More crap development coming to Rockaway

Good evening,

I was heading home after checking out the completed boardwalk/sidewalk and got on the 116th station in Rockaway and heading for the shuttle train I saw some interesting new development next to the tracks. I assume this is up your alley (no pun intended) of your expertise because it looks like the header photo on your blog.

Then there is this piece in the Rockaway Times, a local newspaper passing for a real estate brochure, about some group tied to a developer involved in building some pretentious hip hotel. They are trying to beautify the development around them by painting over the green fencing and also trying to get ferry commuters to get loaded in a beer garden in a filthy construction site.

This reminds me of what Slate Properties tried to do in Ridgewood with Rockaway Brewery a year ago. Without the sand of course.

What did you say a few days ago when you posted about that terrorist conspirator that we live in a bizarro city. Well, these mental patients trying to turn these dirt yards into tourist attractions are validation of that.

JQ LLC

Hipster beer beach shut down by DOB

It's really gotta suck to be one of these "urban pioneers" and find out the hard way that the shit you're peddling ain't going over with certain community minded folk. Let's take the Ridgewood beer beach. It got shut down by the DOB just before tomorrow's scheduled grand opening. Why? Well they are doing construction on a building without a permit.

The C of O for this property also does not allow a "beer beach" or whatever the hell this thing is supposed to be.

But you wanna know what's really amusing about this? They are trying to pass off their delayed opening as a concession to the community. From QNS:

Marcus Burnett, co-owner of Rockaway Brewing Company, which is hosting La Playa NYC, is working to address the community’s issues with the beer garden.

“We are trying to work with Community Board 5 and we understand that residents are raising concerns,” Burnett said. “One common misconception is that there is going to be live bands or live music. There will be no live bands and no DJ parties, that’s for sure.”

No live music or DJs? Then please explain this previous statement:

Throughout the summer La Playa NYC will also feature local talent including DJs, guest chefs, beer talks and special performances, ensuring a summer of beach, beer and fun for the whole community.

Here's the cherry on top of this shit sundae:

The opening of La Playa NYC depends on the results of the SLA hearing, which is scheduled to take place later this month.

So you were going to open without a liquor permit, but as a favor to the community, decided to wait until you actually had the SLA hearing? How wonderful of you.

Good luck with that

From DNA Info:

A new beer hall and a music venue might be on tap for Court Square — part of a plan to turn the booming neighborhood into a nightlife hub.

Rockrose Development Corp. is building thousands of luxury residential apartment units in the industrial Long Island City neighborhood, but retail amenities are still sparse.
The company's president, Justin Elghanayan wants to change that.

Rockrose has plans to draw retail tenants to the neighborhood — with hopes for a beer hall, music venue and high-end restaurants — with the anticipation that Court Square will be one of the city's next nightlife and cultural destinations.

Bohemian Hall - the last authentic beer garden

From the NY Times:

How many beer gardens can one city — even a fiercely pro-beer-garden city like New York — possibly have?

“Basically, this is too much,” said Larry Spacek, manager of the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria, the 100-year-old paterfamilias of the New York beer garden world. “Everybody sees our success and is copycatting us. I don’t know if it is progress, but probably we are reaching an era of beer gardens.”

According to Mr. Spacek — he pronounces his name SPAH-check (“I am not related to Sissy”) — a successful beer garden requires both the beer and the garden, and if there also happen to be bratwurst, schnitzels and enough communal tables to, as he put it, “sit around with 600 other fellows singing karaoke,” that’s all to the good. The problem, he suggested, resides with those beer gardens lacking foliage. It is true, he acknowledged, that some of these less-than-green newcomers have cut into the Bohemian Hall’s business. “But sooner or later,” he said, “the fact that we are in a real park, with real trees, will bring people back. This is very important.”

Case dismissed, garden stays?

From the Queens Courier:

At a dead end in Whitestone, a colorful garden encircled by stone extends from the fence of a mustard-colored stucco home and into the middle of a city street.

The property owner of the house, located at 148-12 on 2nd Avenue, was issued a summons by the Department of Transportation (DOT) on April 1, 2010, that found the projections, including the garden and the fence, impinge on city property.

The department ordered homeowner Rocco Sacco to remove the structures. After failing to comply, he was issued three more summonses over a period of several months. But, the matter dates back much further.

At the Environmental Control Board (ECB) hearing held on May 4, 2011, a DOT representative affirmed the charges against Sacco comprised of four violations for “encroaching on city property” by building a fence on the sidewalk and a garden in the street.

However, Sacco’s representative, Carl Sulfaro, contested the violations, saying that Sacco did not plant the garden, does not have jurisdiction over it and does not own it, according to the ECB hearing document.

After the DOT representative presented photos and a property information sheet of the site, Administrative Law Judge Loriann Hellmann found that the DOT did not meet its burden to show that the encroachments were either on city property or out of the bounds of Sacco’s property. She also found that the DOT failed to show that Sacco actually planted the garden on the street.

Hellmann dismissed all four violations. The DOT now has 30 days to appeal this ruling.

Yellow liquid and sausage at Bohemian Hall...

From the NY Times:

At the Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria, Queens, my friends and I watched in shock as a father changed his child’s diaper on a vacant table, pitying the person who would sit there next with a pilsner and kielbasa.

When beer gardens ruled Queens

From the Queens Courier:

The earliest beer gardens were in lower Manhattan...but as German immigrants moved to Queens, there was no way they were leaving their beloved gardens behind.

Proprietors of beer gardens welcomed the newfound space in Queens by including old-world elements like picnic grounds and dance floors that had not fit in their cramped Manhattan quarters. Some, on the water, featured swimming and clam bakes.

Beer gardens sprouted across Queens in neighborhoods like Glendale, Ridgewood, Maspeth, College Point and Jamaica. They had names like Richter’s Cypress Hills Park – now home to a stretch of the Jackie Robinson Parkway – Joseph Witzel’s Point View Island – today a sewage treatment plant – and North Beach, the site of LaGuardia Airport.

New Queens beer garden opens today

From the Daily News:

Queens is slated to get its second beer garden when Studio Square, a 30,000-square-foot bar near Kaufman Astoria Studios, opens Thursday.

The new garden - on 36th St. near 35th Ave. - puts a modern twist on the borough's legacy as a haven for beer gardens.

The bar is the brainchild of four Astoria locals, who purchased a six-story former factory building on the Long Island City-Astoria border and converted it into a space that seats more than 1,000 people and serves nearly 20 imported, domestic and craft beers.

The garden features an expansive outdoor seating area and several interior bars to accommodate patrons in the winter.

The property is within walking distance of four subway lines, and is a few minutes from the Queensboro Bridge.

The bar also serves a number of traditional beer garden specialties, such as bratwurst.

Photo and more from Gothamist.