Isn't all this building just great!Here's a special issue of the Queens Courier dedicated to promoting the overdevelopment of our borough.
Queens Is Booming
Building for the future of Queens
Notice how there are no people telling the "other side" of the story - those asking for downzoning, infrastructure improvements, questioning the availability of affordable housing or the wisdom of building on the waterfront when we are one Category 4 hurricane away from disaster.
The other QC likes Atlas Park and Queens West so much, they printed them twice!
Check out these other "news" stories:
Luxurious living at Novo 64 in Forest Hills
Luxurious townhomes nestled along the Waterfront
Skyline Commons - a life-care community
Riverview’s artistic apartments
Vantage Properties - Quality housing at affordable prices
Great work, Vick & company.
43 comments:
Why is it that your blog, which is very good at documenting development and related activities in Queens, takes such an obvious slant towards dislike of all development. Are you not happy that people WANT to be in queens? Are you disappointed that the people moving here are hiring your painters, your roofers, your plumbers to fix their new places. Does it tick you off that bad that they buy their cars from Queens dealers or purchase their groceries from Queens retailers?
Or is it that you are not watching the stock market and the foreclosure boom which is threatening other communities around the country.
Your blog is good, but the webmasasters constant glass half full view which parades development as the work of the devil in all instances, regardless of the who, what or why is getting old.
Brooklyn Papers did something like this earlier this summer - the insert was "Brooklyn Today!" with a shiny color rendering of the Gehry monstrosity.
The woman is selling editorial content. A very slippery slope. basically, she's working as a pimp whoring her reporters.
"Or is it that you are not watching the stock market and the foreclosure boom which is threatening other communities around the country."
Perhaps you are not watching the foreclosure boom which is threatening Queens. It has been documented thoroughly on this blog.
"Are you not happy that people WANT to be in queens?"
I want to be in Queens. I'd also like affordable electricity, water, schools for my kids, roads that aren't congested 24/7 (but only Manhattan roads are important) and all the building is not helping me have these simple things without a problem.
None of the new people coming here WANT to be in Queens. They end up here because they can't afford Manhattan or even Brooklyn at this point.
Yes, and since they don't want to be here, they don't really care how they leave it looking. It's not where they plan to stay. Why not do a story on that, Vicky?
I would love to purchase my groceries from Queens retailers, however, the supermarkets in my neighborhood are all closing. So much for all the new people revitalizing business in the area.
Queens has the highest foreclosure rate in the city. Subprime lending brought many people here. Now these people can't afford to patronize Queens car dealerships, supermarkets, painters, roofers and plumbers.
The Queens Courier is an example of why local newspapers are a joke. Not one voice critical of the luxury condos is included in the stories. It's all propaganda.
Most Queens residents are unable to afford the Novo64 apartments, with their zen garden, shuttle buses, and fitness center.
How many more condo towers does Forest Hills need? Look at the long lines for the Q23 bus and the crowded conditions inside the Continental Avenue subway station.
Hey Crapper, you're one sided, so isn't it hypocritical when you scold others for being one-sided?
Just because they're on the other side of the argument doesn't mean it's wrong.
I'm not an objective source of information. A newspaper is supposed to be.
Anonymous #1 is right on. These developments are tremendously advantageous for Queens. They bring business, shopping options, and restaurants, they are improving areas that are dumpy, blighted or neglected, they enhance quality of life, and they enhance Queens' reputation. Thankfully, the complainers on this blog are a small minority. It's a shame, because the things these complainers should be focused on - cheap, low quality development - gets lost in all the inane complaints. These people would rather have Queens look like Chemung County rather than an exciting part of New York City.
Also, while Queens did have a slightly higher foreclosure rate than other boroughs in the past quarter, it is still by far one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the entire country.
"The complainers on this blog" is a tired phrase. Please come up with something more interesting.
"The complainers on this blog are a small minority?" Have you ever actually SPOKEN with people who live in Queens? You wouldn't be saying something like that if you had. How about commissioning a poll and asking Queens residents:
1) Is there too much, not enough or the right amount of development in your borough?
2) Are services adequate or inadequate?
3) We have too many, not enough or just the right amount of people living here?
"The more the merrier."
"they are improving areas that are dumpy, blighted or neglected"
Hey jerk, stop by my block sometime. Some of the boys would like to have a little talk with you about those words.
Its easy to say things like that in a blog, wussie. Now go into a bar where people are getting squeezed out of their community by you developers and say those things.
Go ahead big boy, lets see what you are made of.
Bottom line is you're against ALL development and expect Queens to be frozen in time. It doesn't work that way, you have to expect the biggest city in the country to just get bigger with time. How is that done? With more density.
The article also mentions how the unemployment rate has plummeted and blighted areas have been replaced with jobs and such. Isn't any of this good?
