison Realty Capital won a rezoning a few blocks away at 69-02 Queens Boulevard in 2018 for a roughly 500-unit Woodside project, and Mega Development Group filed in April for a 310-unit building at 220-28 Jamaica Avenue in Queens Village.

The affordability splits are worth watching. Benenson's 97 below-market units work out to about 25 percent of its 389-unit count; Sipos's 64 land near 25 percent of 257. Those ratios, and the rents behind them, are exactly what local boards and the Council members tend to negotiate before any vote.

What's Next

Public hearings are the next gate, where community boards, the borough president, electeds, and residents weigh in before the Planning Commission votes and the application moves to the City Council. Forest Hills has its affordable-housing deal in hand; Woodside's terms are still live. Watch the unit counts and the affordability percentages, because on Queens Boulevard, those are the numbers that move between filing and final vote.