Thursday, September 2, 2010

Group hopes to create garden with blackout money

From the Daily News:

A DEVASTATING blackout that hit western Queens could be the spark to energize a green oasis under a proposal to build a unique community garden.

Astoria-based Cidadao Global wants to build a garden on property that also would double as a community center for recent immigrants. It would be funded by a chunk of a $7.9 million initiative that came out of a settlement with Con Edison after the 2006 power outage.

"There's nothing like it in Queens," said Ramona Ortega, founder of the nonprofit group - one of many submitting proposals to get a piece of the settlement for "greening" projects.

"It would be a garden space where many organizations can share the immigrant experience," she said of the project, which she estimates would cost $500,000 during the next three to four years.

Cidadao Global, which serves mostly Brazilian immigrants, will submit its proposal to the Greening Western Queens Fund next month. That fund will be used for projects to benefit Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside and Astoria, which were affected by the 2006 blackout.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance," said Ortega, 35, who wants to create a garden run with the cooperation of different immigrant groups in the neighborhood.

Ortega said she hopes the garden will connect diverse groups in the neighborhood.

The need for this kind of center is very real, immigrant advocates said, pointing to blighted properties and a general lack of open areas.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Two things:

First, The Daily News link says NOTHING about WHERE this garden might be. Seems incompetent to publish an article and not clarify it, especially when there is 7.9 million dollars involved.

More importantly, second, we got $61.00 from Con Ed when the electricity was off for 3 weeks. We were born and raised here. Immigrants are getting 7.9 million.

Do you possibly think there's something wrong with this scenario?

Who is allowing this and WHY are they?

Anonymous said...

i predict another scam to divert money into the pockets
of scoundrels.

Anonymous said...

Ditto the first comment word for word. WTF? Fuck immigrants.

Anonymous said...

The money is not coming out of thin air but our utility bills - paid not by the illegal hookups by electricians who learned their craft in Tegucigalpa but paid by Archie and Edith.

North Star and the people with this agenda must have been a bit disappointed with Jerimiah who ran a poor showing the first time they got involved in western Queens (BTW, check out North Star's background and you can see where they are coming from).

The millions spent on the tree planting program has gotten them nowhere and less attention. Besides, the trees were often planted too close together and with no follow up care in a hot, dry summer, have alreay begun to die.

Welcome to western Queens, bubs, where a good gesture is wasted on knuckle dragging neiderthals and clueless Tower Kids who don't give a shit anyway.

So, senseing the increasing moribund and all but senile political leadership in western Queens they are shifting their tweeding efforts to the immigrant tweeds. Sunnyside and Astoria will become Elmhurst and Corona if they have their way.

Meanwhile, the community groups that really serve the neighbhorhoods are all withering on the vine, dieing because the pols that call the shots in the oily sufficiting political world of that part of our fair borough continue to pour six figure amounts into tired programs at, for example Athens Sq or stinky dirty Astoria Park serving a population, like them, well into their 70s and whose kids now live in a belt from Whitestone to Great Neck.

Anonymous said...

Hey, buy the Steinway mansion!

(snicker)