St. John’s University is once again at loggerheads with its neighbors, this time for shutting off access to Utopia Parkway without prior notice.“We notified the community of the closure in a letter dated Thursday, May 22, and sent it out before noon that day,” said St. John’s spokesman Dominic Scianna.
St. John’s Street Closure Angers Area Residents
Scianna stated that the gate was closed at the suggestion of the contractor, Structure Tone Inc.
In response to criticisms regarding the fire hazard created by closing the gate, representatives from St. John’s met with community members and the FDNY on Wednesday afternoon.
Due to short notice, the DEP was unable to respond to questions regarding whether St. John’s needs a permit to undertake construction on 82nd Avenue between 172nd and 175th Streets.
Scianna said that residents could use the service road of the Grand Central Parkway instead of 82nd Avenue.
The DOB did not return calls.
9 comments:
Why should SJU be good neighbors to you with the way you treat them?
Anon
"Why should SJU be good neighbors to you with the way you treat them?"
Are you kidding?
SJU feels that the guidelines of DOB, DEP and other city agencies apply to other mere mortals but not them; they can do as they please with impunity. SJU always claims ignorance of the law and blames someone else for all that ails them. They are the worst neighbors! It’s about time that neighboring communities organize and flex their power before our lovely neighborhoods cease to exist as we know them.
Hate to tell you - your lovely neighborhoods have already ceased to exist as you knew them, compliments of St. John's.
St. John's purchased the property at Hillcrest in 1936. Title was taken in the name of Walcan Realty Corporation which was organized for that purpose and which was, of course, controlled by the University. They wrote nice letters to the neighbors in 1954 saying, "If you should be disturbed at any time in the next few years by the noise and inconvenience attendant to a construction project such as ours at Hillcrest will be, we humbly beg your indulgence, but there is no other way by which we can bring St. John's to your community."
When is outrage setting in folks, why should St.John's greed dictate what becomes of our lovely neighborhoods!
Anonymous I- Give us one example of SJU being a good neighbor. Do good neighbors or well intentioned businesses violate their mission statement, choose to work in secrecy, ignore the community, neglect to include elected officials in the planning and lie to their own dialogue group. In this case send notices the day before closing the street, acting in very bad faith .A style, quite unbecoming to a religious institution. I consider SJU and their leadership to be pompous bullies and HORRIBLE NEIGHBORS!
They invaded our neighborhood and now we are angry! We have had nothing but grief and problems with the university since they announced their "Master Plan" in 1998.
Remember the Baseball Stadium? Six million NYC taxpayer dollars to build a stadium for this private university.
1998-2008
Ten years of St. John's arrogance and disrespect for their neighbors!
I suggest moving out of Jamaica then if St. John's is such a bad neighbor. That's what I did. St. John's is staying here, whether anyone likes it or not, and it is only going to get larger and larger. The amount of people trying to get an education nowadays is rising so heavily that times need to change in order to accommodate this. It's a ever growing college...what can anyone expect?
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