Belt Parkway traffic headaches coming

From the Times Ledger:

The city Department of Transportation has begun a half-billion-dollar rehabilitation project to restore seven bridges on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, which is expected to affect Queens residents significantly.

The Queens Borough Board heard in detail Monday about the massive project, which will renew and rebuild the seven bridges, most of which project officials said “have passed their useful life,” dating back to the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt.

The work began last month and is scheduled to be finished by October 2014. The bridges are at Fresh Creek Basin, Rockaway Parkway, Paerdegat Basin, Mill Basin, Gerritsen Inlet, Nostrand Avenue and Bay Ridge Avenue.

“Although these bridges are located within Brooklyn, construction on them is expected to have a great effect on many Queens residents while work goes on,” said Maura McCarthy, Queens borough commissioner for the DOT.

Bronx tells mosque to keep prayers to themselves

From the Village Voice:

A Bronx mosque that had sought a sound permit to amplify its morning call to prayer has quietly rescinded its application.

But the Jame Masjid mosque's revocation of the proposal didn't hush its neighbors, since the mosque plans to resubmit its request to play the undulating ribbon of Arabic invocation, or adhan, through a loudspeaker during four of five daily prayer times.

Residents called the plan, which was unveiled in October, an imposition on the daily lives of a diverse community. The idea of prayer booming through the streets also touched off cultural resentments.

"When in Rome do as the Romans do," said Gerri Lamb, who lives a quarter mile from the mosque. "If you're not in your own country, in your own culture, then you can't force me to be a part of it"...

The comment, made during a Community Board 9 hearing on the issue (though the proposal was off the table at the moment), seemed to sum up neighborhood tensions. The local advisory board had asked residents to avoid that type of commentary while testifying, but Lamb received uproarious applause.

Bronx tenants sue slumlord

From the Daily News:

Urine in the stairwells. Moldy walls. Leaky pipes. Vermin infestation. Broken elevators.

Tenants at 1380 University Ave. in Highbridge said these are just some of the living conditions they've had to endure for years - and they've had enough.

Together with attorneys from the Urban Justice Center, 47 tenants earlier this week filed suit against their landlord in Bronx Housing Court.

"This landlord is violating tenants' rights on multiple fronts," charged tenants' attorney, Marie Tatro. "These residents live in unsafe conditions without the services they pay for."

The lawsuit alleges landlord University Residence LLC failed to address repeated complaints of broken windows, doors and cracked walls, leaking ceilings, inadequate heat and vermin infestations.

The lawsuit also alleges that after opting out of the city Housing Preservation and Development-run Mitchell Lama program in 1997, the landlord continued receiving millions in tax breaks, charged market rates for apartments that should be rent stabilized, and has illegally converted apartments.

Smoke gets in your eyes near Midville restaurant

From the Times Ledger:

A new restaurant in Middle Village appears to be pleasing diners with its high-end Italian food, but some neighbors are complaining that its old-style wood-burning oven is giving them a face full of soot.

La Bella Cucina opened Sept. 4 at 69-61 Juniper Blvd. South and soon afterward hosted a Republican fund-raising dinner for City Council candidate Tom Ognibene and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Its Web site touts its authentic, brick-oven pizzas.

But neighbor Bernice McCormick told Community Board 5 in October that black smoke pours from the restaurant’s wood-fired oven most of the day, making her eyes burn.

CB 5 District Manager Gary Giordano said he had written to the owner asking her to stop using the oven and contacted the city Department of Environmental Protection, which issued a $400 violation against the restaurant Oct. 14 for odor emissions from the smoke. The restaurant is slated for a hearing on the violation Nov. 30.

“I thought maybe that did some good, but then, like the last two Sundays, it was pretty bad when I passed by,” he said.

A DEP spokeswoman said the agency had received 10 complaints involving the restaurant between September and the beginning of November.

