Sponge worthy

 

QNS

 

A residential street in the Rockaways is the first in the city to be redesigned with groundbreaking infrastructure methods to absorb stormwater and reduce tidal flooding from Jamaica Bay.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced on Sept. 6 that construction on a $1.2 million project that transformed three roadway medians into green infrastructure “sponges” that mitigate chronic flooding on Beach 67th Street between Almeda and Thursby Avenues in Arverne have been completed.

 “Transforming these medians into working green infrastructure that absorbs stormwater helps reduce any flooding along Beach 67th Street while also protecting nearby Jamaica Bay,” DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala. “In just the last several years we have constructed more than 12,000 similar installations that absorb stormwater and beautify neighborhoods across the city. We will continue to aggressively expand this critical work that is making our city more resilient to the changing climate.”

The completion of the project was announced just as forecasters began to warn of a potential hurricane threat to the East Coast forming in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Lee was upgraded to a hurricane on Wednesday with the potential to become a category 4 hurricane by the weekend, but it is too early to predict the storm’s path.

“As peak hurricane season nears, these new green infrastructure sponged in Arverne are a welcome addition to the Rockaway community, which we know is extremely prone to strong storms and coastal flooding,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said. “Every new median helps as we leave no stone unturned to mitigate flooding and protect our shoreline communities.”

Work included removing the old median curbs, trees, plantings and the accumulated trash. Stormwater storage vaults and drains were installed five feet below the surface and covered with stones and engineered soil – all elements designed to maximize the amount of stormwater that the median will be able to contain. Modeling shows that the new medians will absorb approximately 90,000 gallons of stormwater annually.

Whale washed up in Arverne

Arverne by the sea blues

 

The Wave

Vandalism, car break-ins, and theft. This has become the norm in Arverne By The Sea over the last couple months with multiple incidents making residents question the area’s safety. The concerns have led some at “The Dunes” section of ABTS looking to hire a private security firm. 

“Over the course of two months, acts of blatant, senseless vandalism [have] increased dramatically,” Qin Chen, the president of The Dunes HOA at ABTS, told The Wave. “We had numerous reports that a group of young teens would go through the community yelling, and destroying property. We have over a dozen homeowners who’ve reported cases of vandalism and property damage, which includes rocks being thrown through windows, car windows being stepped on, and random acts of destruction.”

In addition, some residents of ABTS have reported their packages missing, suspecting they are being stolen off their porches. 

To address these security concerns, the Board met with Captain Chris Dipreta, Lt. Ramos Polanco, and Officer Victor Boamah of the 100th Precinct on July 21, according to The Dunes Newsletter.

As a result of the meeting, the precinct “agreed to provide The Dunes with ‘directed’ patrols throughout the week” in hopes of discouraging crime in the area. The officers also urged ABTS residents to “report every incident by either calling 911 or ‘texting’ 911 instead of calling the precinct directly” and purchasing their own security cameras in the hopes of the video footage serving the precinct in future investigations. 

Chen and other members of the HOA are looking into finding private security as well.

Off-duty rookie cop shot during carjacking attempt by Arverne By The Sea

 

Eyewitness News  

 An off-duty NYPD police officer was shot and wounded during an attempted carjacking as he drove to work in the Arverne section of Queens last night.

The 22-year-old rookie was shot at the intersection of Beach Channel Drive and Beach 62nd Street at around 10:20 p.m. Tuesday.

Two men tapped on his window of his personal vehicle with a gun. The officer got out, and one of the men fired several shots, striking him in the shoulder.

The off-duty officer returned fire as the suspects ran away.

Responding officers rushed the shot man to Jamaica Hospital, where he was in stable condition and expected to recover.

When other officers from the nearby precinct caught up with the suspects three blocks away on Beach Channel Drive, one of the suspects fired a shot at them.

City integrates nature and upscale hotel in plan for Rockaway redevelopment

Crains New York

L+M Development Partners, the Bluestone Organization and Triangle Equities have closed on $30.3 million in financing for the first phase of Arverne East, a 116-acre oceanfront development in the Arverne and Edgemere neighborhoods of the Rockaways.

The first phase is a 35-acre nature preserve with a new building featuring a welcome center, a park ranger office, a comfort station and a community center, owned and operated by nonprofit organization Rise.

