Part 2 of Queens Tribune's city council debate

Part 1 of Queens Tribune's city council debate

Featuring: Hiram Monseratte, Rory Lancman, Peter Koo, Alison Tan, Paul Vallone, Paul Graziano, Elizabeth Crowley and Robert Holden

Fraternity is hazing the neighborhood

From the Daily News:

Profane messages scrawled on the front door of a cape-style home are the latest in a string of obnoxious shenanigans to befall a tree-lined Fresh Meadows block ever since a St. John’s University frat moved onto 69th Ave. in September.

“Toxic. Please help us. Do not enter. Dead inside. F---,” read the messages, which were written on the frat's front door more than a month ago.

Loud parties, blaring music, weed smoking and constant shouting have prompted irked neighbors to repeatedly call 311 on the raucous frat house, neighbors told The News.

“I regret moving here," said Barbara Sun, a new mother who says constant partying next door keeps her baby daughter awake all night. “This is my firstborn, I’m very excited about it. I just want to give her a quiet place to live.”

Strange rise and fall of Cecilia Chang

From the NY Times:

She was petite. Elegant. Forceful.

“She could walk into a room and dominate a conversation,” said Jonathan Derek, a former assistant of Dr. Chang’s who attended dinners where Dr. Chang entertained potential donors. “Just by being there, she was the center of attention.”

She made her home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, in a $1.7 million Tudor-style house with seven bedrooms, maid quarters, stone fireplaces and soaring ceilings with skylights.

Yet in many ways, Dr. Chang was a woman out of place.

As her legal troubles mounted in recent years, she found friendship among bartenders and casino bus drivers. She would curry favor by lending money to people from Chinese communities in Flushing and to fellow gamblers at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut, where she was spending more and more time.

And to her embarrassment, she never learned to speak English fluently, writing that she felt isolated from her colleagues, like a “money tree” that was shaken but never nurtured.

Dr. Chang was hired at St. John’s not long after graduating from its master’s program. Three years later, she was named a dean. A big part of her job was to keep the Taiwanese money flowing.

Closer to home, she helped arrange trips to Taiwan for political delegations from Queens that included Donald Manes, the Queens borough president who committed suicide after his role in a far-reaching bribery scandal became public in 1986.

Sid Davidoff, a lawyer, lobbyist and longtime friend of Mr. Manes’s, recalled that Dr. Chang served as the borough president’s political liaison to the Asian community in Queens. Dr. Chang was so close to Mr. Manes that when she renovated her Queens mansion, she asked him to manage the project, according to a former university colleague of hers who was not willing to be named. There was speculation that some of Dr. Chang’s business relationships extended into her personal life.

She followed in Donald's footsteps

Wondering what the tie was between all the tweeders and the recently deceased Cecilia Chang, who was on trial for embezzling at St. John's University?

This Queens Tribune article from 2003 is a great reminder:

I write this on Saturday, and three non-related events of the past two days brought into focus the part of Mike [Nussbaum]’s life that is somewhat separate from our business and his family. Although Mike integrates all that he does – his family members have become my friends and mine his – and his outside ventures often become my causes, there is another Mike.

Event 1, Thursday night: Lil and I attended the Queens Jewish Community Council’s 35th Anniversary Terrace-on-the Park Gala in honor of Claire Shulman and Mike Nussbaum.

Event 2, Friday afternoon: We cleared our Tribune office floors to make room for new carpet and in looking into Mike’s office, I noticed various mementos of a peace trip to North and South Korea that Mike had arranged when Congressman Gary Ackerman became the first person since Douglas McArthur to cross the 39th parallel which divides the two nations.

Event 3, Saturday morning: Mike took Senator Chuck Shumer to welcome Taiwan President Chen Shui-Bian to New York and announce Shumer was joining the newly formed Senate Taiwan Caucus to further ties between our two nations.

Yes, Mike brings us Asian clients and friends — but that’s the smallest part. His network includes the very top government officials and business giants in the Far East as well as their counterparts here in our country.

At the Thursday night affair, I met Mike’s old friend Dr. Cecelia Chang, vice president of St. John’s and Dean of the Asian Studies program. In 1980, as president of his own company, Mike helped Cecelia put together the first government and business delegation to visit Taiwan. Queens Chamber Prez, Citibank’s Peg Sweezy, Queens Beep Donald Manes, Congressman Jim Scheuer, Councilmembers Archie Spigner and Ed Sadowsky were a few who went with them. It was that trip which established Queens County and Taipai, the capital of Taiwan, as sister cities.

It also established Mike as a player in the Far East.

From the Daily Mail:

The New York Daily News also reports that detectives investigated Ms Chang in the murder of her husband. From his death bed, Mr Tsai reportedly wrote 'My wife did this!' when questioned by detectives.

He was shot four times in the back while leaving his business in Brooklyn, New York, in 1990. He died later and no one has every been charged in his death.

Tsai's note also suggested that Dr Chang had an affair with Queens Borough President Donald Manes, a neighbor who killed himself in 1986 after being caught in a scandal.

St. John's students target of bus stop robberies

From Eyewitness News:

Police are alerting Queens residents and St. John's University students about a band of bus stop bandits who appear to be getting bolder.

Officers from the 107th Precinct have stepped up their patrols with a new sense of urgency.

Detectives have released surveillance images of the three suspects.

Police say the victims were attacked moments after they stepped off the bus near Union Turnpike in Fresh Meadows.

The suspects approached the victims from behind and, in some cases, punched and kicked them before stealing cell phones, iPods, Blackberries and cash.

