Friday, June 19, 2009

Tennisport is history

From NY Post:

For Tennisport -- one of the city's best-known public recreation facilities -- it's game, set, match.

After 33 years in Hunters Point, Queens, the center that has hosted celebs and tennis stars will be shutting its doors July 31 as the city begins work on a massive housing complex overlooking the East River.

For the past 20 years, the Boturs have known match point was near.

First, the state had eyed it as part of its enormous Queens West development. In 2002, the state forced the family to sell the property through eminent domain.

The Boturs negotiated several two-year extensions while development plans went bust.

Finally, the city bought the property from the state in 2006.

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed building 5,000 units of middle-income housing and a school for the 24-acre site.

City officials said they would begin work preparing the land, which has little infrastructure, by the end of the year.

"It was a garbage dump when my father found it," said Andrea Botur, whose dad is now 87 and still works at the club.

"It seemed courageous at the time. He built the club and thought he was safe here."

Now the Boturs are busy finding new jobs for their 30 employees and 15 tennis pros.


Is this part of Bloomberg's 400,000 jobs program?

P.S. If you bought at the Powerhouse for "the view", you'll soon be S.O.L.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

What, not enough film industry and bicycling stories to complain about? So now we're bemoaning the loss of 15 tennis pro jobs and 30 other jobs associated with this "elite" sport?

Condo towers to replace a tennis club? Seems to me like six of one, half dozen the other.

Queens Crapper said...

Not sure I understand your point. A job is a job.

Anonymous said...

They came in when it was garbage. You have to respect that.

Anonymous said...

"They came in when it was garbage. You have to respect that."

So did the people who live in the new condos. The area on the waterfront was literaly a garbage dump of burnt out cars, overgrown weeds and trash until they cleaned it up.

Anonymous said...

No, if I recall correctly, "they" didn't clean it up. The Department of Sanitation and the developers who got sweetheart deals from the City did.

Anonymous said...

The Department of Sanitation used to dump broken garbage trucks on the site of Gantry Park. There was no one to blame but the City for its condition.

Anonymous said...

That's what the City thought of LIC until they figured out they could make a buck off it.

Anonymous said...

what are the income guidelines for this "affordable housing" crap?

poor people with waterfront property on my taxpayer dime while i schlep to work from further out?

wtf?

Anonymous said...

What kind of a dumb comment is that about the jobs? The construction, building and school jobs that will be created will more than make up for these lost jobs. Beside, these jobs aren't lost. If there is demand for tennis and tennis pros, the business will shift elsewhere. There is a new tennis facility in Long Island City called Cityview that is doing tremendous business. Do you think the patrons at Tennisport are just going to stop playing tennis altogether since the place is gone? They will shift to another tennis facility and the business will go with them.

Ridiculous.

Anonymous said...

What an asshole. You think jobs like this are being created in this economy? Maybe if you were one of the 15 who no longer had a source of income you wouldn't make flippant arrogant statements like that.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the most offensive thing about this is that eminent domain was used to take a family's property in order to replace it with "affordable housing" which we all know is a complete joke.

Anonymous said...

So we shouldn't build anything so 15 tennis pros can keep their jobs, even though they will be able to get jobs elsewhere and they knew for two years that this place would be closing? Genius.

Queens Crapper said...

No, we shouldn't be building anything there (and using eminent domain to boot) because:

a) It's someone's private property.
b) We don't need "affordable housing" now because we have a glut of empty living space.
c) Most of the jobs created will be temporary.
d) We have a budget crisis in this city and money should be put toward vital services instead of condo towers.

Ditto for Willets Point.

Anonymous said...

Crapper doesn't think we should develop. Anything. Anywhere.

Shocking.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't the city have the chosen developer negotiate with the owner directly? Why are we overusing and abusing eminent domain everywhere?

This is insane.

Toby S. said...

"Crapper doesn't think we should develop. Anything. Anywhere.

Shocking."

Evan, if you've been told once, you've been told a thousand times...leave the Queens Crap blog people alone. You know they are just going to chew you up and spit you out! Now come back to Albany and change my diaper!!!

Anonymous said...

A large residential tower creates more than 30 jobs - doormans, porter, supers, conceige desk, managing agents, etc. This does not include the hundreds employeed in the construction. Overall this is a plus for the job market. This is creating jobs.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, maybe in 5 years. We need jobs now, in case you haven't noticed.

Anonymous said...

Okay, well you will have 100s of well paying construction jobs the day this break ground. In two years you will have the jobs that I mentioned. Happy?

Anonymous said...

No, subcontractors will be hiring illegals for that. They even work for the unions now with fake SS#s.

Missing Foundation said...

And plenty of jobs tearing the building down and making it a park in about 30 years when an overdue Cat 3 hurricane leaves 10 feet in water in its basement and buckles its foundation.

Anonymous said...

The main problem is that the real estate market is underwater. Why sink money into a massive new development that will possibly destroy ones that are already under construction? It is unfair competition, financially wasteful, and disruptive to the current residents of the area.

Anonymous said...

Not sure I understand your point. A job is a job.

Anonymous said...

Not sure I understand your point. A job is a job.

Anonymous said...

My point, and not crappy's, is that this will wreck the people who already have shovels in the ground, send their people out of work and create dangerous, half-finished projects.

We are already reading about municipalities, i.e. Detroit, that are tearing down already-built structures. This is a waste of precious capital.

Instead of deploying construction workers to oversupply a glutted market, lets start overhauling bridges and roads. Our transportation infrastructure is pathetic.

Missing Foundation said...

Instead of deploying construction workers to oversupply a glutted market, lets start overhauling bridges and roads. Our transportation infrastructure is pathetic.


BRIDGES DONT MAKE CAMPAIGN DONATIONS.

Anonymous said...

BRIDGES DONT MAKE CAMPAIGN DONATIONS.

Sad but true.

Anonymous said...

The reality is that the developer will level the club, install some basic site work, then mothball the site until the housing market starts to recover in NYC: the worst of all worlds, with no construction jobs, no tennis jobs, a big ugly mudhole, and no place for the kids to play tennis.

All you who say this is an elitist sport: what about the hundreds of NYC school kids who play at Tennisport every day of the week???

Anonymous said...

A job is a job.

I don't buy that argument, and I doubt any structurally unemployed New Yorker or economist worth his/her salt would buy it either.

Not all jobs are created equal. There's something called a multiplier effect - how many additional jobs does this job support or generate? Jobs on Broadway, for example, have a high multiplier as they support jobs in restaurants, hotels, etc. I'm pretty sure the multiplier effect for a tennis pro is fairly bottom-rung.

Anonymous said...

Great, so let's eliminate all the jobs that don't support many other jobs. Of course, the argument could be made that the tennis center brings people to the area who will support other businesses there. Wait, no, let's not use that reasoning because it may stand in the way of promoting eminent domain abuse and rampant development.

See, the area may have been "blighted" a few years ago, but now, it's pretty hard to make that argument with million dollar condos being offered a stone's throw away.

This is a land grab, plain and simple, and it's happening all over the City thanks to Mayor Bloomberg.

Vote his ass out of office this November.

Anonymous said...

In this economy, when we are closely watching unemployment numbers, any reduction in the number of jobs is bad. In other words, losing even one job is a bad thing. It doesn't matter what field it's in.

And if it were your job, you wouldn't be so flippant about it.