The DEP said it recommended the restaurant either use a different fuel to light the fire in the oven before switching to wood or install a filtering device on the chimney to reduce smoke and odor.

Photo from News Blaze

Jamaica Hospital adds new beds

From the Times Ledger:

Jamaica Hospital has been making progress in its efforts to expand its services to not only handle the void left after Queens lost two major hospitals, but also to serve the influx of patients, the medical center’s administrator said last week.

The hospital completed part of the renovation of its facilities to include 14 new medical surgery beds. The expansion is part of a multimillion-dollar effort to meet the growing needs of patients in southeast Queens who head to the hospital for both urgent and long-term care, according to David P. Rosen, president and chief executive officer of Jamaica Hospital.

The new beds are on the sixth floor of the hospital, at 89-00 Van Wyck Expwy. The floor used to hold three auditoriums, clinical departments and medical offices, according to Rosen.

Those facilities were moved to the hospital’s former nursing and rehabilitation center, Rosen said. Work will continue for the rest of the year and when completed the floor will have a total of 39 beds.

Since the closing of Mary Immaculate and St. John’s hospitals in the spring, other Queens medical facilities have reported great increases in emergency room visits. Jamaica Hospital has seen a 20 percent increase in ER visits, according to Rosen.

Bedbugs invade Access-A-Ride

From the Daily News:

Dozens of irate workers rallied outside a city contractor's office building in Long Island City Wednesday, demanding that management fumigate their workplace after a year-long bedbug infestation.

The bugs have been found in the offices for Access-A-Ride dispatchers on Northern Blvd. since the summer of 2008, but management ignored the problem until a pest-sniffing dog confirmed the cubicles were overrun with the insects, workers charged.

Brooks researches Brooks

From Lost City:

Much had been pretty solidly confirmed by articles Ian had dug up in the archives of the New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle, and other newspapers. The address used to function as Long Island City's City Hall in the late 19th century (when it was not yet part of New York), where the local wily officials, like slippery James Gleason, conducted city business. In 1910, it was purchased by Mssrs. Martin Heilbut and Herman Kleefeld, real estate men. During the next decade, it was referred to by several names, including Kleefeld Hall, Kleefeld's saloon, Kleefeld's Hotel and just plain Hielbut and Kleefeld, until the 1920s, when it began to be referred to as the Court Square Restaurant.

"Just compensation" is just a joke to NY

From the Daily News:

Property owners challenging the condemnation of their homes and businesses for the Atlantic Yards project charged the state is adding insult to injury by lowballing offers for their property.

Chief opponent Daniel Goldstein got a letter offering $510,000 if his three-bedroom Pacific St. condo is taken by eminent domain. He paid $590,000 for it in 2003.

"They're supposed to pay just compensation and there's nothing just about it," he said.

The September letter from the Empire State Development Corp. says the offer "represents the fair market value" of the property.

But some local real estate experts disagreed. "That's way low. That's ridiculous," said Slope Heights Realty broker Tony Atterbury, who added a 1,290-square foot, two-bathroom apartment like Goldstein's could fetch somewhere between $720,000 and $900,000.

Private Flushing development to get federal stimulus money

From the Times Ledger:

Ground is to be broken by March on a tall glass building to be used as a medical center and residential complex in downtown Flushing, according to a designer working on the project, but several elected officials said they had not heard of it until this week.

The Eastern Mirage project is on track to be built with the help of $17 million in tax-exempt stimulus bonds on three plots at 42-31 Union St. between Franklin and Sanford avenues, a fact that is drawing the ire of area politicians and experts who say they were not notified about the plans by city officials or the project’s developer, Flushing-based mortgage broker Fleet Financial Group, Inc.

North Queens Medical Center is a proposed 80,000-square-foot commercial diagnosis and treatment facility that will occupy one portion of the site. The Eastern Mirage Tower portion is slated to have 62 market-rate apartments, 100 apartment hotel rooms, 200 underground parking spaces and nearly 20,000 square feet of community facility space for amenities such as a restaurant and pool, according to Fleet Financial documents.