According to plans, the entire development eventually will include 1,650 units of housing—80% of which will be affordable—retail space and a beachfront hotel atop city-owned land that has been vacant and dilapidated for nearly 50 years.

 “In moving forward with this long-envisioned plan for Arverne East, we are ushering in a more resilient and inclusive future for the Rockaways community,” said Louise Carroll, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

In the early 1970s, the city acquired and cleared most of the urban-renewal area for redevelopment to remove substandard housing and make way for new low- and moderate-income housing, but it hasn’t been redeveloped. 

The project completed the city’s arduous uniform land-use review process in March, with a push from Borough President Donovan Richards, who recommended the plans be approved. Construction on the whole project is expected to be finished by 2031.

 

Water's Edge development is falling apart

From The Wave:

On Friday, Jan. 13, owners of the condominiums, Water’s Edge in Arverne stood in front of their ‘shoddily constructed’ city-financed dream of first-time homeownership for low and moderate income people and proclaimed it a nightmare.

Council Member Donovan Richards stood in solidarity with the homeowners, asking the Briarwood Organization for one simple thing.

“Just do the right thing,” said Richards. “One of the many dreams we have in life is to become the owner of our very own home. Many people, particularly in our city, never get that opportunity, never mind an affordable home. Unfortunately, for many of the residents here, that dream turned into a reality and then a nightmare. Briarwood needs to make this right and if they don’t, we are calling on HPD to refuse to work with their organization on any subsidized projects.”

On Sept. 1, 2016, the condominium board sued the Briarwood Organization Arverne /Briarwood II, LLC, its principals, Vincent L. Riso, Raymond Riso, James Riso, Howard Goodman, and Briarwood Properties, Inc. who built the 130-unit complex consisting of 65 two-story buildings, with a condo unit on each floor after winning the bid of the Request For Proposal (RFP) issued by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) during the Bloomberg administration.

Arverne owners file lawsuit over poor construction

From Crains:

Households who bought affordable condominiums in a city-sponsored Queens development are now stuck with $10 million in repairs due to shoddy construction, a lawsuit filed earlier this month alleges.

On Sept. 1, the condo board for Waters Edge at Arverne sued the Briarwood Organization and its principals, which built the 130-unit complex in the Rockaways after winning a request for proposals issued by the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The board is seeking a total of about $150 million from the developer and another $60 million from the project's designers, AIA Architects.

Waters Edge, a development for low- and moderate-income households, was approved during the Bloomberg administration and completed in 2009. The complex is composed of 65 two-story buildings featuring a condo unit on each floor. The average cost for a two-bedroom unit was $188,000 and $300,000 for a three-bedroom.

Among several causes of action, the suit alleges that gutters, roofs and the frames of doors and windows were improperly installed and sealed, which has led to standing water, leaks and structural water damage. The findings were detailed in a 2015 report commissioned by the law firm Adam Leitman Bailey, which is representing the board. Many of the boilers in the complex were also installed contrary to the manufacturer's directions, residents said, which has left some homes without enough heat and causes a particular room to remain perpetually cold.

Additionally, the suit claims at least two aspects of Waters Edge's design violate the city's building code, even though the plans were approved by the city's Department of Buildings. For example, a valve to shut off the water supply to the apartments should be located in each unit, according to building code. But at Waters Edge, valves for both units in a house are located in the first floor condo. Similarly, the electric code states that every resident will have "ready access" to a box of circuit breakers. But in the complex, both circuit-breaker boxes are located within the top unit's garage. According to a Buildings Department spokesman, the city conducted several audits of the blueprints before construction began, but did not cite the owner for the locations of the water shut-off valves or circuit boxes.

Arverne development resists hipster invasion

From the NY Times:

The growing popularity of surfing in the Rockaways has created a resurgence, attracting large beach crowds, fueling new businesses and generating other economic boosts.

But it has also made the two New York City-sanctioned surfing beaches, near Beach 90th and Beach 67th Streets in Queens, packed with wave seekers.

“Surfing has completely exploded, and we’re jammed into small areas,” said Conrad Karl, a local surfer and restaurateur. “We need to spread out a little bit. It would be safer.”

Calling the crowded lineups of surfers potentially dangerous, many surfers are pushing for a new or expanded surfing area, specifically along a stretch from Beach 66th Street to Beach 60th, an area that Mr. Karl calls “basically dead, going to waste” since it is closed to both swimming and surfing.

