Seven years ago, left-leaning politicians, including Zohran Mamdani, successfully fought against a plan to bring an Amazon headquarters to Queens.
On Wednesday, the City Council’s land use committee voted to advance a new project on the same site. The project, which overlaps the boundaries of Mr. Mamdani’s assembly district, would make way for 14,700 apartments, a development which Mr. Mamdani has spoken positively about during his mayoral campaign.
The vote signals that the plan is likely to be approved by the full City Council at its next meeting. If approved, it would be the largest neighborhood rezoning in a quarter century based on how many housing units it could create, city officials said.
The plan calls for rezoning about 54 blocks of the broader neighborhood, known as Long Island City, to allow for residential construction. Julie Won, the City Council member who represents the area, said the city had committed to an investment of $1.5 billion in the neighborhood for new schools, park space, upgrades to public housing and more.
The rezoning effort is very different from the Amazon proposal, which included hefty public subsidies for Amazon, one of the biggest and richest companies in the world.
But it also shows how the left has warmed toward development. Most of the new housing units would rent at market rates, and all would be built by private developers.
The rezoning has also become a focal point in a fight over housing-focused ballot measures, which the City Council has opposed.
Those measures would diminish the sway individual council members have over developments in their district; Ms. Won has threatened to kill the rezoning if the city and developers do not meet certain demands.
But the passage of the rezoning by the land use committee also shows, according to the City Council, how the body is perfectly capable of making way for more housing, even without the changes the ballot measures would enact.
At the meeting on Wednesday, Ms. Won said that if voters approve the proposals limiting council members’ influence, it would “make it impossible for me to ever negotiate on behalf of my community ever again to this level.”
Mihir Zaveri covers housing in the New York City region for The Times.
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