Queens, Bronx and Manhattan civic groups continue their battles against borough tower prisons

Patch

  A group of homeowners in Kew Gardens, Forest Hills and Briarwood is planning to sue the city in a last-ditch effort to stop a new jail from going up in their neighborhood and get the mayor's office to return to the drawing board.

The group, which calls itself the Community Preservation Coalition, is preparing to file an Article 78 lawsuit over the city's decision to approve building a new jail in Kew Gardens, part of a $9 billion plan to replace the detention facilities on Rikers Island with a new jail in every borough except Staten Island by 2026.

Article 78 refers to a civil law that empowers New Yorkers to challenge decisions made by public agencies or officials on the grounds that it was unlawful, arbitrary or capricious.

"We really want them to do a meaningful review," Kew Gardens Civic Association President Dominick Pistone told Patch in an interview. "We don't think they've fulfilled their obligations under the City Charter."

The New York City Charter lays out a series of design and funding details that officials must include for a capital project to be approved by the mayor. 

Members of Queens Community Board 9, which voted unanimously against the Kew Gardens jail plan last year, previously accused the mayor's office of failing to meet those requirements in a Sept. 27 letter to the City Council. 

The Kew Gardens Civic Association, which is helping spearhead the legal effort, sent a letter to homeowners Wednesday soliciting contributions to fund the lawsuit, pitching it as "an investment in preserving your home," according to a copy obtained by Patch.

NY Post

A group of South Bronx residents is suing the city in a bid to block a new jail from coming to their neighborhood as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s larger efforts to shutter the Rikers Island prison complex.

The suit, filed Tuesday in Bronx Supreme Court on behalf of the Diego Beekman Mutual Housing Association and other parties, seeks to halt construction on a 19-story, 886-bed jail planned for the site of the NYPD’s tow pound in Mott Haven — a neighborhood located in the nation’s poorest congressional district.

It alleges the de Blasio administration and City Council broke the law by snubbing alternative sites for the jail, failed to reveal the true environmental impact of the project to residents and snubbed the entire public-review process.

“The Mayor and Council Speaker broke the law and rigged the process to saddle a low-income community of color with a jail, plain and simple,” said Arline Parks, CEO of Diego Beekman Mutual Housing Association, which represents 5,000 residents in 38 buildings.

NY Daily News

 The city’s plan to construct a jail in Chinatown routinely neglected community input, including 
Native Americans concerned about the possibility of large amounts of human remains in the area of the planned facility, a lawsuit set to be filed Friday claims.

The suit, which will be filed by Neighbors United Below Canal and American Indian Community House, claims the city’s plan will cause “irreparable damage to indigenous lands” and that the city failed to adequately reach out to neighborhood organizations and affected residents.

“The work and outreach that’s gone into this lawsuit is work the city should have been doing in the first place," said Jan Lee, who runs Neighbors United Below Canal. “It’s a robust case because we did meaningful outreach to our neighbors and came to realize just how deeply negligent the mayor’s plan was from the very beginning.”

The suit, which was shared with the Daily News, also alleges the city violated its own land use procedure, in which the City Council must approve projects before they can be built, by changing the proposed location of the Manhattan facility from 80 Centre St. to 124-125 White St. at the last minute. The White St. location is where the borough’s current jail , known as “The Tombs,” stands.

“Although the community was not pleased with the initial proposal to build a new jail structure at 80 Centre Street, the change of location was even worse,” a draft of the lawsuit reads, noting that the new plan puts the jail near residences, small retailers and a senior center.

The city also identified that there is a “moderate to high” possibility of Native American remains at the site of the proposed Chinatown jail, but still failed to reach out to the indigenous community, neighborhood advocate Christopher Marte told the Daily News.

Gianaris suddenly concerned about LIC's dearth of open space

From the Times Ledger:

State Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) and several Long Island City community organizations are urging the city to include park space in Court Square as the neighborhood continues to grow at an unprecedented pace.

Gianaris called on the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Department of Transportation to renovate public land located underneath the Queensboro Bridge ramps between 23rd Street and Thompson Avenue and turn it into public space to reflect a proposal made in the 1999 Department of City Planning study.

“Long Island City is one of our fastest growing neighborhoods and we must ensure community needs are met as we grow,” Gianaris said Sept. 21. “More public park space must be part of the planning process and utilizing this parcel would be a great way to start.”

