Monday, November 17, 2008

Queensboro Hill crap: loved and hated

Queens Crap, a blog dedicated to gripes about “overdevelopment” in the borough, recently lamented the “crappification” of Queensboro Hill, “once a beautiful suburb of Flushing.” (Actually, it was back in February, but who's keeping track?)

City blocks: 59th Avenue between Main and 138th streets, Queens

Washing his parents’ van yesterday, 17-year-old Andrew Hubert also noted the signs of encroachment: A few lots down, a house was torn down to make way for a three-story luxury condo building.

“People don’t like it,” said Hubert, who has lived here his entire life. “My parents think it’s too big and it will bring more cars on the street.”

Last year the city passed zoning changes to ensure that “future residential development is consistent with its surrounding context.” But while longtime residents may have hated new development, recent homebuyers were more welcoming, said Mario Arraya, 20, who was visiting his parents. “The new houses raised values,” he said. “People are moving in.”


Must get a quote from someone who thinks overdevelopment is great, even if it doesn't make sense! First of all, there are no "luxury" condos in Queensboro Hill - we know what's there and that the term "luxury" used to describe them is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. These are three or four-family piles of Queens Crap. Notice how they don't show a photo of the building in question, but of the non-crappified part of the nabe to show it ain't that bad. Replacing one family with four or five families doesn't benefit a neighborhood or residents that are lacking in services as it is. And the fact that developers want to build the previously mentioned piles of real estate dung certainly is not what artificially raised values of existing homes in the area. This Arraya kid has a great future in the Bloomberg administration.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A funny thing about real estate that the preservation community never tells you (with their head stuck up their arse in da Heights, and West Side and Village they are hardly qualified to discuss NY real estate but that is another question):

Sometimes the hottest markets are ghettos. Anything goes, anyone welcome. Look at Harlem 100 years ago.

Can be lots of frenzy with the bottom feeders. Just drop a tasty morsel onto a pond bottom and see what happens.

Anonymous said...

And what does a 20 year old kid that just moved into a community know about this topic?

Or is it, in good Queens fashion, if your follow the script you get the mike?

Anonymous said...

Houses in middle-class areas are plummeting in value because they have to become affordable to middle-class people. Stop lamenting the decline and praising those dead-cat bounces.

Anonymous said...

This is so sad. I grew up in Queensboro Hill....138th & 62nd Avenue. It was a great neighborhood w/ lovely homes.

The neighborhood is what attracted Asians to this area of Queens in the first place -- and before you know it they change it to something else. If you continue to bring in 3 & 4 family homes, you change the character of community. Will you still want to live there when you don't know who is living next door? Why would you cut off your nose to spite your face?

Anonymous said...

I thought the writing was tongue-in-cheek. The Asian guy at the end says he just wants to "fit in."