Monday, March 19, 2018

Claremont Terrace apartment house has become a zombie


From the Queens Chronicle:

Councilman Danny Dromm (D-Jackson Heights) said Dr. John Ko promised him last February that long-delayed work at 1 Claremont Terrace in Elmhurst would be done in one year.

Thirteen months have passed, and the lawmaker says the unfinished, graffiti-covered apartment building abutting the Long Island Rail Road tracks is still in the same unsightly condition.

“It’s become a zombie apartment building. It’s just horrible,” Dromm told the Chronicle on Monday. “Our patience has come to an end.”

The property the building sits on is one of the more historic ones in Elmhurst, as Samuel Lord — the co-founder of Lord & Taylor, the oldest department store in America — purchased the site in 1840, eventually building homes for his four daughters there.

But 12 years ago, the final, decaying Lord home was demolished and construction began on the eight-story building.

But once the shell of it was completed, work seemingly came to a halt.

And in the years since, Dromm said, the site has become an on-again, off-again homeless encampment — “they had tents and everything” — and a magnet for graffiti vandals.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If this were Manhattan it would be the Dyckman House museum, but its Queens, the home of politician boot lickers.

Someday you will grow a pair and have enough self-respect and pride to fight for your community.

Not.

Anonymous said...

I guess Danny Dromm didn't get paid enough under the table to do something about it --

Anonymous said...

It's interesting to note that this monstrosity was allowed as an alteration to the original 1853 one family home.How that was even possible is anyone's guess in Crap City.

Anonymous said...

Would be nice to know why it's being left uncompleted. What sort of developer wastes money like that in a booming market?

Anonymous said...

An Asian "developer"!
Waddaya expect!
Tommy Huang wrote the book on delay, destroy, etc. procedures.