Public testimony: Varuna Sundaram urges rejection citing infrastructure capacity
Varuna Sundaram, a physician and homeowner, strongly urges rejection. She cites overcrowded schools with lottery systems, grocery shortages after Key Foods closure, flooding concerns, and argues the high-rise buildings cited by the developer are all on Jackson Avenue, not the surrounding block.
I'm sorry.
Can you hear me now?
We can hear you now.
You may begin.
Sorry, somebody changed my name, but it was listed as Varuna Sundaram.
I had registered to testify.
No worries.
You may begin.
I'm here today to strongly urge the council to reject the proposed spot.
You know, as a physician, I review the neighborhood planning through the lens of community health, stability, public infrastructure.
And as a parent, I look at it through the lens of our family survival.
Over the last decade of living here and being a homeowner, I've watched Long Island City transform into a wonderful neighborhood.
But this rapid out-of-scale upzoning, pushing an 11-story luxury tower with 84 units into our immediate perimeter, is pushing the local infrastructure and families like mine to a breaking point.
The applicant states that they'll be providing affordable housing with this project, and that's great, but our neighborhood resources are already at capacity.
Where is the affordability when these families can't access the resources of communities?
Our local schools are dangerously overcrowded, forcing families into a stressful lottery system that just secures just to secure a seat nearby.
Even day-to-day essentials have become a bottleneck.
Our neighborhood grocery stores face constant shortages and long lines because because
The resident population has vastly outpaced the retail infrastructure, especially as the key foods around the corner from that plot had just shut down due to high rental rates.
And the area in particular is prone to flooding with nearly every rainstorm, and a building of this nature will only worsen that and potentially create flooding that would spill over into the surrounding buildings, including MoMA PS1.
If this rezoning continues to clear a path for aggressive, out-of-scale developments that ignore infrastructure limits, families like mine will quite literally be priced out and forced out of the city entirely.
Applicants showed that.
A bird's eye view of the area in concern, and you can see there's large high-rise scale buildings.
They're all across the street on Jackson Avenue or on the corner, including the newest, largest high-rise building that's being currently built just across the street on Jackson and not immediately surrounding the proposed building on the block.
New York just can't afford to lose its growing families just because it chose to prioritize speculative real estate over...
Community preservation.
The development needs to be holistic, protective, and sustainable.
This piecemeal upzoning is just not.
Please vote no on this application, and thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.