Motorcycle club getting a bumpy ride

QUEENS (WPIX) — Neighbors in Willet's Point are tired of complaining to the city about potholes on their roads. One group called PIX 11's Greg Mocker and invited him to a meeting off 34th Ave and 126th Street in Queens.

The Queensboro Motrocycle Club owns a clubhouse on 34th Avenue. Auto shops and industrial yards make up the rest of the area. Traditionally, it is known as the "iron triangle." The biggest neighbor is Citi Field, right across the street.

The club, which was founded 100 years ago, feel neglected by the city. Cars and trucks have to weave around giant potholes. For the past few years, members of the club have contacted department of transportation officials and representatives from the borough president's office. They showed Mocker paperwork from various agencies that indicates the road has been inspected and work could be forthcoming.

Members say it has taken years to get anything done. For decades, there has been a debate about how to develop Willet's Point. Members of the club say they pay their taxes and they're getting no city services.

Mocker contacted the Transportation Department which is researching it's involvement. A spokesman told Mocker: "DOT is aggressively resurfacing and re-engineering New York City's streets to make them safer for everyone who uses them. We filled more than and repaved nearly 900 lane miles in the last fiscal year and we encourage New Yorkers to report potholes that need to be addressed to 311."

Uh yeah, and the DOT HQ and asphalt plant is a few hundred yards away, on the other side of the highway...

Here's the "resolution", which is just the regular old bullshit.

City not being straight with motorcycle club

From the Times Ledger:

History sure seems to repeat itself for the Queensboro Motorcycle Club.

The biker group was unceremoniously uprooted from its original clubhouse among the old ash heaps of central Queens in 1939 to make way for the creation of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in time for that year’s World’s Fair, according to Bill Goldstein, the club’s president.

The resilient club, which turns 100 this year, was never compensated for its property, Goldstein said, but it pushed on and eventually found a new slice of Queens in Willets Point, where members built a modest clubhouse behind a chain-link fence between two warehouses on 34th Avenue.

But time and the inattention of city officials took its toll on their new digs, and the Iron Triangle turned from bad to worse as the years passed. And it looks like the Queensboro riders may be rolling into the sunset once again.

The city never installed sewers, running water, sidewalks or other urban amenities in Willets Point and the 62-acre section of land is in a new administration’s sights.

The plans for Willets Point leave the bikers in a lurch as they attempt to continue their gatherings, rides and community service activities from a point with an uncertain future. Goldstein said the club pays $4,000 a year in taxes and he asks only that the city tell them what will become of them in coming years.

“We understand that this is an area of contention and that no one wants to breathe a word about it,” he said over sodas in the club’s wood-paneled meeting room. “But we pay $4 grand a year and we get nothing for it. We get no road repair, no sidewalks, no streetlights, there’s no sanitation. This place is an absolute pigsty.”

Or, as club member James Frost put it last week, “it looks like Beirut now.”

Years of unattended potholes and ruts have turned the roads of Willets Point into a minefield for motorcyclists, and earlier this month a member of the club slowly riding to the clubhouse hit a nearby pothole, sustained minor injuries and damaged his bike, according to club members.

The state of disrepair has reached a breaking point, members said, and member Jan Borodo has been compiling a file of the club’s repeated requests for repairs. Borodo has a file with dozens of copies of documents he has sent to Bloomberg’s office, the city Department of Transportation, 311, Community Board 7 and a number of news outlets in hopes of getting basic repairs done — all of which have yielded little or no results.

The group’s members said they do not want to fight the city — they only want to know what lies ahead. Goldstein said the group is willing to take a fair relocation deal or to stay if the city makes improvements.