New apartment building dedicated on former parking lot

With the Cross of Christ leading the way, the Trinity Family of Astoria/Long Island City dedicated a new apartment building on what was for many years a parking lot that the church owns. 

Several years ago Trinity entered into a 99-year land lease with Azimuth Development Corp. to develop the property into housing that will bring significant income to the congregation for mission and ministry, as well as help fund major repairs on their main church building, rectory and the school building. 

With a groundbreaking in February of 2019, no one expected the building to be ready for dedication and occupancy so quickly. No one but Matt Katz of CW Realty, who coordinated all of the building.

“Despite the quick construction, this is a solid steel and concrete building and is quite sturdy,” said Pastor Paul Milholland.  He and his husband live across the street from the apartment building and watched the construction site daily, amazed at the work.  “I was like a little kid, enjoying seeing the large machines digging and building.  The house shook when they were digging down for the foundation.”

There are 39 apartments in the building, most at market rate, but 20% in the affordable rate, for which one must enter a lottery with NYC to qualify.  Brokers for the market rate are Nooklyn, and they have already received deposits for 50% of their portion of the apartments.  The size ranges from studio to 3 bedroom.  The building contains a laundry room, community room and a gymnasium for residents.

After the blessing and ribbon cutting, the Trinity Family members and neighbors were led on a tour by the brokers, which included going to the roof.  The view is breathtaking – where one can see the whole NYC skyline from the Hellgate bridge in Astoria Park, to Manhattan and the new skyline of Long Island City.

In addition to the apartment building, Trinity requested and will soon have use of 2 Community rooms (one at street level and one in the basement). Each room is about 1000 square feet, and has 2 ADA compliant bathrooms.  In addition, the street level room has a small kitchen.

“Our desire is to increase our outreach to the Astoria community, as well as having more meeting space for our own growing ministry,” Pastor Paul said.  “In the 9 years I have served as pastor here, we have had to turn down several 12-step groups seeking space as we simply had no room for them.  We look forward to providing safe space for people to engage in conversation and healing.” 

Additionally, the church has 22 parking spaces behind the building for their members who drive to church.