I will stand up and agree with you that a lot of construction isn't worthy of New Delhi let alone NYC, but stopping development is short-sighted and not the answer. We need the housing and jobs.
I'm sure back when you're houses were built people lamented the loss of farming and agriculture. Or when the first highway or subway was built, people might have wanted it to stay "rural." NY is an everchanging city and you just have to embrace it.
"you have to expect the biggest city in the country to just get bigger with time. How is that done? With more density."
Wow, and how is more density supposed to be sustained without basic service increases?
1 million LESS people by 2030!
Please tell me which projects in this article are so horrible. SilverCup West? Looks great to me. Atlas Park? Highly successful and the community by and large loves it. Citi Field? Seems like a good thing. I don't live in Flushing, but those developments seem pretty good. Willets Point? Cleaning that up and building it up will be a major improvement. Queens West? It is a great transition for an area that lost its industrial usage and is in a prime location.
I agree with the person above. New York City has always evolved, grown and aimed to get bigger and better. Why would you live here and expect something different?
If you think Atlas Park is "highly successful" then there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell you. (They were crying for help earlier this year - 'we're DYING over here') Also, please explain the wisdom of unbridled growth in areas that don't have the infrastructure to support it. The LIC waterfront converting from manufacturing to residential was not necessarily a bad thing. But was it right to replace factories with high-rises in a neighborhood that was low-rise and low key? Hardly.
"New York City has always evolved, grown and aimed to get bigger and better."
Population NYC 1940: 7,454,995
Population NYC 2005: 8,143,197
Net gain over 65 years: 688,202
Why 1 million more by 2030 (only 23 years)? Somehow we've remained the largest and greatest city in the world without the promotion of unchecked growth in past years.
"But was it right to replace factories with high-rises in a neighborhood that was low-rise and low key?"
Of course it was. Yuppies wanted it.
" Are you not happy that people WANT to be in queens? "
I am happy when my services go up, not down.
I am happy when I pay less taxes and have more money for my family.
I am happy when a politician talks about stuff that is important to me.
Why should I be happy when there is more people? What does that do for me but drive up rents and services and drive down quality of life? What planet do you come from?
" It doesn't work that way, you have to expect the biggest city in the country to just get bigger with time. "
Huh? What? Where did this guy get this secret knowledge? He claims to have the proof on how things work and knows what to expect for the biggest city?
What the hell are you doing on this blog, mister! You should go out there and share this insight with the world!
BTW, how many books have you written? What is the last title? Surely we did not get insight to the world over a frappe at Omonia?
"Please tell me which projects in this article are so horrible. SilverCup West? Looks great to me."
First, it is a Suna Equity project, with nothing to do with wholesome bread or a film studio as a minor part of a private land grab of members of the Suna family who are going to exclude the community from its own public waterfront.
How about the traffic study that just said one stoplight had to be adjusted to accommodate the 1000s?
How about putting Queensbridge into a permanent shadow and reflecting all the noise at them?
How about the parking garage wall a street level, all that the community will see of its own waterfont?
How about that racist off site exclusion of 'affordable housing' the only opportunity people from the community have a chance to enjoy their own waterfront?
How about plopping a number of 40 story buildings in the middle of a sick power grid?
How about the balconies of its highrises just about the same height as the chimneys at Big Allis just a few blocks away?
How about the job creation project that are temporary construction and highly skilled with almost no employment for the community?
How about the energy wasting out of scale SILVERCUP sign that will visually mar our waterfront?
How about that 40 foot wide public access? A real substitution for a park, eh?
We can go on. But the point is that a monster like that can only go up in Queens, specifically at CB1 & CB2. This would be laughed out of Manhattan or even Brooklyn.
How about getting swamped in the next big hurricane to hit NY?
Idiot.... "1st poster"......
Queens is at the HEAD of the FORECLOSURE BOOM in NYC because all of those people with Champagne taste and (it appears) beer bankrolls can't keep up with their payments on all that overpriced over-development that's supposed to be good for our borough!
Get your head out of your duffle bag !
Vicki has an over-developed "imagination" !
What an ancient Baysider she is .....using an out of date photo at the head of her personal "news" column each week !
What do you really look like nowadays.....eh Victoria ?
She's living in the past like a fly in amber with the rest of those Bay Club "babes" thinking that they're spring chickens and that Bayside is their own La La Land!
Shades of Norma Desmond ("Sunset Boulevard") !!!
Yeah.....if Ruppert Murdoch bought "The Courier".....that would even be an improvement !
Vicki who constantly uses her weekly rag
to pimp for over development in Queens
has become the
"developers' diva"......the "builders' bitch" !
Hey Columbia journalism students: always looking for stories: there must be a dozen of them right here.