But, as it happens, the surfers’ campaign has collided with another explosion in the area: the infusion of hundreds of new residents into the vast Arverne by the Sea development along that same stretch of beach.

Many of its residents also want those beaches opened, but for swimming. The problem is that city officials forbid swimming and surfing in the same area, because swimmers and surfers could collide.

Maspeth & Arverne homeowners may be in similar predicament

From the Queens Chronicle:

The homeowners who were forced out of their Maspeth house by a collapsing basement wall on Friday think the damage could be tied to a sinkhole in the street on 58th Road, but city agencies say the family is on its own for effecting repairs and making the building safe again.

Sean and Danielle Maher have owned 69-11 58 Road for just over three years. Danielle Maher, her toddler daughter and four tenants were forced to flee the building Friday afternoon as the eastern wall to their basement first cracked then collapsed.

Inspectors with the Department of Buildings on Friday afternoon posted evacuation orders on the Mahers’ home and one located across a small walkway at 69-13.

In television interviews this past weekend the Mahers suggested that the troubles could be linked to a large sinkhole in the middle of the street on 58th Road that the city repaired earlier this year.
Danielle Maher in published reports said she stepped in the snow-covered hole this past winter as she carried her daughter.

The hole, which is in front of the house at 69-09 — connected to the Mahers’ home — is almost perfectly round and more than two feet in diameter. It still goes down about three to four inches at its deepest point.

A longtime resident of the block said sinkholes have existed there for some time, including the one in the street in front of 69-09, and been the subject of multiple calls to 311.

An official DEP statement on Monday said only that personnel inspected a sewer line that runs under the street adjacent to the property and that the line was found to be intact and functioning properly.

I sent this story to Steve Major, who alerted the media to the sinkholes in Arverne after Sandy. His response:

I think the families along the series of sinkholes in Arverne Queens are in about the same boat. The city told them it's their problem to resolve as well despite being result of either 1) city water main breaks, or 2) a historic drainage canal not properly backfilled before the land was sold to developers by the city, IMO. No matter the cause, it is certainly not a subsurface condition the homeowners ever knew about and therefore the burden cannot be placed on them. The city is bullying people by not even investigating the cause(s). We the people need to organize everyone in similar situations. This is one of the top projects on the list of The Real Volunteers (TRV) philanthropy programs to help investigate, fix and prove who should be responsible since no one else has helped them... "The Beach 68th St, Averne, NY Sandy Sink Holes Homeowner Advocacy Program - City officials have told the residents on these blocks that each of the whole series of a dozen sinkholes in their yards and under their homes is each individual homeowner’s financial responsibility to repair. These were subsurface conditions (I believe an old municipal drainage canal not properly filled) that the residents could’ve never even known existed beneath their homes. We will contract a civil engineering firm to perform subsurface ultrasounds, exploratory excavations, etc. in order to prove the nature of the cause of the sinkholes and be prepared to testify as to those findings to force the repairs."

Call to repair Jamaica Bay bulkheads

From the Daily News:

Jamaica Bay's crumbling seawalls are putting some Queens residents in jeopardy of flooding.

City Councilman Donovan Richards and other officials called on the city to repair Hurricane Sandy-damaged bulkheads in order to protect Arverne streets and homes from the bay’s deluge.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is studying the seawalls, but the report will not be completed quickly enough to stave off current flooding threats, Richards said.

The final round of skeeter spraying?

From the Queens Courier:

Another round of West Nile spraying is set for parts of Queens this week.

The spraying will take place on Thursday, Sept. 18, between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 6 a.m. the next morning. In case of bad weather, the application will be delayed until Monday, Sept. 22 during the same hours.

The following neighborhoods are being treated to help reduce the mosquito population and the risk of the disease, according to the city’s Health Department:

Parts of Arverne, Bays Water, Edgemere, Far Rockaway, Hammels and Somerville (Bordered by Jamaica Bay to the north; Cross Bay Parkway to the west; Atlantic Ocean to the south; and Nassau County Boundary to the east).

Parts of Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Saint Albans and Springfield Gardens (Bordered by 119th Avenue to the north; Farmers Boulevard to the west; Merrick Boulevard to the south; and Belt Parkway and Nassau County Line to the east).