The bus stop bandits struck first on October 20 at 9.40 p.m. and again the next day. They then struck two weeks later, and just this week have struck four more times. Police say there were three muggings Wednesday night.

Drunken SJU students add to vibrant diversity

From the Queens Chronicle:

Residents of Jamaica Estates have had a big bone to pick with St. John’s University, the city and elected officials, and Monday they got their chance.

The Jamaica Estates Association held a meeting that night at the Hillcrest Jewish Center to discuss off-campus student housing — where illegal drinking, all-night partying and worse have some residents afraid and others angry.

In recent years, although St. John’s officials say that “the student population of the entire university has not increased,” the volume of complaints has grown concerning about as many as a dozen one-family houses occupied by students close to the Jamaica campus.

The room was filled to capacity during the nearly three-hour meeting, at which scores of homeowners all but finished each other’s sentences, relating stories of loud parties and obnoxious behavior by St. Johns students and their friends.

City codes allow for only “two unrelated persons” to join another in renting a residential unit — so it’s illegal for four or more college kids to live in a one-family house.

Longtime residents insist that unscrupulous realtors are illegally packing college kids into houses on quiet residential streets, and their blocks aren’t quiet anymore. They complained of one such “animal house” on Aberdeen Road that was the recent scene of a drunken bash of some 300 St. John’s students and their pals.

Neighbors recounted public urination and vomiting; a passed out youth on a front lawn, window-climbing, sexual escapades, tipped over mailboxes, and in one case a woman being threatened by a student, who was placed under arrest.

Police searching for Jamaica sex assault suspect

From Eyewitness News:

Police in Queens are searching for a man accused of sexually assaulting a teenager near St. John's University.

Investigators released a sketch of the suspect Wednesday night.

They say he approached a 16-year-old girl on Monday near 168th Street and 82nd Road.

He then grabbed her and attacked her.

Police say the man fled in a metallic royal blue vehicle with the new yellow New York State license plates.

Shots fired at Steinway Street pool hall

From the Queens Gazette:

A fight between patrons at an Astoria pool hall turned violent on April 9 when one of the men pulled a gun and fired several rounds, striking the second patron.

Law enforcement sources said the scene at the Racks billiard hall at 19-25 Steinway Street erupted in chaos at about 3 a.m. when shots were fired.

Police have no sure motive for the dispute, but club patrons said the fight started over a woman who had dated both men.

The shooting took place as members of the St. John’s University men’s and women’s basketball teams celebrated a birthday party at the pool hall. Team members fled the scene when the shots rang out, law enforcement sources said.

College students living in illegal conversions

NY1 VIDEO: Residents who live in Queens neighborhoods surrounding campuses such as St. John's University and Queens College say that a number of students are living in off-campus illegal apartments.

Shocking!

Padavan concerned over SJU illegal apartments

From the Times Ledger:

City officials are ramping up efforts to inform individuals about illegal apartments following complaints by state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose) and borough residents that too many college students are crammed into area homes, Queens Department of Buildings Commissioner Ira Gluckman told a Community Board 8 meeting last week.

“For the next two weeks we’re having our inspectors go to various subway stations to hand out fliers with information about illegal apartments,” Gluckman said at the Nov. 18 meeting.

The flier says a tenant should look into the legality of his or her apartment if the bedroom is in the cellar or attic, if they get electricity with an extension cord or if they lock their room with a padlock. It comes on the heels of Padavan’s October letter to Gluckman, in which he said there are at least 11 houses illegally inhabited by St. John’s University students in the Fresh Meadows and Jamaica Estates area.

The commissioner said DOB officials went to inspect each of the houses and confirmed that two were legal residences, gave one home two violations for subdividing the house and gave another residence one violation for creating an apartment in the attic. Inspectors were denied access to the other seven houses and Gluckman said they are not permitted to force their way into a house.

“We can get access warrants, but judges aren’t happy to give these out readily,” Gluckman said.

Padavan vs. illegal occupancy

From the Queens Gazette:

State Senator Frank Padavan has complained often and forcefully to Department of Buildings officials that numerous homes in the Jamaica Estates area are illegally housing St. John’s University students and endangering the community and students alike, but no official action has been taken to remedy the situation.

Last week, he pleaded in a letter to Queens DOB Commissioner Ira Gluckman:

“Your office must take action not only to protect the community, but also to protect the young students who are residing in conditions that may be hazardous. Many are living in basement or attic rooms, or in unsafe and improperly constructed illegal additions, without proper ventilation and/or exits in the event of fire or some other emergency.”

Padavan asked Gluckman to review department procedures “and provide us with a plan which will provide the community and ALL the residents proper housing, proper protection from abuses and dangerous conditions, and give us all a good, peaceful and safe quality of life”.

Copies of the October 26 letter also went to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Borough President Helen Marshall, citywide DOB Commissioner Robert Li Mandri, Community Board 8 and several local civic associations.

As of yesterday, Gluckman had not responded in any way to Padavan, so the lawmaker said his next move would be to go directly to Mayor Bloomberg.

SJU student has swine flu

From the Queens Courier:

A St. John’s University student tested positive for the swine flu that has dominated headlines throughout the country and world for the past week, according to school officials.

In a correspondence sent to the University community on Wednesday, April 29, school officials stated that one undergraduate commuter student on the Queens campus contracted the swine flu or H1N1 virus. The student’s name was not revealed.

“The student is fine and recovered,” St. John’s University spokesperson Dominic Scianna said on Thursday morning, April 30.