New York City population growth stagnated in the 70s and 80s and the city was worse off for it. From 1910 to 1930 population went from 4.8 million to 6.9 million - 44% growth. From 1920 to 1950 it went from 5.6 million to 7.9 million (41% growth). In Queens, from 1910 to 1930 population grew from 284 thousand to 1 million (352% growth!). From 1930 to 1950 it went from 1 million to 1.55 million, and then in 1970 to 2 million. When growth stagnated after that, the quality of life in NYC also deteriorated. New York is now as exciting and popular as ever and I am glad that certain areas of Queens are transforming for the better as part of this process.
"I am glad that certain areas of Queens are transforming for the better as part of this process."
When are you starting your tours of Elmhurst, Main Street, Steinway Street, and Jamaica Ave.
I want a bunch of people on the bus that remembers those areas in the 60s.
Nitwit.
Hey, doofus, Queens and the Bronx were empty in 1910. Growth stopped because the city got filled up.
Hell, places like Boston and S F which were developed fully 100 years ago are considered the among the best places to live.
Rome, Paris, London are old and lovely.
Lagos, Mexico City, and Nairobi are rapidly expanding and are, well, ....
Lets just say that the new direction of development in Queens looks towards the last three than the first three.
Come to think of it, the prodevelopment crowd as a whole doesn't live here and have to cope with the breakdown of communities and services. Our homes and neighborhoods are just a place for them to milk the cow and make money.
I'd take Old Astoria in 1976 over what it is today in a heartbeat.
A friend of mine lives in College Point and several times a week a group of us go for “walks” around her neighborhood, just for exercise. We always pass the Soundview Pointe development on our way to the park. We are amazed at how fast these units are going up. Recently we stopped in at the sales office. Not only were we shocked at the prices ($980,000 to $1.2 Million); we were shocked at the amount of new households coming into this already congested area. There will be eighty-six two family units with the usual walk-in basement. In reality, these will be three family units. Two hundred and fifty-eight new households will be in College Point area.
The brochure is impressive. It states, “The residents will have their own “shuttle” service to the Main Street subway station”. However, it does not mention that each household will have at least one car, on average, and each unit has only a one-car garage. I hope all of the excess cars stay inside the gated community while the residents are riding their private shuttle.
Even more disturbing, the brochure says, “Designed with the principles of Feng Shui in mind, Soundview Pointe fulfills the vision of living a full and harmonious life.” I don’t know why feng shui is mentioned as a selling point, other than focusing sales at one particular group of people.
If you have any doubts, check the availability of the units here:
http://www.elliman.com/MainSite/Agents/Agents.aspx?BID=AK#Mylistings
After discussions with my fellow “walkers”, I’ve come to the same conclusion as my friends; “Soundview Pointe is a new, privately gated community…” That is being pitched to one particular group. Which means it is an upper middle-class ghetto in the making.
When I read how successful Queens is doing in the local rags like the Courier, it makes my blood boil. They measure how successful Queens is by the amount of real estate that is being sold and for the price for that real estate. Nothing more.
Dirty secret: the IRS has cut back on auditors. It is a no brainer to cheat on your taxes these days. If your business is in cash, a shoo-in.
Guess on whose back the shortfall hits?
Guess why is is made easy for certain groups to cheat on their taxes?
Connie, what is your national background? Irish - when the Irish came to NY, the existing resident Protestants railed against them because they didn't want so many people considered "low class" in the city. Italian? When the Italians came, the Irish and others fought to keep them out because they didn't want such "criminal types" in the city. Laws were passed to limit the inflow of Italians. If you think your prejudicial comments are helping your case, you are sadly mistaken.
The previous poster is sadly mistaken.
I don't have any "case". I don't live there. I don't feel my comments were prejudicial in any way. I simlpy made an observation of what is going on at Soundview Pointe.
Keep your historical insight on New York's immigration to yourself. I don't need a history lesson.
My national backround? I'm an American. I was born here. So were my parents and my grand parents. Where ever my great-grand parents came from, more than a century ago, has nothing to do anything.
C-mon....highlighting the "Feng Shui" feature in the promotional brochure seems highly suspect !
Soundview Pointe certainly looks to me like it's being marketed EXCLUSIVELY to Asians.
I'd caution the poster who is , perhaps,
attempting to infer that "Connie" is a racist....
that there are also federal laws
covering REVERSE DISCRIMINATION not to mention online LIBEL !
Are you an agent for the developer ?
Might you also be engaging in a subtle form
of reverse discrimination
in the marketing of real estate ?
A lot of these College Point waterfront developments are built upon toxic waste dumps
like the infamous "Love Canal".
We've been told that Cancer clusters are already starting to appear in this area.
I'd check the Sound View Pointe properties
VERY CAREFULLY for you and your family's sake
if you're thinking of buying there !
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