Non-profit is building up Astoria property
From the
Queens Gazette:
Plans have been revealed for the development of a 14-story, mixed-use building at 21-12 30th Road in Astoria, on property owned by the Variety Boy’s & Girl’s Club.
The 145-foot-tall building will feature 133,090-square-feet of residential space, 7,780-square-feet of commercial/retail use and 114,430-square-feet of space for a community facility for the Boy’s & Girl’s Club, according to a post on the YIMBY (Yes, In My Back Yard) website.
The development will feature 112 condominium units averaging 1,228-square-feet each.
The development will be split between two towers with the community space occupying floors one through six and residential units occupying floors seven through 14.
6 comments:
This is what happens when the local talent in Queens gets their hands on a non-profit - we saw if with the QBPL and we see it with the Variety B/G Club.
Back in the day it used to have a big playground and was open to the kids in the nabe. The big shots of the area used to stop by and many of them, not too far removed from the streets the kids were on, bonded with them and participated in programs. It was neighborhood. It was community. It was one of those things the made Astoria a special place when most of the city was going to hell in a hand basket.
That is unthinkable today.
Like everything in Astoria, the local talent has decided that the only thing of value in that community is dirt. They have taken advantage of the childlike innocence that the working classes have always had when their leadership turns on them and starts to, in turn, exploit them not unlike those from whom they rescued.
I personally know both people were on their board and people that went to the club.
As to the first, this is the end of a series of 'development' projects over a series of decades that slowly converted the club from a community asset, to a insider's investment bonanza (not unlike the Steinway Mansion, et al). Parcel after parcel was sold to 'put the place on firm financial footing.' Sort of like a saint doing a strip tease - modesty soon was transferred into something coarse. Now they are going in for the prize.
As to the second, a fellow that went to it as a kid was there recently and looked around. He still is in Queens and still has a respected program involving youth. He said "when I was a kid, the place hummed like a hive. Now I walked in and it looks dead."
You can say that about the 40 year decline and death of Vallonia. Lots of development activity not unlike the fuss of embalming a dead body.
I used to attend that Boys Club way back when. Dodgeball, knock hockey, wood-working (can still smell that saw dust and learned what a rasp did), skinny-dipping in the pool - Hank was the instructor (learned how to dive there), darkroom for photography (definitely initiated my camera interests), a Mr. Berg - I guess some kind of then administrator - gave me back issues of the National Geographic from the library which stimulated my love for travelling. Anyone remember lightning-fast Zachar, one of the neighbor kids who attended? Nobody, absolutely nobody could outrun him during the touch football season. That activity - touch football during the Fall - and softball during the warmer months took place in that vast expansive yard where a now a humongous apartment house sits where home plate used to be. I can't even bear to look at it.
The Vallones and their ass-kissing political minions, have absolutely ruined the Astoria neighborhood.
Zachar, where are you?
I thought the Vallones were good for the neighborhood, but they are not...they have profited off of all this overdevelopment...and screwed this neighborhood dearly
GTA, it’s me Zachar. It’s your turn to run.
Am I getting these comments straight? This place used to be one big, giant, active playground, and then Vallone and co. sold off one piece after another, and this little lot is all that's left? And now it'll be gone, too?
Am I getting these comments straight? This place used to be one big, giant, active playground, and then Vallone and co. sold off one piece after another, and this little lot is all that's left? And now it'll be gone, too?
Yup. Likely.
In the old days a guy like Vallone would have showed up to teach the kids First Aid. Understand his wife used to teach music there.
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