The Guardian
The optics of a white man trying to grab a young woman of color, while police officers stood by, was ripe for outraged clicks. After a tense debate at a public hearing on 10 February, the Queens community board chair, Eugene Kelty, lunged at a Chinese American woman who was part of a large group opposing a special waterfront district in Flushing, New York.
Later that night, the board – whose leadership is almost all white and had conducted the entire hearing in English – voted in favor of the waterfront district, which would pave the way for more luxury developments there.
What wasn’t captured in the videos that circulated after the meeting that night was who was seated near the front of the room: the developers – F&T Group, Young Nian Group and United Construction and Development Group – who own most of the property in the waterfront and have formed a development consortium, FWRA LLC, to push aggressively for its development.
Young Nian Group is a subsidiary of Zhonggeng Group, an international conglomerate headquartered in Shanghai. The founder of United Group is Chris Jiashu Xu, who immigrated from China as a teenager and now serves as president. Two Taiwanese American immigrants, Sunny Chiu and Michael Lee, founded F & T Group, which is headquartered in Downtown Flushing.
The three developers have stressed in public hearings that they are not outsiders to Flushing, which is 69% Asian. “They’ve been here, they live here, they work here, they’ve invested here,” said Ross Moskowitz, an attorney for the developers at a different public hearing in February.
The influx of transnational capital and rise of luxury developments in Flushing has displaced longtime immigrant residents and small business owners, as well as disrupted its cultural and culinary landscape. These changes follow the familiar script of gentrification, but with a change of actors: it is Chinese American developers and wealthy Chinese immigrants who are gentrifying this working-class neighborhood, which is majority Chinese.
This part here was eye-catching:
Perhaps the most significant change to Flushing is the disruption of its food scene. From 2000 to 2015, the number of food and drink retail stores has increased from almost 400 to more than 800. But many of the additions are high-end venues, such as the upscale Sichuan restaurant Guan Fu and international Asian chains like Papparich. This change is deliberate - Helen Lee, executive vice-president of F&T, is responsible for selecting retail tenants for more than 300,000 sq ft of space under development in Flushing. She told Eater in 2019 that she chooses restaurants that fit with Flushing’s changing population and that will change its “cheap eats” reputation.
When reached for comment, F&T’s PR representative, Relevance International, said: “Any real vibrant dining scene requires diversity in choice. While F&T has brought in international renowned brands like HaiDiLao to the market, they’ve also supported longtime staples in Flushing like Nanxiang Xiao Long Bao ($6 dumplings) by leasing them space at One Fulton Square.”
This might explain those foodie night market festivals of the past couple of years by Flushing Meadows Park. Follow the money behind that trojan horse.
24 comments:
QC Reader said...
We need to Clean up the messy created by dems in Vlissingen.
Let's all defund the DemoRats too.
Thanks for running this story. Gene Kelty has been pulling the bully-boy tactic for years, yet no one on the City Council has ever said a word about it. He did lunge at the young woman and did try to grab her cell phone from her hand; attempted assault. NYPD was right there looking on and did nothing to protect the woman, or to arrest Kelty. It doesn't matter to men like Kelty who runs their communitie into the ground, they just appreciate how the money is spread around. Kelty and his partner in the hood, Apellian, should both be removed, after over 30 years in control of the CB7, enough is enough. It's Flushing's own Tamney Hall.
The odor of main st needs to be gentrified
The optics of a white man trying to grab a young woman of color, while police officers stood by, was ripe for outraged clicks.
I stopped reading after that sentence.
@Go Woke.
I didn't like how it started off either, it comes off contrived even though that did happen. Despite that it's a good article and surprising it got British press attention.
The Guardian will piss off a lot of readers here because of it's lib leanings, but their gentrification articles are resourceful.
Second Anon; You're welcome.
Wondering if HaiDiLao still offers Wuhan bat soup on the menu?
On one hand, no one likes money, especially foreign money, pouring in and ripping up the fragile living space of an area. On the other hand, the area is so insular and exclusionary I get a bit of a 'boo-hoo' mentality, especially now that flushing is pushing out and pricing out non-asians in the surrounding areas.
How awful, they had the entire meeting in English.
Flushing is already a shithole as it is. Who cares if it gets more shitty? This virus has taught the city absolutely nothing. Which should have been that overpopulation is NOT good! Look at the places that was hit the most in the city, filthy areas with filthy people who live literally on top of each other. But the politicians dont care about the ones who have lived here for years and have called nyc home for many years. They only want to cater to the wealthy, foreigners and illegals. Sorry, Americans, you mean nothing to the government anymore especially here in NYC. They wanted the people in the nursing homes to get sick from this thing. Why? Because most of the people who are living in nursing homes are old white people who the government hates anymore. So we can just get over it. Americans especially white people are not welcomed in NYC and the government wants us all dead if you're not rich.
Hooked on phonics said...
How awful, they had the entire meeting in English.
———-
Thanks for being a bigot. You obviously missed the point. Sheesh. Next thing you’ll want Greeks in Astoria to have signs only in English and the waiters not to speak Greek.
Wasn't it Julia Harrison who said "They treat Queens like it's a colony"
I believe this is what you call the “Free Market Economy” in action. For more information on how this works, please check with George The Fascist, or your local Fox News Fascist. Seems to be plenty it them commenting on this site. Note to moderator. Please don’t upset your base by quoting from a real newspaper. Fascists really get confused by such things.
What's crazy is that it's easy for all these China-based developers to do business here, but it's extremely difficult for American companies to do business in China.
Do you have any idea of how many fraudulent China-based companies are listed on the New York stock exchange? Trump thinks levying tarrifs and banning TikTok is enough. He has done too little too late. He's doing the shit he's doing now to salvage whatever remains of his re-election prospects.
@Bored
Don't tell me what to post and what to link to.
Anonymous@ BoredWithFascists said... #TDS is in your brain bud.
Pay your Marxist College student debt then you can move out of mom's basement !
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
― Margaret Thatcher
@Bored
Need to brush up on your history a bit, tool.
"The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries. Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far right within the traditional left–right spectrum.
The "Fascist left" included Michele Bianchi, Giuseppe Bottai, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Sergio Panunzio, and Edmondo Rossoni, who were committed to advancing national syndicalism as a replacement for parliamentary liberalism in order to modernize the economy and advance the interests of workers and common people.
The "Fascist right" included members of the paramilitary Squadristi and former members of the Italian Nationalist Association
The Squadristi wanted to establish Fascism as a complete dictatorship, while the former ANI members, including Alfredo Rocco, sought to institute an authoritarian corporatist state to replace the liberal state in Italy while retaining the existing elites.
Upon accommodating the political right, there arose a group of monarchist fascists who sought to use fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.
Basically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile."
Who cares?
Democrats want to replace the government with the Democratic Party with the federal institutions vestigial relics.
The Republicans want to keep the government as they have hijacked it to benefit a small oligarchy to the detriment of its citizens.
Now how to keep the government and turn it over to the citizens? That is easy: they have to stop being lazy, whining and complaining, and get off their arses and read up on civics and get engaged!
We are China. Except it .
Learn to speak ENGLISH! Why should a CB meeting be held in a foreign language (Chinese) unfamiliar to most members and residents?
It’s “white” mainly because CB7s agenda has always been to keep Whitestone etc. white!
Develop the downtown but leave Malba Beechurst alone!
Systemic racism?
If it quacks like a duck....what else can it be?
So it was conducted in English? Woh-woh. AFA as residents being priced out to make room for a luxury developments..what did they expect? Greed is a universally deplorable trait, regardless of culture.
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