Janel Patterson, a city Economic Development Corp.spokeswoman, said the residential tower will not benefit from the stimulus money.

The project is controversial in large part because the developer is awaiting $17 million of triple tax-exempt bonds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The EDC’s Capital Resource Corp. will hold a public hearing on the bond issuance Dec. 9.

“It’s a private development, private health care facility, and meanwhile Flushing Hospital and New York Hospital Queens are both struggling for their lives to stay afloat,” said Paul Graziano, a Flushing planning and zoning consultant. “So where’s the $17 million for those?”

Are these free rides really free?

City workers get record number of 'free' rides
By DAVID SEIFMAN, NY Post

Mayor Bloomberg presides over a driven government.

Documents released yesterday by the Office of Payroll Administration in response to a months-old Freedom of Information request show that the number of city workers commuting in their official vehicles matches the record of 2,409 set in 2005.

In 2007, a total of 2,275 of them drove to and from home at taxpayer expense using taxpayer-supplied gas. Back in 2003, there were just 1,547.

Leading the pack, ironically, was the Department of Environmental Protection, with 440 employees getting commuting privileges.

The mayor, who boasts that he's a regular subway rider, has pledged to reduce the city's carbon footprint by 30 percent.

The Buildings Department granted the transit freebie to 230 workers.

The FDNY maintained its perch near the top of the list with 155.

The only cost to most of the commuters is the tax they pay on the value of their free rides.

For most FDNY employees the value is listed at $660. That would put their out-of-pocket cost at about $220 a year -- or less than the price of three monthly MetroCards.

Flushing rapist sought

From Village Voice:

Last Friday around 7 p.m. a young woman entered a building on 31st Road near 23rd Street in Flushing,and was accosted in the elevator by a young man, pictured in this police sketch, who forced her into the stairwell and sexually assaulted and robbed her. He's described as a 18-25 year old Hispanic, about 5'4 with a medium build, and was wearing a blue hoodie at the time. If you have any information as to this man or this incident, NYPD asks you to contact 1-800-577-TIPS(8477), www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or text 274637 (CRIMES), then enter TIP577.

City Council approves College Point police academy

From the Queens Courier:

Thanks to a 42 to 7 vote by the City Council – and a construction contract that has already been awarded – it seems that the new police academy in College Point is on track.

In fact, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Tuesday, November 17 that, “the city [can] move forward on constructing a 21st century police academy to train the next generation of New York’s Finest...we can now break ground on the new building.”

Located at College Point Boulevard and 28th Avenue, the academy is a $1.5 billion project that will consolidate all of the instruction facilities for new police, school safety and traffic enforcement officers, as well as the continuing education of veterans, on its 30-acre campus. It will have 250 classrooms, firing ranges, indoor and outdoor tracks and a tactical training village including a simulated subway station.

Photo from the Times Ledger

LPC scared of City Council

From the NY Times:

Last week the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 6 to 3 to give landmark protection to the 100-year-old B. F. Goodrich tire company building on Broadway just north of 57th Street, but not to a connected building around the corner designed by the same architect at the same time. Some commission members on both sides of that unusual divided vote cried foul, complaining that politics played an inappropriate role.

The vote came after four City Council members signaled that the council might overturn a commission decision to confer landmark designation on the second building because they did not want to jeopardize a hotel tower planned for the site at Broadway and 57th Street. The commission’s chairman, Robert B. Tierney, then recommended a vote against landmark status for both buildings “in light of opposition to this designation from the City Council and certain members of the City Council and the likelihood that that body will overturn any designation.”

Christopher Moore, a commission member who had voted with the majority, said the council should not have been a factor in the commission’s decision.

Mr. Moore said in an interview: “To me, it’s embarrassingly transparent: ‘We’re not going to do this because the City Council has already notified us they’re going to veto it.’ We let the world know. The friction between the commission and its role and the City Council and its role needs to be exposed. My request is we don’t do this again.”

