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Residents and concerned community members stood three-deep in line on Monday to advocate, along with their elected officials, the rezoning of 28 acres of Western Flushing.

The neighborhood, replete with construction crews and freight trucks, had the distinct air of light industry. Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) and State Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Flushing) saw something very different.

“There hasn’t yet been enough done in Flushing to foster the creation of affordable housing,” Liu said, surrounded by the machinations of industry. “Even with all of this activity, there’s still potential to create affordable housing through zoning and other activities.”

“There’s construction going on, you can hear the pile-drivers and the cranes,” Stavisky agreed. “This is where the action is.”

Saying that “keeping real New Yorkers in New York can be achieved,” Liu, before a silent crowd of supporters, pledged to make sure that working families in the area were able to afford rent in their own communities.

“I think that affordable housing is really critical,” said Christopher Kui, of Asian Americans For Equality. “Flushing is a gateway community for New York City.”

Asian Americans For Equality is heading up a study of Flushing and the surrounding neighborhoods, to determine the viability of mixed-use zoning in the area, and study the environmental factors of having an entire community of affordable housing structures in an area currently only used by light industry.

The mixed-use shopping district of Main Street in Flushing, cited by Liu and Stavisky as a community precedent, was several blocks and a world away in terms of traffic – both pedestrian and automotive. The corner where the announcement was made had even been used as a pile-up point where local plows left snow banks, resulting in a large glacial mass at the middle of the industrial intersection of three streets.

“We’ve been looking at the whole development of Flushing as a gateway community, as a place where new immigrants come to settle, but also more importantly as the traditional middle class family building a community,” Kui said. He said the focus of the AAFE study would be the effort to keep the character of the neighborhood in Western Flushing the same, while still accommodating an influx of new residents.

“I think that everybody in the community has been talking about the need to build affordable housing. There’s been probably about 3,000 to 4,000 units built in the area – hardly any of them are affordable to people who are making 80 percent of the median income.”

Kui said that rezoning the area for mixed use between light industry and residential was a key first step. He insisted that heavy industry is a rarity in the area, and that most of the light industry ties directly in to commercial interests. Ultimately, Kui said, the community will decide how to proceed, using the AAFE study as a blueprint.

“We’re looking in the next couple of weeks, to talk about some of the findings, and then also to get input from the community and property owners,” he said. “The most important part of the study we’re undertaking is going to be the process, as well.”