Man hunting for package thief

From CBS 2:

A fed-up homeowner tracked down a thief who stole a package left at his Queens home.

As CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez reported, the thief looked right into a surveillance camera before snatching a box off the front stoop of Jason Gratz’s house on Beach 139th Street in Belle Harbor on Tuesday morning.

“That’s the worst thing about it – not what’s in the contents of the package. It could have been $1, it could have been $1 million, it didn’t really matter. Just the feeling of being violated like that, it really just burned me,” he told Sanchez.

Surveillance video shows the ponytailed robber pausing to eye his target before turning his black cap, contemplating his getaway, and then grabbing the package.

Gratz walked all over his neighborhood and found a construction crew at a condominium that recognized the suspect as someone who had been working at the site, which is just two blocks from his home.

He said he tracked down where the suspect works and informed police, hoping they make a quick arrest.

Former Belle Harbor nursing home is hazardous to health

From CBS 2:

“The owners of the Chai Nursing Home didn’t do a thing to fix it, clean it up, board it up,” Palmiero said.

The owner of the property refused to be interviewed on camera, but told CBS2 that he bought the property 2 years ago and that it is safely secured.

A CBS2 news team found a door wide open for someone to walk right in.

The Palmieros shared pictures they took of people climbing on the roof and fences to get inside, and racoons and opossums who have made the building their home.

According to the Department of Buildings website, the property has dozens fo active violations including one for failing to secure the building walls, making it a hazard to the public.

The DOB said twelve of the violations are safety violations. Mrs. Palmiero who suffers from blood cancer said she feels her health is at risk.

Goodbye Pathmark & Waldbaum's, hello Stop & Shop

Queens Courier

From the Queens Courier:

Stop & Shop is looking to grab six Queens supermarkets off the clearance rack.

The company announced Monday it is acquiring local Pathmark and Waldbaum’s supermarkets from the struggling Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which filed for bankruptcy. In all, Stop & Shop is purchasing 25 Pathmark, Waldbaum’s and A&P locations in the tri-state area from the grocery giant for $146 million. The deal is subject to court approval, but is expected to be finalized before the end of this calendar year.

Stop & Shop currently has five locations in Queens, including on Myrtle Avenue in Glendale; on Union Turnpike on the Glendale/Forest Hills border; on Northern Boulevard in Little Neck; and on 48th Street in Long Island City.

The chain will more than double its presence in the “World’s Borough” with the addition of three Waldbaum’s stores on 26th Avenue in Bayside, Beach Channel Drive in Belle Harbor and Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach, as well as three Pathmark locations on Farrington Street in Flushing, Atlantic Avenue in Ozone Park and Springfield Boulevard in Springfield Gardens.

Sandy victims can pay money back slowly

From the Daily News:

Seniors at a Queens assisted living facility made homeless by Hurricane Sandy will not have to dig into their meager bank accounts to pay back federal disaster relief aid, lawmakers announced Tuesday.

About 30 residents of Belle Harbor Manor in Rockaway were driven to panic in November when the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent letters asking them to return funds because they were also reimbursed by insurance companies.

“I will sleep better tonight,” said Angelo Cantanzaro, who has lived at the complex for 10 years and was asked by FEMA to repay almost $2,500. “The poor people got a break.”

The residents had collectively received $108,598, with most of that money intended to cover temporary housing, according to data obtained through a previous public records request.

They were moved to different state-funded shelters, and they used the money to purchase vital items such as food and clothing.

Assisted living residents asked to return Sandy aid money

From CBS New York:

Several assisted living residents in Queens received a shock recently after FEMA asked for reimbursement on aid given out following Superstorm Sandy.

Residents of the Belle Harbor Manor assisted living center in the city’s Rockaway Peninsula spent four months after Superstorm Sandy moving through a series of emergency shelters due to flooding at the facility.

Now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency wants at least a dozen of those disabled, elderly and mostly poor residents to return thousands of dollars in disaster aid.

“We’re on a fixed income. I don’t have that kind of money!” said 61-year-old Robert Rosenberg, who suffers from a spinal disability and other chronic health problems.

FEMA said the money should never have been paid out since it was meant for temporary housing and instead the residents were moved from one state-funded shelter to another.

Following the storm, residents were forced to move to a huge evacuation center set up inside a Brooklyn armory, then live four-to-a-room at a hotel in a crime-plagued neighborhood, then to a halfway house on the grounds of a partly abandoned psychiatric hospital in Queens, where they bunked on cots and were barred from having visitors in their rooms.

Belle Harbor still shaken by storms

Things still ain't what they used to be in Rockaway

From the Daily News:

More than three months after Superstorm Sandy ripped through Rockaway, residents are still struggling without the services New Yorkers take for granted: electricity, post offices, banks and supermarkets.

But what’s even more painful, some locals say, is the perception outside the peninsula that life is somehow back to normal.

