Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Congratulations, Astoria!

You're the laughingstock of the city for welcoming architecture like this:

Open House Report: Astoria Windsor's Dose of Blue

"It's sandwiched between a car detailer and a ramshackle freestanding house, and right across the street from the Sunoco station in what is, at best, an "okay" neighborhood."

Now Curbed's readers are generally pro-development, but the comments on their thread (as of the posting of this entry) are unanimous in the sentiment that what's being built in Astoria is quite fugly.

Of course, there are always the people out there who think this stuff is fantastic and improves the neighborhood.

Photo from Curbed

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bwaaaa.
Look's like a hospital where you put sick people.

Anonymous said...

Yup, it's pretty fuglie. It's not a bad neighborhood actually. I live pretty close to here.

georgetheatheist said...

I'd rather live in a discarded refrigerator crate. (Great tax abatement too!)

Anonymous said...

It's not a masterpiece, but I don't find this building repulsive. Different folks have different tastes. At least you can't see any Fedders!

verdi said...

Gag....this looks like a bad adaptation of a Bauhaus School designed Swiss sanitarium for the mentally damaged to make a recovery!

You've got to be crazy to want to live here!

It's also suitable for a medical facility or diagnostic oncology clinic......not for living quarters!

Anonymous said...

Looks like is should be offices for the Toll Plaza at the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

Anonymous said...

Or perhaps a highways or MTA office near the Kosciusko bridge.

Anonymous said...

How about a sanitation facility, all they need are the trucks parked out back!

Anonymous said...

What IS it about Astoria that brings out the best in urban planning?

Are those people just brain dead, or they are just going through the motions and don't care anymore?

Anonymous said...

Well, if you have a summer home and spend all yout time there, it is tough to focus your attention on the comunity.

Besides, ol Bessie kind of takes care of herself, standing under a tree when it rains, laying down in the mud when she is tired, flicking all the flys away with her tail.

The milk just comes naturally.

moooooo

nobody really cares what happens in some distant cow pature now, do they?

Anonymous said...

21st Street used to be a swamp, Sunswick Creek and it was filled by 19th century landfill.

Want to speculate what is down there?

Have friends who moved into that other brainstorm nearby, Hallets Cove, and the topsoil in their 'yard' is all of 6 inches deep.

According to the city's longest serving CB manager, George 'Demolition Man' Delis of CB1 Queens, AKA the community board from Hell, 21st street is a hot place to build.

You got that right, George.

Anonymous said...

from Curbed, just had to post it here

I wish people in queens gave a crap about aesthetics - everyone knows that developers in new york do as little as possible to get projects finished, but queens is easily the worst. and yet, you can't blame the developers entirely, because everyone in this damn borough just rolls over and takes it. exasperating.

HEY, YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!

SUBJECT FOR CRAPPIE: WHY ARE PEOPLE FROM QUEENS SO FR*GEN PASSIVE?

Anonymous said...

Horrible.

I live a few blocks away (in a 1935 apartment building that I quite like), and see this eyesore whenever my walks around the neighborhood take me toward 21st Street. Which, given how fugly it is, doesn't happen often.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't look terrible to me. Much, much worse goes up in Elmhurst.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the comparision between LIC and Elmurst, I feel so much better.

Faint praise for a place that once, along with Manhattan and Brooklyn, used to consider itself a real city.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of "Ol Bessie" the cow.....a speech by a questionable Chinese leader was given at the Sheraton La Guardia East Hotel in Flushing several years ago to, I believe, an almost all Chinese audience (in Mandarin dialect).

The subject was politics. The translation into English was:

"Money is the mother's milk of politics"!

That's the key to everyone looking the other way to the plethora of ugly overdevelopment in Queens!

In a single word PAYOFFS to the politicos!

Anonymous said...

why does everyone on this site blame politicians? Politicians have no say in what building goes up, unless your talking about a project which undergoes a variance, which is ussually not the case.

Anonymous said...

Oh, you're so right. I have finally seen the light. We're sorry for blaming politicians so much. After all, the mayor isn't responsible for directing city agencies to embrace overdevelopment, the city council isn't responsible for passing upzoning resolutions in communities that can't absorb more people, and the legislatures don't allow developers to give legal bribes to politicians in order to get their agenda through. Politicians also make sure they close all the building loopholes that are exploited by developers. So, so, sorry for calling attention to this.

Anonymous said...

Politicians who take campaign money from developers who saturate neighborhoods with overbuilt uglies are certainly to blame and will continue to be exposed on this blog site!

The buck (developers bucks) stops there!

Go look up Melinda Katz's campaign contributions, for example, it represents a "who's who" of every major developer in NYC! That's why she was made chair of the land use committee!

How many times do you think she's "greased" her favorite developer's projects throught the process of approval?