About Paul Graziano
Paul Graziano, a life-long resident of North Flushing, is the son of two CUNY professors, attended PS 21, the Louis Armstrong Middle School and the Bronx High School of Science. After attending college at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Graziano came home in 1993 to find that disturbing changes had occurred in his home town. Downtown was becoming increasingly crowded and dirty; the Whitestone Expressway had tons of traffic; beautiful homes throughout Flushing and the rest of northeast Queens were being torn down for shabby speculative development and McMansions; and the general quality-of-life of our neighborhoods was clearly being affected.
Graziano's early and continuous involvement in the civic world resulted in the founding or assistance in creating of a number of civic associations in areas of Queens that had been lacking, including the North Flushing Civic Association, Northeast Flushing Civic Association (NEFCA) and Station Road Civic Association in the 19th Council District. At various times he has been the Zoning, Land Use and Landmarking Chair for the Queens Civic Congress, an umbrella organization representing over 110 civic and homeowners associations in Queens. Graziano was also the President of the Historic Districts Council, the grassroots advocates for New York City's historic neighborhoods, from 2007 to 2009.
To this end, Graziano has spent the last two decades organizing residents throughout northeast Queens to stop the destructive speculative development occurring in their neighborhoods, and been committed to using his expertise - which led to completing a Masters of Science in Urban Affairs and Planning degree from Hunter College - and background in planning, zoning, environmental and historical research, and economic development strategies to create novel approaches in protecting neighborhoods from overdevelopment.
One of Graziano's first major preservation victories was the protection of Fort Totten, which had been slated to be given away to developers and St. John's University for the creation of a private, gated college campus. Graziano and a half-dozen other tenacious activists created the Fort Totten Conservancy, supported by thousands of local residents in Whitestone and Bayside, and were the only group to put in a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a public park and historic district for the entire peninsula. After a political firestorm over questionable actions taken by the Commanding Officer in favor of St. John's, the New York City Police and Fire Departments partnered with the Fort Totten Conservancy. This resulted in Fort Totten permanently being open to the public as a park and historic district for generations to come.
After working for six years in New Jersey as a consultant at Mayo, Lynch & Associates - an architectural, engineering and urban planning firm - specializing in writing Master Planning reports; assisting towns in reviewing variance and zoning requests; facade restoration and streetscape improvement programs in distressed downtowns throughout New Jersey; and Public Schools facilities restoration and renovation, Graziano co-founded his own company, Associated Cultural Resource Consultants (ACRC) and became sole proprietor in 2009. ACRC authored the Broadway-Flushing National Register of Historic Places Nomination Report, which placed 1,330 buildings on the National and State Register of Historic Places in 2004. ACRC also authored a Cultural Resource Report for the Douglaston Historic District Extension in 2008, a portion of which was calendared by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Outside of New York City, ACRC surveyed entire towns in Suffolk and Westchester counties in New York State and Fairfield County in Connecticut and helped create numerous historic districts and designate individual buildings as landmarks, including 750 houses in the Eastside Historic District in Paterson, New Jersey and the 200-year-old Abel Bradley Farmhouse in Westport, Connecticut, always focusing on sensible development and the preservation of important neighborhoods throughout the New York City metropolitan region.
From 2003 to 2009, Graziano also worked as a consultant to then-Councilmember and Zoning Committee Chair Tony Avella, surveying every property in the 19th Council District and creating a Master Plan for zoning, historic preservation, open space and commercial corridors. From this study, Graziano co-designed the groundbreaking Bayside, College Point, Whitestone, Douglaston/Little Neck, North Flushing and Auburndale rezonings with representative civic associations, Community Boards 7 and 11, the Department of City Planning and now-State Senator Avella and co-authored their most important component: the R2A (and later, R1-2A) anti-McMansion zone, now mapped solely throughout northeast and southeast Queens. The rezonings have resulted in helping to stop overdevelopment throughout the 19th Council District by fixing the "mismatch" that encouraged speculative developers to buy perfectly solid houses, tear them down and build out-of-context multifamily housing or, in the case of the R2A and R1-2A zones, stop a single-family house from becoming three times the size of every other building on the same street. Additionally, Graziano continued to assist Senator Avella in land use, zoning and preservation issues as a Special Assistant from 2011 until January 2013.