Queens College Muslims cause controversy

From the NY Post:

A controversial imam who authorities have called an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing is scheduled to speak tonight to a Muslim student group at Queens College on the subject "How Islam Perfected Thanksgiving."

The appearance by Brooklyn mosque imam Siraj Wahhaj - who also testified for convicted terror plotter "blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman - and a recent nasty verbal altercation involving members of the Muslim Student Association that invited him, has spurred some other students to demand that Queens College cut off funding for that group.

Professor Tim Rosen said that at a screening of the anti-radical Muslim film "Fitna" two weeks ago, a MSA member was "laughing" and muttered "good" during footage showing American businessman Nicholas Berg being beheaded by terrorists in Iraq, and that the student was "giggling and saying 'good' " during footage of planes hitting the Twin Towers.

At a raucous post-screening debate with Queens College Republicans, who hosted the film, an MSA member said, "If I had enough money I would be part of the jihad army, I would kill all the Jews," recalled College Republicans treasurer Eli Karl.

"He said, 'When I get enough money, I'm going to do some pretty bad things . . . and he talked about getting a bomb," recalled Karl, who now supports de-funding MSA.

Girdusky said a female member of MSA "said something like, 'How could you show something like this [the movie] when we get attacked for denying the Holocaust? ' "

The MSA did not respond to requests for comment.

Astoria, LIC outpacing city's growth

From Crain's:

Housing flourished in the westernmost part of Queens, as it did in few other areas of the city from 2002 to 2008, according to a new economic snapshot of the neighborhoods of Long Island City and Astoria by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The size of the area's housing stock rose by about 4.8%, faster than the citywide growth of 3.6% during the six-year period, the report said, citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing and Vacancy Survey. According to the report, a total of 3,640 apartment units were added during that time in the two communities, which it calls “one of the few remaining manufacturing enclaves in the city.”

Despite all the new development, 82% of the area's housing is rental apartments, according to the comptroller's report. Two-thirds of the rental units are rent-regulated and the rest are market-rate. For the six-year period, median rent for rent regulated apartments increased 27% to $916 a month, which is less than the citywide median $850 a month. The median rent for market-rate housing rose 37% to $1,357, higher than the citywide and Queens medians of $1,200.

And they wonder why they had a blackout.

Elmhurst Hospital sign has hidden meaning

From the NY Times:

It shined briefly as a strange beacon of commiseration: the hospital sign that declared in large neon lights something that looks a lot like, “I’m hurt.”

Now the Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, where the sign marks the entrance to the emergency room, has decided to cut power to the sign until it is repaired, probably next week, a hospital spokesman said.

“It’s too much attention that wasn’t intended and is not needed,” said Dario Centorcelli, the spokesman. “It will be fixed.’

The strange message was the result of the neon bulbs in two letters in the hospital name burning out — the “E” and “S” — prompting passers-by to find hidden meaning in the surviving text “lmhur t.”

DOT offers such a bargain!

From the Times Newsweekly:

In announcing the Expedited Sidewalk Repair Program last Tuesday, Oct. 27, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan indicated that expediting sidewalk repairs around Queens would help eliminate safety hazards while improving the quality of life for residents. The new sidewalks, it was noted, would also decrease the liability faced by homeowners in the event someone sues them after being injured by a damaged sidewalk in front of their residence.

Under the expedited repair program, property owners may request a DOT contractor to make the improvements at a cost of between $11 and $13 per square foot, which is higher than the current rate charged by the DOT (between $8 and $9 per square foot).

Based on the average 200 square feet of sidewalk adjacent to a typical one-family home in Queens, homeowners could be charged anywhere between $2,200 and $2,600 if it is determined entire pathway must be repaired.

