Hochul Unveils Plans to Build Housing at Queens Psych Center

Gov. Kathy Hochul has unveiled a plan to redevelop the 58-acres in Eastern Queens occupied by a state-owned healthcare campus including Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.

Under the plan announced by the governor last week, vacant or underutilized buildings on half of the campus will be replaced with 2,873 new homes.

“Creedmoor represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for New Yorkers to reimagine State land and plan for the emerging needs of tomorrow,” Hochul said, in a statement.

Half of the homes will be for-sale units, ranging in size from mid-rise rental buildings and co-ops to semidetached single-family houses. The plans envision 813 units in elevator co-op buildings that will be between six and eight stories tall.

Of the 1,240 rental units in the plan, 377 will be restricted to seniors, 431 will be supportive housing units and 432 will be income-restricted units that will be distributed via a lottery.

The new neighborhood will be served by two major bus lines, with increased bicycle connections to 635-acre Alley Pond Park. Plans call for 14 acres of green space and recreational facilities. There also will be a new school and space for retail.

Empire State Development, the state economic development agency, will begin an environmental review of the project, known as the Creedmoor Community Master Plan, part of an 18-month expedited approval process the get the project ready for construction.

“The potential before us on the Creedmoor campus is limitless, as the new Creedmoor Master Plan boldly outlines,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said, in a statement.

“From thousands of units of housing to historic homeownership opportunities to school seats to community facilities to retail, this plan represents the single largest investment in Eastern Queens in generations,” Richards said.

State health agencies will continue to use more than half of the 125 acres in the healthcare campus, with the redevelopment slated for the southern part that bisects Union Turnpike.

Shortly before World War II, a satellite psychiatric facility for the Brooklyn State Hospital was developed in Eastern Queens on what had been a rifle range. The population of what became Creedmoor peaked at 7,000 in 1959.

In recent decades, as medication shrank the occupation of residential psychiatric facilities, Creedmoor occupants were reduced primarily to its signature high-rise building.