Queens getting more homeless shelters

From the Queens Courier:

A community is outraged and looking for answers as they learned the city went behind their backs to turn an East Elmhurst motel into a permanent homeless shelter.

Last week, the city’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) approved the conversion of the Westway Motor Inn, located at 71-11 Astoria Blvd., into a shelter to immediately house over 100 homeless families, according to officials. The shelter will be managed by social services provider Women In Need.

“The agreement was that the homeless people would be bused in at night and out in the morning, no permanent housing,” [Rose Marie] Poveromo said. “We have no voice, the government doesn’t follow the will of people.”

“We are deeply troubled by this decision and find it disturbing that neither elected officials nor community leaders were informed or consulted beforehand,” a group of elected officials wrote in a letter to DHS Commissioner Gilbert Taylor after being told about the plan the day before the families were expected to begin moving into the motel. “While we appreciate that DHS is legally required to provide shelter for the homeless, the agency’s failure to provide any notification to the people currently living in the area who are impacted by its implementation is unacceptable.”

The emergency town hall meeting on the Westway Motor Inn homeless shelter will be held on Wednesday, July 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of the Moving Image at 36-01 35th Ave.

Then there's this from the Daily News about a shelter in Rockaway:

The city's plan to quietly convert a former Rockaway rehab center into a homeless shelter has enraged residents and officials, who say their peninsula is being used as a dumping ground.

“Without any talk of essential services being added to Rockaway, this is not a good proposal,” said City Councilman Donovan Richards. “We have done everybody’s share for the last 30 to 40 years.”

The Department of Homeless Services is set to begin housing 155 homeless families at the site of the former Daytop Village drug rehabilitation center on Beach 65th St., officials confirmed Wednesday.

The city drew up a contract with Housing Bridge, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that operates 16 shelters throughout the city.

Shocked local leaders said they were misled by the city and had no idea the agency was eyeing the site for a shelter.

An official from the Department of Homeless Services told Richards’ office in June there were “no plans to build anything there,” according to emails obtained by the Daily News through a Freedom of Information request.

I've lost count, are we up to 4 shelters for Queens this year, 2 of which the City lied about? It's funny how Comptroller Scott Stringer signed off on these secret shelters then scolded the DHS in a letter for opening them without community input.

This crisis may be due in part to "migrant children".

A sunken forest for Arverne?

From Capital New York:

The architects behind a "double dune" system envisioned for parts of the Rockaways are pushing an even more ambitious proposal for the barrier peninsula: a sunken Forest.

"It's more for animals than for people, but the part for the people is primarily resiliency against flooding and sea surges," said Walter Meyer, who runs Local Office Landscape Architecture with his wife, Jennifer Bolstad.

Last Wednesday, Meyer, Bolstad and the developers they are working with presented their Sunken Forest-like proposal to the public at a charter school in Far Rockaway, part of a larger bid to win community and government backing for a mixed-use development called Arverne East.

Arverne East, in turn, is the latest in a multi-phase plan to build a new neighborhood on more than 300 city-controlled acres between Beach 32nd and Beach 84th streets in the Rockaways. That partially complete neighborhood is already home to than 1,000 families, but the Arverne East portion has been hampered by, among other things, the real estate crash.

Now, after Hurricane Sandy, the developers are re-imagining the project with the 50-acre nature park as one of its most beguiling features.

Will every unit come with a canoe?

From the Daily News:

City Councilman Donovan Richards said he is pushing the city — and prodding developers — to move ahead with plans to build affordable housing and retail on a portion of the dormant 80-acre site in Rockaway.

“We’re at a pinnacle time here,” said Richards (D-Laurelton). “Mayor de Blasio has set a (city-wide) goal of 200,000 affordable units and the developer is in a good place.”

Richards said he is meeting with officials from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development on Tuesday to discuss the project’s future.

He is optimistic that shovels could be in the ground within the year.

Richards is insistent that affordable housing be included in any plan — saying it could be on a sliding scale that would include teachers, firefighters and police officers.

In 2007, the city reached an agreement with L+M Development, Bluestone Organization and Triangle Equities to develop the site, but that plan was waylaid by the economic downturn. And then, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the peninsula.