Since 2013, Graziano has been involved in successfully stopping a number of potentially damaging developments in the 19th Council District, including halting the proposed demolition of the Reception House and replacing it with a large-scale commercial development; stopping an 800-student high school from being built at the former Bayside Jewish Center (now the new home of the Korean Community Services Center); and making sure that the former Bayrock property in Whitestone is cleaned up correctly and developed only with detached single-family houses and a waterfront park. Graziano was also a plaintiff in the recently successful and critically important lawsuit against the Queens Development Group, who wanted to steal 45 acres of public parkland in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to build a megamall.
Either as a consultant or a volunteer, Graziano has designed, co-authored or assisted in more than 80% of the rezoning proposals that have been completed in Queens County; with the exception of the Jamaica Plan where he was retained to (successfully) lower the proposed maximum height of buildings on Hillside Avenue, every one of the rezonings was contextual, focusing on protecting and preserving the existing physical scale and substance of a particular neighborhood rather than promote unbridled out-of-context development, which the previous zoning encouraged. As a result, over 100,000 properties in Queens, or more than 40% of the entire borough, have been contextually rezoned. Within the 19th Council District, it is close to 85%, with only Bay Terrace in need of a neighborhood-wide contextual rezoning.
Among many items, Graziano assisted the Douglaston-Little Neck Historical Society in the successful creation of the Douglaston Hill Historic District; assisted the Douglaston Civic Association in the halting of a proposed 7-story apartment building Board of Standards and Appeals variance at the corner of Douglaston Parkway and Northern Boulevard; stopped the imminent development of a large contaminated waterfront site in College Point before it was properly cleaned up by the developer; consulted for the Bayside Historical Society for strategic planning as well as the creation of educational and historical programming; helped forge a compromise between the Station Road Civic Assocation and a Korean Church located within their civic area for a new religious facility design; and helped rally the College Point and Whitestone communities to stop the proposed industrial "Tradeport" at the former Flushing Airport site and demand that only light recreation, wetlands and a public park were acceptable to the residents of northeast Queens.
Graziano's early and continuous involvement in the civic world resulted in the founding or assistance in creating of a number of civic associations in areas of Queens that had been lacking, including the North Flushing Civic Association, Northeast Flushing Civic Association (NEFCA) and Station Road Civic Association in the 19th Council District. At various times he has been the Zoning, Land Use and Landmarking Chair for the Queens Civic Congress, an umbrella organization representing over 110 civic and homeowners associations in Queens. Graziano was also the President of the Historic Districts Council, the grassroots advocates for New York City's historic neighborhoods, from 2007 to 2009.
To this end, Graziano has spent the last two decades organizing residents throughout northeast Queens to stop the destructive speculative development occurring in their neighborhoods, and been committed to using his expertise - which led to completing a Masters of Science in Urban Affairs and Planning degree from Hunter College - and background in planning, zoning, environmental and historical research, and economic development strategies to create novel approaches in protecting neighborhoods from overdevelopment.
One of Graziano's first major preservation victories was the protection of Fort Totten, which had been slated to be given away to developers and St. John's University for the creation of a private, gated college campus. Graziano and a half-dozen other tenacious activists created the Fort Totten Conservancy, supported by thousands of local residents in Whitestone and Bayside, and were the only group to put in a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a public park and historic district for the entire peninsula. After a political firestorm over questionable actions taken by the Commanding Officer in favor of St. John's, the New York City Police and Fire Departments partnered with the Fort Totten Conservancy. This resulted in Fort Totten permanently being open to the public as a park and historic district for generations to come.
