But Flushing Commons will also include around 1,600 parking spaces, all priced below market rates. That means residents, shoppers, and workers at the mixed-use project will be driving into downtown Flushing, not taking transit. That doesn't exemplify sustainability; it enshrines a car-centric lifestyle in steel and cement.
Keep in mind that the total amount of parking is far greater than the developer wants to build or than the Department of City Planning itself requires. It was mandated by EDC and essentially pulled out of a hat.
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This project, which replaces a vitality-sapping 1,100-spot surface parking lot, is very close to being, as Burden argues, a transit-oriented home run, putting hundreds of thousands of square feet of new development in one of Queens' most walkable and transit-accessible sites. But instead, it's going to give more space to storing private vehicles than to retail and office space combined.
The amount of space we give over for the part time storage of vehicles is immense.