Sandy volunteer still trying to raise money to fix up Rockaways

"This reality show I’m still fighting to get launched (I won’t be on it, just behind the scenes), donating 100% of all Creator & Exec Producer $ I earn (& w/ 100% transparency) back into these communities guarantees me extraordinary inner wealth for life." - Steve Major, aka the "Arverne Sinkhole guy"

You can visit The Real Volunteers on Facebook and Tumblr

Far Rockaway YMCA 8 months behind schedule

From the Daily News:

The News got a sneak peek into the $23 million, 44,000-square-foot Y on Beach 73rd St. which is undergoing the final phases of construction. It’s slated to open on Feb. 14, 2014.

The facility was built as part of the Arverne-by-the-Sea urban renewal project. The funding came from the developers, city officials and private dollars.

“We’re building a community in Arverne,” said Gerry Romski, project executive for Arverne-by-the-Sea. “The Y is a very important component.”

Owners of that community will get a free one-year family membership, he said.

Correction: The funding did not come from city officials, it came from taxpayer dollars. And offering free membership to the people who can most afford it isn't elitist or anything. Funny thing is, the last we heard, this place was supposed to have opened this past June and the total cost was $25M.

Seeking uses for vacant Far Rockaway land

From Brownstoner Queens:

Permanent development is in the works for a vacant, 80-acre site on the Rockaway Peninsula, an area badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy, but in the meantime the organization 596 Acres is looking toward interim uses for the land. A few weeks ago, the group led a discussion on potential interim uses for these empty lots in the Arverne East/Edgemere neighborhood — all those green dots in the map above are public vacant space. Proposals for the lots include a food fest, a view tower for star gazing, a farmers market, and a ski trail. See the details of each proposal here.

Let's build more new housing in Rockaway!

From Curbed:

Rebuilding is proceeding in the areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy, and one spot ripe for a new post-storm approach is Arverne East, an 80+-acre site first designated for development seven years ago. Progress stopped amid the credit crisis, and the developers (and friends) sought a new design through a two-phase competition announced several months ago. Four finalists, announced this morning, will each receive $30,000 to develop their proposals.

The four firms given the finalist nod, out of 117 submissions, were Ennead Architects, Lateral Office, Seeding Office, and White Arkitekter. Only Ennead is based in NYC—the other firms are based in Toronto, London, and Goteberg, Sweden. (Another six firms received honorable mentions—again with only one NYC-based entrant among them.) Each team has until October 7 to submit its final design, and the winner—to be announced October 24—will receive another $30,000 and the chance to be involved with the actual design of the site.

You'd think a storm buffer would be preferable, but not in NYC! We never learn.

Hurry and develop more of Arverne before the next storm!

From Curbed:

Several competitions and exhibitions have cropped up focused on rebuilding and sustainable design in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The latest, unveiled at the Center for Architecture today, came together in less than two months and involves a long-stalled site in a "distressed and somewhat ignored" area, in the developer's words, of the Rockaway Peninsula. The more-than-80-acre site in question, Arverne East, was designated for development by L & M Development Partners, Triangle Equities, and the Bluestone Organization seven years ago, but the financial crisis brought the plans grinding to a halt. Following the storm, the developers are ready to resume work, but the old site plan no longer applies. Instead, the developers (and a bunch of other partners listed on the competition site) are seeking input from architects, engineers, interested members of the community, and pretty much anyone else in a two phase competition. The full details and competition brief are available on the official website.

Regardless of who wins, the ultimate site plan will need to be mixed-use, sustainable, "storm-resilient," and mixed-income.

You really gotta love it when the mayor is encouraging more coastal development at the same time that the governor is paying people to leave the waterfront.

It's also interesting when the Curbed comments read like Queens Crap comments.

At least it's not gunshots...

From CBS New York:

Construction crews are working around the clock to get the Rockaway boardwalk reconstructed in time for the start of summer.

But some neighbors have complained that the noise is out of hand.

Cement pilings are being pounded into the sand. Arverne by the Sea homeowner Vincent Castellano said the constant thumping has kept him up at night.

“The couch shakes, the bed shakes,” Castellano told WCBS 880′s Monica Miller. “You leave the TV on to drown out the noise. The lights shine into the apartment.”

Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanaugh with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation said they’re trying to get life back on track at the beach by Memorial Day.