After working for six years in New Jersey as a consultant at Mayo, Lynch & Associates - an architectural, engineering and urban planning firm - specializing in writing Master Planning reports; assisting towns in reviewing variance and zoning requests; facade restoration and streetscape improvement programs in distressed downtowns throughout New Jersey; and Public Schools facilities restoration and renovation, Graziano co-founded his own company, Associated Cultural Resource Consultants (ACRC) and became sole proprietor in 2009. ACRC authored the Broadway-Flushing National Register of Historic Places Nomination Report, which placed 1,330 buildings on the National and State Register of Historic Places in 2004. ACRC also authored a Cultural Resource Report for the Douglaston Historic District Extension in 2008, a portion of which was calendared by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Outside of New York City, ACRC surveyed entire towns in Suffolk and Westchester counties in New York State and Fairfield County in Connecticut and helped create numerous historic districts and designate individual buildings as landmarks, including 750 houses in the Eastside Historic District in Paterson, New Jersey and the 200-year-old Abel Bradley Farmhouse in Westport, Connecticut, always focusing on sensible development and the preservation of important neighborhoods throughout the New York City metropolitan region.
From 2003 to 2009, Graziano also worked as a consultant to then-Councilmember and Zoning Committee Chair Tony Avella, surveying every property in the 19th Council District and creating a Master Plan for zoning, historic preservation, open space and commercial corridors. From this study, Graziano co-designed the groundbreaking Bayside, College Point, Whitestone, Douglaston/Little Neck, North Flushing and Auburndale rezonings with representative civic associations, Community Boards 7 and 11, the Department of City Planning and now-State Senator Avella and co-authored their most important component: the R2A (and later, R1-2A) anti-McMansion zone, now mapped solely throughout northeast and southeast Queens. The rezonings have resulted in helping to stop overdevelopment throughout the 19th Council District by fixing the "mismatch" that encouraged speculative developers to buy perfectly solid houses, tear them down and build out-of-context multifamily housing or, in the case of the R2A and R1-2A zones, stop a single-family house from becoming three times the size of every other building on the same street. Additionally, Graziano continued to assist Senator Avella in land use, zoning and preservation issues as a Special Assistant from 2011 until January 2013.
Since 2013, Graziano has been involved in successfully stopping a number of potentially damaging developments in the 19th Council District, including halting the proposed demolition of the Reception House and replacing it with a large-scale commercial development; stopping an 800-student high school from being built at the former Bayside Jewish Center (now the new home of the Korean Community Services Center); and making sure that the former Bayrock property in Whitestone is cleaned up correctly and developed only with detached single-family houses and a waterfront park. Graziano was also a plaintiff in the recently successful and critically important lawsuit against the Queens Development Group, who wanted to steal 45 acres of public parkland in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to build a megamall.
Either as a consultant or a volunteer, Graziano has designed, co-authored or assisted in more than 80% of the rezoning proposals that have been completed in Queens County; with the exception of the Jamaica Plan where he was retained to (successfully) lower the proposed maximum height of buildings on Hillside Avenue, every one of the rezonings was contextual, focusing on protecting and preserving the existing physical scale and substance of a particular neighborhood rather than promote unbridled out-of-context development, which the previous zoning encouraged. As a result, over 100,000 properties in Queens, or more than 40% of the entire borough, have been contextually rezoned. Within the 19th Council District, it is close to 85%, with only Bay Terrace in need of a neighborhood-wide contextual rezoning.
Among many items, Graziano assisted the Douglaston-Little Neck Historical Society in the successful creation of the Douglaston Hill Historic District; assisted the Douglaston Civic Association in the halting of a proposed 7-story apartment building Board of Standards and Appeals variance at the corner of Douglaston Parkway and Northern Boulevard; stopped the imminent development of a large contaminated waterfront site in College Point before it was properly cleaned up by the developer; consulted for the Bayside Historical Society for strategic planning as well as the creation of educational and historical programming; helped forge a compromise between the Station Road Civic Assocation and a Korean Church located within their civic area for a new religious facility design; and helped rally the College Point and Whitestone communities to stop the proposed industrial "Tradeport" at the former Flushing Airport site and demand that only light recreation, wetlands and a public park were acceptable to the residents of northeast Queens.