“They don’t understand,” said long-time Belle Harbor resident Ed Andrews. “They need to come out here and take a walk along the beach.”

A home at the end of Andrews’ block still sits precariously on the sand, one side torn open by the storm to reveal a dining room and staircase.

“You have to go down Woodhaven Blvd. or Brooklyn to do shopping,” said Andrews, adding the commercial strip on Beach 129th St. is “demolished.”

There are still almost 2,000 customers without power in the Rockaways, according to the Long Island Power Authority.

Mold found at Belle Harbor school

From the NY Post:

Department of Education officials found mold and asbestos in a storm-damaged Queens school that last week was cleared for students to return — but only after parents insisted that the officials check.

It took scores of complaints from parents and meetings at the school before officials agreed to conduct tests for moisture and other hazards at PS 114 in Belle Harbor, which had been shut for more than a month after Hurricane Sandy.

Late yesterday, DOE officials quietly posted findings of subsequent tests online showing that areas of mold and asbestos in the auditorium and a nearby stairwell require removal.

Additionally, two of 14 water fountains showed elevated levels of copper.

In a letter to parents, Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm committed to removing the mold and asbestos over the coming two weekends.

City reopened Zone A school prematurely?

Recovery efforts in Broad Channel and Rockaway

Donate to Broad Channel Fire Department here.

Most expensive Queens homes are in Rockaway

From the Daily News:

A new report on the priciest blocks in Queens has been raising eyebrows over some unexpected results.

Belle Harbor, in the Rockaways, had the borough’s most expensive block — which came as a surprise to local brokers.

The median Belle Harbor home price on Rockaway Beach Blvd., between Beach 145th and Beach 146th Sts. was $2.5 million, according to the PropertyShark report.

Forest Hills Gardens scored the next three spots on the list, with median home prices in the vicinity of Seasongood Road and Ascan Ave. fetching $1.66 million to $1.35 million.

Other areas on the list of pricey blocks included Douglaston, Oakland Gardens and Jamaica Estates.

Whitestone was also very expensive...but wasn’t pricey enough to make the cut.

Southeast Queens, and in particular Jamaica, where the lion’s share of the borough’s foreclosures have been, had the lowest home values...

Expensive monster house sells in Rockaway

From Curbed:

The folks at PropertyShark have delved into the data to come up with a list of the most expensive properties sold in Queens in 2011 - and the most expensive, 131 Beach 139th Street, made us blink and double-check our map to make sure we were talking about the same Queens. (The borough's second priciest transaction was for a much more typical-looking property.) 131 Beach was listed for $5.379 million in May 2010 and sold for $3.2 million in September 2011. Not a positive result for the seller, who spent $3.4 million on the house in 2006. Then again, this is the kind of place that won't necessarily appeal to every buyer.

Crime way up in "good" parts of Rockaway

From the NY Post:

The Rockaways are getting rocked by crime!

Felonies in the 100th Precinct in Queens, which blankets Belle Harbor, Breezy Point, Broad Channel and other western areas of the peninsula, have gone through the roof, according to the latest police statistics.

Burglaries have jumped 144 percent, from 54 last year to 132 this year. Felony assaults have soared 66 percent, from 78 to 130. Robberies have gone up 31 percent, from 63 to 83. Grand larcenies are up 26 percent over last year. The crime wave is so pervasive that a local deli is even offering pamphlets that warn customers, “Do You Feel Safe and Secure? We Hope You Do ... But Maybe You Shouldn’t!”

Meanwhile, crime in Manhattan’s 20th Precinct, which covers the Upper West Side, showed the most significant drop, plunging 12.8 percent this year, police statistics through Dec. 18 reveal.

Not a day at the beach for Rockaway man

From the Daily News:

It's the second wave for a Belle Harbor man who sued the city for building sand dunes on a four-block stretch of the Rockaways.

James Agoglia, 40, is appealing a judge's decision to toss his lawsuit, which claims the dunes restrict access to the beach and don't prevent erosion, as originally intended.

"We didn't want dunes there in the first place," said Agoglia, who lives on Beach 141st St., about 350 feet from the dunes. "All it did was shrink the beach for people who use the beach." The Parks Department constructed the dunes in 1997 between Beach 138th St. and Beach 142nd St., as an "experiment in erosion control, designed to keep sand on the beach and out of your street and yards and homes," said then-Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.

But Agoglia said the experiment has been a failure and has benefitted only the six homes directly in front of the dunes.

"The sole purpose of those dunes was to give privacy to those homeowners," Agoglia said.

Agoglia and five fellow plaintiffs sued the Parks Department and the state Department of Environmental Conservation in Queens Supreme Court in 2006.

Justice Janice Taylor tossed out the case in March 2009. In her ruling, Taylor wrote that the plaintiffs failed to show "that they have suffered a different harm than the harm allegedly suffered by the public at large."