Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The Sunnyside saga: It's finally over!

The City Council voted unanimously to make Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, one of the first planned communities in the country, a landmarked historic district.

Sunnyside Gardens landmarked

The council's vote, which affirms the landmark commission's designation in June, makes the 77-acre development the largest historic district in Queens.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

With all due respect.....
no more excuses from your staff
(i.e. "it's a lot of work"etc.)....
chairman Tierney.

Broadway/Flushing was promised
to be the next on the list (after Sunnyside Gardens)
and we have been patiently waiting
for our landmark designation process to begin
for going on nearly two years.

Our deserving,
well planned, architecturally distinctive neighborhood has already achieved
National Historic District status.

We understand that the LPC has already completed all the research (based on over the 1,300 photos
and SHIPO study reports that we've provided
to the LPC) and await being calendered
at the nearest possible opportunity.

We don't want our promised district
to fall through the cracks.

Everyone is on board in supporting this request....
from Councilman Avella, Senator Padavan, Assemblyman Lanceman, CB#7,
Borough President Marshal, HDC, etc.

Time is of the essence.

Anonymous said...

Too bad Meiklejohn & Co. !

Your "agenda" was beaten down
by the real majority....
not your shrill minority....
claiming to "represent" the neighborhood !

Ta, ta..... and good luck somewhere else.
I'm sure we'll be seeing one of your "cooked up"
studies popping up in the near future .

Anonymous said...

Now watch them disappear behind their brown signs never to be heard of again.

While the rest of the boro around them rots.

Anonymous said...

Finally! Now I can call INS and be taken seriously.

Anonymous said...

A real slap in the face to the clubhouse, or the tiny landmark clique protecting one of their own?

The jury is still out.

Anonymous said...

Don't be surprised if Micklejohn challenges the law for ignoring working class and immigrant communities.

This is an opportunity on a silver platter.

Finally. Hopefully.

Anonymous said...

My to do list, now that my neighborhood is landmarked:

1) Stop calling Sunnyside Gardens part of "Queens." From now on it's "Le P'tit Brooklyn"

2) Answer to every question will begin with "Speaking as someone who lives in the Sunnyside Gardens Landmarked Historic District..."

3) Spend at least 10 minutes jumping back and forth going "Landmarked!" "Not Landmarked!" "Landmarked!" "Not Landmarked!" "Landmarked!" "Not Landmarked!" "Landmarked!" "Not Landmarked!"

4) Start wearing bracelets which read "WWLMD?"

5) Get t-shirts printed which read "SIX OVER SIX, STUPID!"

Anonymous said...

my take on this is that developers just weren't all that interested in Sunnyside, so they allowed the city to landmark it in order to stymie critique.

"How can anyone possibly say that there's rampant overdevelopment in Queens when a whole community was just landmarked?" they'll now be able to argue.

Still, it's good that SS got LM-ed. At least one community will remain standing when all of the construction dust settles.

Anonymous said...

Sunnyside Gardens Outsider:

Landmarking - I am familiar with Sunnyside Gardens - a nicely treed area in which inovative middle class housing is fairly attactive and quiet.

Question: Landmark Commission is known to go after people to get each detail exacting when a repair or change is made. My thoughts are whom can really afford to do this as middle class?

Yet the upside is that folks are severely restricted from radically altering the structures as is occuring everywhere else? Is there a reasonable middle ground somewhere in this designation especially since the only folks able to be exacting in changes made to a structure here is to be rich? Not that the rich want to live here - so going forward how does historic preservation successfully succeed?

Anonymous said...
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