Civic peeved about LLC's abandoned lot

Queens Chronicle 

What’s going on with the vacant lot on the corner of 154th Street and 11th Avenue in Whitestone?

That’s the question President of the Greater Whitestone Taxpayers Civic Association and Community Board 7 Member Kim Cody has been asking since Lot 74 was last occupied in 2010.

Cody said that members of his civic have inquired about the lot, as well. “People are asking, ‘What’s going on with the property?’ over the years. All the sudden, it started overgrowing with weeds,” he told the Chronicle. “They go down there and check, and then they see this pile of junk in the middle of the lot.”

The site, which spans two addresses on the block, 11-10 and 11-12, was previously occupied by a fruit market and a deli, Cody said. Though the building on the lot was not demolished until roughly 2019, the lot itself has been fenced off since 2015.

The fence seems to have been ineffective. “Kids were still going inside the lot and stuff like this doing what teenagers do,” Cody said. “They were drinking and whatever the possibilities were coming apart.”

When the temporary, fabric fencing ultimately became tattered as a result of several storms, a chain link one was installed in 2019. Since then, no further construction has occurred, despite rumors that speculated otherwise.

Meanwhile, Tax Block 4538, Lot 74, has continued to deteriorate, and upset surrounding the site has only persisted. Cody said. “People would call up the civic association [and say], ‘We’re worried about rats or raccoons in there,’ and stuff like this,” he said. “There’s a public school right up the block, and it’s a commercial area, there’s delicatessens there and stuff, Chinese restaurants — there was a lot of concern about what was going on with the property.”

The property in question is, according to the Department of Buildings, owned by Andrew Lester of 11-10/12 154 St. LLC. Lester is currently the senior vice president of construction at Wharton Properties, a Manhattan-based, commercial real estate company.

Revel repulsion

Queens Chronicle 

 The image is a stark one.

Four of the sky-blue Revel scooters that have become ubiquitous on street corners in some sections of Forest Hills were photographed last week, not in the street waiting to be rented by a new rider, but on the other side of the curb, laying on their sides in the grass on a side street just off Union Turnpike.

At least one appeared to be damaged, with its mirror laying a short distance away on the sidewalk. The photo doesn’t indicate whether, the damage was incidental to the vehicles being moved by someone looking for parking or done with extreme prejudice.

The scooters began appearing in Forest Hills back in the spring. Unlike Citi Bike vehicles that are taken from and returned to specific docking bays, the scooters, under a city-approved program, can be left on the street for the next renter to pick up and drop off when finished.

While they must adhere to all city parking and traffic rules, they have not always sat well with some Forest Hills residents, who have complained about abuses on both fronts.

The apparently damaged scooters even came to the attention and social media accounts of Tom Verni, a retired NYPD detective who now works as a crime and law enforcement consultant for media outlets. He also is a former resident of Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. Verni, too, said the photo appears to show that at least one of the scooters was damaged.

“They’ve been springing up like dandelions all over the place,” Verni said. “With Citi Bikes, you have stations that take up a quarter-block, half a block. The Revels people leave them just anywhere. It’s becoming a nuisance.”

Verni said he has seen the scooters parked illegally; parked in front of driveways; and parked between cars, often leaving them inadequate space to pull out without physically moving the scooters. He has also seen them parked at curbs on alternate-side-of-the-street parking days when street sweepers must detour around them.

“All true. Those are the calls we’ve been getting,” said Frank Gulluscio, district manager of Community Board 6. Gulluscio said Revel officials did speak before CB 6 before the program kicked off, but that was it.

“It’s not like we had a say,” he said. “The city had already approved it.”

The Van Sicklen Horror

 

NY Post

A human skull was found outside a Queens home Monday morning, police said.

The remains were located in front of 108-16 Pine Grove St. in Jamaica around 9:30 a.m., police said.

The city’s medical examiner responded and determined that the remains were human and had no sign of trauma, police sources said.

There were no further details immediately available.

  Impunity City

 It’s not everyday the NYPD reports a skull lying on the sidewalk in a residential area. But in the obviously click bait generating article (which is not even truncated here and the Post used a google map crop for the lede photo), the home the NY Post is referring is an abandoned zombie house that was cited for a full vacate order by the D.O.B. following a fire and from the looks of it, it might have been abandoned even longer before that incident.

So might as well provide some further details the NYPD couldn’t provide (or wouldn’t).

Let’s enhance…

 

 

Perusing the D.O.B. files, not much is known about the prior or even current owner of this blighted property, but this home is steeped in Queens history. It was built and owned nearly a century ago by Abraham Van Sicklen, whose father was a New York supreme court justice who also owned a famous mansion in Jamaica and grandson of a renowned farmer in Brooklyn.