Can the neighborhoods of Rockaway—a six-mile-long section of an 11-mile peninsula jutting out from the southern corner of Queens—emerge from the economic and development morass to which six decades of destructive government policy had once consigned them? Given the market forces at work following World War II as well as the changes in American tastes, the Rockaways' exuberant mix of high- and low-income households was probably fated to be lost in the short run. But government actions—particularly an urban renewal program that acquired and demolished private residences and built public housing and nursing homes where they once stood—ripped the heart out of the community. Activists, private citizens, and the community board fought back over the decades. But theirs was pretty much a losing battle until the Bloomberg administration took notice, in 2002.

After several years of work, the Department of City Planning announced on April 21, 2008, a comprehensive rezoning of 280 blocks encompassing the neighborhoods of Far Rockaway, Edgemere, Somerville, Rockaway Park and Rockaway Beach. The intention is to protect the scale of the peninsula's distinctive housing stock, including some 200 bungalows and dozens of blocks of one- and two-family homes, by curbing out-of-character development. The proposal would also upzone two areas close to public transportation in order to promote moderate retail and residential development. Noting in an interview that the Rockaways had been hurt by a great deal of "wrong-headed government interference" through the years, City Planning Director Amanda Burden went on to say that the rezoning "will add value and a sense of predictability about what can be built. This will bring significant preservation to some areas while allowing growth elsewhere, in particular strengthening the retail environment."

The chairperson of Queens Community Board 14, Dolores Orr, calls the plan popular with most—except a small contingent from Rockaway Park opposed to upzoning.

THE DECLINE OF A COMMUNITY
Blessed with the Atlantic Ocean to the south and Jamaica Bay to the north, the Rockaways became a popular resort area of elegant hotels and fine houses in the 1830s. The coming of the railroad in the 1880s encouraged more intensive development, including playlands, amusement parks and a few apartment buildings. Attractive beachfront communities were developed, such as Belle Harbor, Neponsit, and Arverne. The opening of the Cross Bay Bridge in 1925 and the Marine Parkway Bridge in 1937 made the Rockaways convenient for middle- and working-class households, who bought the bungalows, frequently distributing themselves according to ethnic heritage. The Irish, who were probably the largest group, says Jonathan Gaska, CB 14's district manager, tended to live from the middle of the peninsula west, especially in Rockaway Beach and Rockaway Park. The Italians sprinkled themselves through different neighborhoods, but favored Belle Harbor and Neponsit. Jewish households settled in Far Rockaway, now called West Lawrence, and spilled into Bayswater. (Even now, this strong ethnic heritage remains, amid substantial racial diversity. Residents joke that half the police and fire departments live in the Rockaways—and, indeed, the area lost more of its residents on Sept. 11, 2001, than any other neighborhood of New York.)

But one very large problem loomed: the peninsula was far away from Manhattan. That was fine so long as families headed out for long vacations, but not so fine when household members needed to commute to jobs—one and a half hours to midtown, for example. As the Rockaways declined in the 1950s, the city designated huge swaths as urban renewal areas. The city and the state then acquired private land through eminent domain, even as the 1961 rezoning branded the remaining property as nonconforming. Bungalows became illegal, and many small business owners found that their property had been rezoned residential even as adjacent property became industrial. They could no longer finance renovations or improvements, or get permits from the Department of Buildings.

Officials in the Wagner and Lindsay administrations found what they regarded as an answer to decline: build large public housing projects along the gorgeous beach. Today, the old towns of Arverne and Edgemere have some of the highest concentrations of public housing—and crime and unemployment—in New York. The city also used federal and state financing to support the development of dozens of nursing homes.

These days, almost no one regards the Wagner or Lindsay land-use planning decisions favorably. District manager Gaska, for example, calls the Rockaways the Siberia of city government. "For five decades, the city and state governments dumped their problems here," he says. "If you were a problem tenant in public housing, NYCHA sent you here. If you didn't have a job and weren't going to get one, then this was the place for you. When the state government started closing their hospitals, they began placing those with mental disabilities here, but without any services. The Rockaways now has 50 percent of the borough's adult-facility beds. The state just keeps approving new facilities via their sham community approval process. They send us what's called a 60-day letter, telling us they're going to approve a new facility. We say no, and they say, 'Thank you for your opinion; we're going to open it anyway.' One result was that, according to the 1990 Census, one-third of our population was on public assistance. In 2000 that was down in the 20s, thanks to some new development, and now it’s down to 18-20 percent, which is close to the city average."

Meanwhile, no one paid much attention to the decline in retail services and small businesses, which plummeted to almost non-existence by the mid-1980s. Real estate broker and long-time community board member Vince Castellano says that investment on Rockaway Boulevard, a commercial street, was effectively prohibited by city regulations. Zoned residential, the boulevard’s commercial uses were grandfathered under the 1961 zoning code, so that any business became an illegal, nonconforming use. "You could stay within the envelope, but couldn't expand, couldn't add," says Castellano, commenting on the lack of any future for business. "This was very hard on small businessmen like licensed tradesmen—plumbers, for example—who had to have a legal office in New York to keep their license. But the city didn’t want to recognize them if their business was in a residential zone."

He recalls a Koch administration that was "utterly indifferent" to this and other problems. "Koch had a thing about the Rockaways," says Castellano. It doesn't pay for government to do anything out there, he used to say. No matter what you do, half of the people are going to hate you, and half are going to love you. Politically, there's no advantage to be gained."

Still, the beauty of the Rockaway beaches, combined with the area’s obvious underdevelopment, led the Board of Estimate, in 1989, in one of its final actions before disbanding as the result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, to authorize the development of 7,500 market-rate, high-rise units by Forest City Ratner. "It was a very close vote," recalls Gaska, who began as district manager that same year. "But within a year or so the project collapsed under its own weight. You couldn't give away condos or co-ops, so Forest City Ratner pulled out."

In 1992, says Dolores Orr, the community board took advantage of a provision in the new city charter authorizing communities to draw up their own plans. After about two years of work, CB 14 presented the Giuliani administration with a rezoning very close to the current proposal. "The city was not of a mindset for these ideas," says Orr. "They threw us out," says Gaska, more bluntly.

The current mayoral administration, however, was something else. "I'm not a Bloomberg fan," Castellano says, "but City Planning is doing their rezoning on instructions from Bloomberg. This rezoning is so welcome, so at variance with anything City Planning has done in the past, that you have to thank the mayor." The department is also said by residents and activists to have an extraordinarily dedicated staff in its Queens office, headed by John Young. "They kept the stakeholders involved in the community," says Gaska. "John Young and his staff were here so many times I can't count the numbers—meeting people in the street, doing tours of the area, answering questions, listening, taking everything very, very seriously."

Indeed, the Bloomberg administration has been remarkably attentive to Queens. Of City Planning’s 82 rezonings throughout the five boroughs, 29 (covering 3,400 blocks) have been in Queens, which has one-quarter of the city’s population. At present, 580 blocks are under public review in the neighborhoods of the Rockaways, Dutch Kills, Laurelton, and Waldheim. No other mayoral administration ever approached these numbers.

REBIRTH THROUGH REZONING?
The proposed rezoning, which extends from Beach 129th Street to the Queens-Nassau border, would: