OneLIC Oversight Task Force held first public meeting

City agencies gave updates on 28 of 44 commitments. Council Member Won pressed City Hall publicly on two un-cited schools and a delayed drainage plan.

The OneLIC Oversight Task Force held its first public meeting last month on June 17th at the CUNY School of Law in Long Island City, drawing a standing-room crowd of residents, city agency staff, and task force members for two hours of commitment updates and pointed questions about what the city has actually promised and when it will deliver.

The task force was created to monitor the nearly $2 billion in city commitments tied to the OneLIC rezoning, which the City Council passed unanimously in November 2025. This meeting was the first chance for the public to hear directly from city agencies about the status of those commitments. Of 44 total commitments, city representatives said 28 have updates, two have been completed, and two are just getting started.

You can watch a recording of the meeting here.

Schools

The School Construction Authority reported that two fully funded elementary schools are on track. The future expansion building for PS 384 at 150 54th Avenue, known as Parcel C, is a $131 million project delivering 547 seats and is on schedule to open in fall 2027. The Court Square school at 23-10 43rd Avenue is a $176 million project also delivering 547 seats, on track for fall 2028.

A third school at 5-46 46th Avenue, a 600-seat building, has a site agreement secured with Plaxall, with the city expecting to take possession of the site in 2028. Two additional 650-seat schools are advancing through site selection. One of those, at 43-58 11th Street, is expected to go before the City Council for a vote in fall 2026.

The relocation of the Baccalaureate School for Global Education is in the final stage of acquisition. SCA is finalizing the purchase of a site at 47-51 Third Street, with a City Council vote anticipated in fall 2026.

Council Member Won used the meeting to press City Hall publicly on school funding. She said she cannot vote on the city budget without written confirmation that funding for the two uncited schools is in the School Construction Authority’s capital plan, and asked City Hall to specify what year that funding would appear.

“We need to make sure that the mayor knows you’re not getting away with anything in this community,” Won said.

City Hall representative Matt Petrus acknowledged that Won’s office is owed a written response.

Sewers And Drainage

The sharpest exchange of the night came over the drainage plan for Long Island City.

DEP representative Tara Deegan told the crowd that the agency’s consultant delivered the drainage plan on time, but that DEP engineers sent it back for further review, pushing the expected completion to the end of 2026. She said a capital program for sewer upgrades cannot be developed until after the drainage plan is finalized.

Won pressed Deegan publicly. “How will my community believe that the funding is going to come in for our sewage and plumbing because it never has before?” she asked.

Deegan said DEP has already cleaned and repaired nearly five miles of sewers in the area, is making repairs at Fifth Street and 49th Avenue, and is upgrading outfalls. But she acknowledged that a capital program is still months away at minimum.

Lisa Goren, chair of the task force’s Resiliency and Infrastructure Committee and a 30-year LIC resident, had set the context earlier in the evening. She said the two infrastructure commitments in the rezoning merely reaffirm the city’s basic maintenance responsibilities, with no new commitments to increase sewer capacity for the roughly 50,000 new residents and workers the rezoning is expected to bring.

“There are no new commitments to increase sewer capacity,” Goren said. She added that resiliency infrastructure is left to a patchwork of disconnected private developer designs despite severe flood risks at Hunters Point North.

A longtime resident who said he has lived in LIC for over 40 years called it “unconscionable that no money is actually allocated” for sewage upgrades, and noted that sewer overflow into Newtown Creek has been a problem for decades.

Parks and Open Space

Jessica Sechrist, executive director of the Hunters Point Parks Conservancy and co-chair of the task force’s Parks and Waterfront Open Space Committee, told the crowd that Community Board 2 ranks third from the bottom in open space per capita citywide, and CB1 is only a few spots above it.

The city’s Walk to Parks land acquisition process is moving through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. A City Planning Commission hearing was held June 3. A vote is expected by July 1, with final approval expected in September. Parks confirmed that the initiative includes sites in Blissville, after a representative of the Bayside Civic Association pressed for clarity on whether the “southeast LIC” language in the commitment referred to that neighborhood.

Sechrist raised concerns about maintenance funding for both new and existing public spaces, pointing to Dutch Kills Green as an example. DOT representative Joe Patti said the agency currently maintains the space two days a week and is working toward a permanent maintenance agreement.

