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In the face of opposition from longtime residents and local elected officials, College Point is swiftly being remade by builders primed to initiate ambitious development projects before this isolated neighborhood completes its effort to enact more restrictive zoning regulations.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the steps of Borough Hall in June and announced broad support for re-zoning much of Queens, the move took civic activists borough-wide by surprise. But the speech also gave a jolt to developers, who seized on the moment to push ahead with projects that might be limited by down-zoning.

“I think all these developers are going to try get their plans on the board before there are changes in what they can do, because they won’t be able to build as many units,” said Joan Vogt, a College Point watchdog and head of the State Northeast Queens Nature and Historic Preservation Commission. “I don’t doubt that they are trying to get in the door before it closes on them.”

Local anxieties over a rush of development projects moving towards approval ahead of the re-zoning initiative took shape this week, as the Tribune learned of two separate plans to build hundreds of new housing units in College Point.

The first, which will be discussed before a closed-door Community Board 7 committee meeting this week, involves a proposal to transform the three-story Chilton Paint Factory on 15th Avenue into a six-story residential complex with 134 apartments. According to the proposal, the three-story addition, as well as an expansion to the rear of the existing structure, will be built on the roof of the old factory.

“Can you believe that?” asked Vogt. “The building is over 100 years old.”

CB7 District Manager Marilyn Bitterman confirmed details of the Chilton plan, but hesitated to connect it to the rezoning initiative. “The Chilton has been in the works for a while, so it is hard to say what went first the horse or the cart,” she said. “But in other areas, developers are rushing through applications…because of the homeowners wanting zoning reform.”

A second development project, long shelved but once again feared by local activists, involves a multi-acre waterfront site just west of the College Point Yacht Club. Originally intended as an extension of the adjacent Riverview housing development, the project is known as Riverview II and calls for the construction of an additional 225 residential units—mostly three-bedroom apartments—and 284 parking spaces.

According to Vogt, control of the second phase of the Riverview project was recently sold to AVR, a Yonkers-based real estate firm, which took over permits and approvals issues for the project in the 1970s. “This is a different developer, different owner and different plans, so how can they use the permits from 27 years ago? That’s what I’m worried about,” she said.

Other neighborhood activists argue that the entire site of the Riverview II project consists of landfill and industrial toxins dumped off the College Point shoreline for decades and fear that development could destroy vulnerable wetlands ecosystems on the coastal areas.

“There used to be water all the way up in here,” said 27-year College Point resident Rich Susko, a member of the Yacht Club. “They created the new land formation by sinking barges and backfilling the land.”

According to James Cervino, a marine biologist and College Point resident, the landfill features an assortment of toxins and debris buried beneath decades of costal sediment. “If you contaminate that fresh water supply, unearthing and digging down to all these contaminants, you are going to kill the health of this system,” he said.

Cervino became concerned over the Riverview II site after a similar polluted landfill development project, located next to McNeil Park and calling for 86 new homes, earned approval by the State Department of Environmental Conservation last month. Like Riverview II, the McNeil development received initial city authorizations in the 1970s and did not require any further oversight at the local level.

At the McNeil site, state regulators approved the use of thin plastic barrier to separate the future homes built on the landfill from the dangerous toxins below. As Cervino and Susko surveyed the Riverview II site this week, they feared a future of College Point characterized by another vast and tenuous waterfront development—unless the city finds a method for stalling developers.

“You are building on a wetland,” complained Susko. “But the city could care less because they are going to have their tax base.”