It was noted that certain areas of Queens—the confines of Community Boards 8 (Fresh Meadows, Jamaica Estates, Holliswood, Flushing South, Utopia, Kew Gardens Hills, Briarwood), 9 (Ozone Park, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill, Howard Beach) and 11 (Bayside, Douglaston, Little Neck, Auburndale, East Flushing, Oakland Gardens, Hollis Hills)—are ineligible since the DOT currently has sidewalk repair contracts underway in each district.

Properties with four or more residential units are also not eligible, as are locations scheduled for capital reconstruction, vaulted properties and sidewalks with distinctive features such as bluestone (slate), granite or decorative pavement.

The program runs through November 2010. For more information, or to file a request for repairs, call 311 or visit www.nyc.gov/dot. The DOT website also has a list of contractors licensed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs to perform sidewalk improvements.

4 NYC Fire Officers Disciplined over Inspections

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Four New York City fire officers are being disciplined for failing to properly inspect buildings.

Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said Tuesday that the two fire captains and two fire lieutenants did not spend the required three hours inspecting buildings in their areas.

Fire Department units are required to spend three hours inspecting buildings on each of three different days each week.

The inspections have taken on added urgency since two firefighters died at the former Deutsche Bank building near ground zero in 2007.

The officers were fined either five or 10 days' pay and assigned to work at headquarters.

Al Hagan, the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, said fire officers need more training in how to perform the inspections.

Rezone not soon enough for Norwood Gardens

From the Daily News:

First, the good news for Astoria: The city is close to unveiling a zoning plan that will prevent tall buildings from sprouting on streets lined with one- and two-family homes.

Now the bad news: That zoning may not be approved in time to prevent the construction of a 10-story building in the middle of Norwood Gardens, a leafy enclave of smaller homes along 36th St.

"This is a beautiful block with unique architecture and a special ambiance, which this new zoning will protect," said City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. "Unfortunately, some people are trying to rush projects in before it happens."

Neighborhood residents said the developer has filed plans to build an apartment building that could reach 10 stories and include eight to 10 units.

Neighbors are also concerned about the area's utilities and services being stretched even thinner than they are now.

Volunteers needed to help save NYS Pavilion

From HDC Newsstand:

Although the Fair buildings were intended as temporary, 1965 plans for creating Flushing Meadows-Corona Park identified the Pavilion for preservation and reuse. While the Theaterama was later successfully renovated as a community theater, the remaining complex is closed and derelict. Today the Tent is used for storage, and the Road Map is in an advanced state of deterioration from weathering, vandalism, and past inappropriate recreational uses.

We’re looking for 12-40 volunteers to help out onsite on SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21ST AND SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, performing a range of activities from removal of invasive vegetation, to the careful and systematic collection and bagging of map fragments that have been dislodged from the floor of the Pavilion. Instruction would be given to the volunteers on how to go about collecting the fragments before any work would begin. We’re looking for volunteers who are responsible, pay close attention to detail, and can follow instructions. Given the historical nature of the work, a certain degree of sensitivity is required. Everyday more of the famous map disappears, making the proposed conservation work critical.

Volunteers should meet at the New York State Pavilion in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, by 9 a.m. All friends, family, co-workers and associates are welcome. There is a lot of work to be done and many volunteers are needed so please feel free to forward to others whom you think might be interested.

NYC hemorrhaging communications jobs

From Fox 5:

The New York City comptroller's office says the city has lost nearly 60,000 communications jobs since 2000, including in publishing and broadcasting.

New York City accounts for about 19 percent of national employment in the communications sector.

The city lost 44,500 communications jobs from 2000 to 2007, and has since lost another 15,100 jobs.

Too little, too late

From the Sunnyside Post:

Two employees of the NYC Buildings Department were handing out fliers at the 46th Subway stop yesterday, trying to alert residents to the dangers of illegal apartments.

The flier warns residents that if the live in an attic or a cellar they might be living in an illegal apartment. It also warns against dwelling units that have just one way to get in and out.

Seeking the "Flushing Pimp"