The applicant for the Bay Terrace Country Club site in Bayside presented a proposal to rezone an R12‑zoned parcel on 20 Fourth Avenue in Queens Community District 11 to an R6A contextual district and to designate the area as a Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) area (options 1 and 2, with the applicant favoring option 2).

Frank Sanjak of Ackerman LLP presented the site and proposed development on behalf of the applicant BMBT LLC. He said the single tax lot is approximately 55,375 square feet and that the rezoning would enable an eight‑story building totaling about 217,000 square feet of floor area (roughly 160,000 square feet residential) with about 183 apartments (128 market rate; 55 permanently income‑restricted under MIH option 2), about 65 assisted‑living/senior units, roughly 56,000 square feet of community facility space on the first and second floors, and an 86‑space cellar parking garage. The applicant said the building would be all‑electric and that MIH option 2 would produce more permanently affordable units than option 1 for this site.

Community opposition at the borough hearing was large and vocal. Paul DeBenedetto, chair of Community Board 11, told the hearing CB11 had unanimously voted to oppose the project at both committee and full‑board hearings; he said more than 500 residents attended the CB11 hearing and none spoke in favor. Residents and civic representatives raised multiple concerns: the site lies within or adjacent to a mapped floodplain (the applicant uses the 2015 flood map as the regulatory baseline and said Appendix G of the building code would apply), projections show sea‑level rise and floodplain encroachment by mid‑century, and neighbors said groundwater/underground streams and past flooding have caused persistent basement and parking lot inundation. Witnesses provided photographs to the community board showing prior flooding. Several speakers said the parcel is adjacent to a new elementary school under construction that will serve about 572 students, and they said both traffic and drop‑off/pick‑up activity could overwhelm a single dead‑end access street (20 Fourth Avenue), creating congestion and emergency‑vehicle access concerns.

Speakers from the Bayside community stressed the area's low‑density character south of 20 Fourth Avenue (zoned R1‑2/R12 historically) and said the proposed eight‑story building would be out of scale, shadow nearby homes, and establish an unfavorable upzoning precedent. Multiple speakers urged the borough president to join Councilmember Vicki Paladino and Assemblymember Braunstein in opposing the rezoning; community members said CB11 had asked the borough president to oppose the project.

Applicant representatives told the borough president's office the senior housing component was part of the design but that the team remained open to converting the community facility / senior program into additional residential units; they said no senior housing provider had been selected and that the environmental assessment statement (EAS) conservatively modeled an entirely residential building, so a program change would not expand the scope of environmental review. On flood risk, the applicant noted that the 2015 regulatory flood map touches the site edge and that full compliance with Appendix G of the NYC Building Code would be required (non‑habitable below‑grade space, floodproofing measures for below‑grade areas, elevation and resilient building systems). The applicant also said they had discussed traffic and other concerns and would continue technical review during permitting.

After more than a dozen members of the public testified in opposition, the borough president's staff closed the item. No zoning determination was made at the hearing. Community Board 11's unanimous opposition was recorded on the public record and several speakers asked the borough president to formally recommend against approval when the application proceeds through City Planning and ULURP.