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Case Study 6
Case Study 6
Greater Jamaica Attracts a Major Residential Development and a Hotel to Downtown Jamaica
Background:
The Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC), a local development corporation based in Jamaica, Queens, has completed a state and city-funded planning study which focuses on creating quality jobs, improving retail diversity and creating affordable housing on vacant land in downtown Jamaica that surrounds the intersection of three major mass transit systems: the Long Island Railroad, the Air Train and the city subway.The area had been upzoned in 2007 from low density industrial to high density commercial. In an earlier phase of its planning study, Greater Jamaica developed the concept of Transit-Oriented Development for the half-mile area around the transit hub.
Strategy:
GJDC has spent a significant part of its state planning funds in market research and the production of marketing materials to attract developers and anchor tenants to the station area. The development corporation conducted an extensive survey of consumer needs and desires, which produced 740 responses from those who live, work, shop, and dine in the area. The survey included a careful analysis of “leakage” to identify what purchases local residents make outside Jamaica. The study informed Greater Jamaica on desirable types of retail and commercial development for the area, which included more tablecloth restaurants.Greater Jamaica then used the market research data to educate developers and anchor tenants on the potential of Transit Oriented Development to support the investments they would make in the area. This campaign helped persuade the initial developers and their lenders to overcome the risk they felt of being the first to build a high rise development in downtown Jamaica.
Later, Greater Jamaica issued a Requests for Proposal (RFP) for the development of two sites that it owned and subsequently sold to developers who committed to build mixed use housing, retail and community facilities as well as a hotel in the area. The first site, which will include 580 units of mixed use housing, 100,000 square feet of retail and community facility space and 300 parking spaces on a 58,000-square foot site, broke ground in summer 2016. The site’s developer, BRP Companies, worked with the Office of Environmental Remediation, and has enrolled the site in the state Brownfield Cleanup Program. The second site, where the developer will erect a Hilton Garden Inn with 225 rooms, has already been enrolled in the City’s Voluntary Cleanup Program. It is expected to break ground in early 2017.