Beach 87th St. Owner Seeks Rezoning for 10-Story Rockaway Tower

A limited liability company has applied to the city to rezone a vacant lot at 2-28 Beach 87th Street in Rockaway Beach, Queens, seeking room for a 10-story residential building on a stretch of the peninsula still zoned for low-rise housing. The application, filed with the Department of City Planning’s Zoning Application Portal as project 2024Q0325, names Beach 87th Street Associates, LLC as the applicant, with Richard Lobel listed as the primary contact. The filing does not name any other individual as applicant.

Why it matters

The request is a zoning map amendment from R4-1 to R7A, paired with a zoning text amendment mapping the site into Appendix F for Mandatory Inclusionary Housing. That combination is the standard route Queens sponsors use to trade density for affordable units on sites too small for a full rezoning study area. The lot sits in a FEMA-mapped flood zone, per the city’s own project record, which will shape the building’s foundation and insurance costs regardless of how the zoning case resolves. For developers watching Rockaway Beach, a successful case would be a rare data point on how much density Community District 14 will accept this cycle.

The numbers

The plan as filed calls for 70 dwelling units, 18 of them income-restricted under Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, spread across 46,000 square feet of residential space with 3,800 square feet of open space. The Department of City Planning logged the application under CEQR number 26DCP106Q and Waterfront Revitalization Program number 24-146. The city noticed the application on August 7, 2026, and certified it for public review on September 23, 2026.

What’s next

The project’s public status is listed as “In Public Review,” meaning Community Board 14, the City Planning Commission and the City Council still have to weigh in through the ULURP process before anything is approved. No vote has occurred and the application could be modified or withdrawn before it reaches the Council. Other Queens and Staten Island sponsors are running the same rezone-for-density playbook this fall, including a Staten Island North Shore rezoning case now before the Council. More on the borough’s pending land use cases is tracked on the New York market hub.