The Hunters Point Parks Conservancy is receiving a one-time $50,000 grant from the city. Parks said the transfer of funds is being worked out.

Queensbridge

Corinne Woods-Haynes, president of the Queensbridge Houses Tenant Association and co-chair of the task force’s housing committee, urged the public to distinguish between new commitments and investments that were already underway before OneLIC passed.

“We don’t wanna confuse the two,” Haynes said.

NYCHA representative Marissa Mavrich said the agency’s waste plumbing modernization project will cover approximately 525 units over six years, with a detailed cost estimate in development. Renovation of the Queensbridge Resident Association office and improvements to the Jacob Riis Community Center are also in the cost-estimate phase. Relocation of 55 NYCHA parking spaces from Queensbridge Baby Park is in coordination with DOT following a meeting this past Monday.

Arts and Culture

Karisha Batan, chair of the task force’s Arts and Culture Committee and CB2’s arts committee chair, told the crowd that neither of the two arts and culture commitments in the rezoning was actually negotiated as part of OneLIC. Both preexisted the plan.

“This is not enough from the Arts and Culture Committee standpoint,” Batan said. She called on the public to help the committee find creative ways to integrate arts into other commitments, including housing, parks, and schools.

An artist in the audience raised concerns about studio displacement as development comes in. Anne Del Castillo of the Department of Cultural Affairs mentioned the NYC Create in Place program, launched in December 2024, which she said is designed to support artists and cultural organizations at risk of losing space. She offered to meet with the artist after the meeting.

Transportation

DOT’s Joe Patti presented several updates. Alternate side parking under the Queensboro Bridge begins in July, running Thursdays from 8:30 to 10 a.m. A public toilet at Court Square is in siting, and Patti said it will be self-cleaning. The 21st Street intermodal hub at the F train stop is fully funded and in design. A Queens Waterfront Greenway connection between Center Boulevard and Vernon Boulevard is also fully funded.

Relocation of DOT facilities currently operating under the bridge ramps is underway, with site selection expected by end of 2026.

Small Business

Small Business Services representative Rachel Morris said the agency has served more than 100 businesses in Long Island City since November through door-to-door outreach. Applications for the commercial district needs assessment grant closed May 20. An awardee will be announced in the coming weeks.

Laura Rothrock, president of the Long Island City Partnership and chair of the task force’s Small and Industrial Businesses Committee, noted that the $100,000 annual grant for three years is a new commitment, but that the broader SBS services being offered preexisted the rezoning.

At CB2’s June meeting, board members pressed task force planner Paula Crespo on how firm those commitments actually are.

Board member Christine Hunter raised concerns about open space. Most of the open space projected under the OneLIC plan will be privately owned, she said, and she wasn’t aware of any rules governing how that space gets developed or maintained, including whether it would need public restrooms or other standards typical of city parks. Crespo said she wasn’t aware of those questions but would raise them with the planner handling parks and open space.

Board member Kenny Greenberg raised small business protections, saying the commitments don’t go much beyond advising industrial tenants of their rights. Crespo agreed, telling Greenberg the rezoning commitments don’t speak to small business preservation directly.

Two things stand out about this task force setup.

First, the city doesn’t seem to have a standing mechanism for tracking rezoning commitments. Every major rezoning seems to spawn its own bespoke oversight structure, built from scratch, with its own facilitator and its own process. That’s a lot of overhead for something that recurs every time a neighborhood gets rezoned.

Paula Crespo of the Pratt Center said the OneLIC Oversight Task Force is only the second of its kind in New York City. The Gowanus Oversight Taskforce formed after a rezoning in Gowanus, was the first. The task force’s work and commitment updates will be posted publicly at onelictracker.com. The next public meeting is expected at the end of 2026.

Second, having Pratt Center facilitate is a reasonable choice on its face. A neutral third party makes sense. But it also means there’s now another organization in the mix, with its own staff, its own institutional voice, and its own read on what the commitments mean. Crespo’s response to Greenberg, that the commitments “don’t really speak to” small business protections, is a good example. That’s Pratt’s interpretation of what the city agreed to, not the city’s own framing.

Worth watching whether that becomes a point of friction as the task force’s work continues.