The public-owned lots are currently used by the city Department of Transportation and while the city can not build on them, it has proposed transferring air rights to The Lions Group, which plans on building two residential towers at 27-01 and 26-31 Jackson Ave. The Court Square Civic Association organized a rally against that plan last Saturday at the corner of Dutch Kills Street and Jackson Avenue.

Civic punishes anti-Machine candidate

From the Times Ledger:

Oster Bryan, the former candidate who ran for an Assembly seat in southeast Queens against incumbent Clyde Vanel (D-Queens Village) in the Sept. 13 Democratic primary was asked to resign from his post as the president of the St. Albans Improvement Association.

Bryan believes that an $8,000 grant sent to the civic association before the Sept. 13 primary by Vanel was at the heart of the decision of him getting booted from organization.

“They are trying to remove as president, and they are saying it’s because I ran for public office, but that makes no sense to me,” said Bryan. “There is no such rule on our books that says I can’t.”

The eight-page bylaws from the civic association did not indicate a member or leader of the organization could not run for office; however, a letter sent to the former candidate said that he knew of the funds that were sent to the civic association before he decided to run and put the needs of the nonprofit at risk.

“It appears that you had no interest nor respect for the welfare of this organization and its members. Instead you choose to join the race for the Assembly seat after already knowing Assemblyman Clyde Vanel gave the Civic a grant,” said the letter that was sent out by the organization’s Vice President Martha Oliver.

Vanel implied he had nothing to do with Bryan being asked to resign and that funds were sent to the civic association long before the primary race; however, he did not have records on hand as to when exactly he offered the grant as of Wednesday night.

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." - 1 Timothy 6:10

Kew Gardens opposed to Dizzy Lizzy's jail plan

STATEMENT BY KEW GARDENS CIVIC ASSOCIATION AND KEW GARDENS IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION -- October 4, 2017

The Kew Gardens Civic Association, representing Kew Gardens homeowners for over a century, and the Kew Gardens Improvement Association, representing apartment house dwellers for almost half a century, are united in their strong opposition to the plan offered by Elizabeth Crowley, presumably supported by other Queens City Council members, for situating one of the successors to Rikers Island in Kew Gardens.

The plan was never shared by Crowley with the residents of Kew Gardens and was apparently kept secret until its sudden release this week to the Mayor.

When the benign Queens House of Detention existed as part of our Civic Center until fifteen years ago it housed persons awaiting trial for very short stays; they were not likely to have many family visitors. And for those who came by car, there was plenty of parking nearby in the 900+ car Municipal Garage, now gone. The 307-car parking lot to open next year will be occupied by City and Court employees and by jurors; the streets of Kew Gardens will be scoured for non-existent parking spaces!

Kew Gardens’ residents accepted the House of Detention as a holding facility; it posed no serious problem. When District Attorney Richard Brown suggested that converting the building to office space for his agency would save the City a lot of money it is now paying for rent elsewhere, it seemed to make sense. We respect Judge Brown and think he should be taken seriously.

After the brouhaha last Spring when the distribution of Rikers’ prisoners was a headline topic, it was said that our Kew Gardens facility was not nearly big enough to accommodate enough prisoners from Queens; that the facility was outdated, that it would need to be demolished and rebuilt and that Kew Gardens could not provide enough prisoners to warrant a ”neighborhood prison,” one of the goals voiced for the break-up of Rikers. What happened??

In just the two days since the Crowley letter was made available we have received numerous replies from our members, all of whom are opposed to reopening the House of Detention. If community opinion is to mean anything, this project should be shelved.

Dominick Pistone, President
Kew Gardens Civic Association

Sylvia Hack, President
Kew Gardens Improvement Association

LIC residents want park, not another tower

From LIC Post:

A local development company filed plans to build a new 18-story residential and commercial tower in Long Island City yesterday, but a community group is looking to fight the project.

Rockrose Development, a company with several projects in Long Island City, filed plans yesterday to build an 18-story, 123-unit residential tower, with retail space on the first floor at 43-12 Hunter Street. The site is known by residents as ‘The Lot.’

According to the plans filed with the Department of Buildings, the project would have an outdoor terrace and amenity room for residents on the tenth floor, and another terrace and lounge on the 18th floor, as well as an exercise room. There would also be a lobby, laundry room, and mailroom on the bottom floors.

The new building would be 228 feet tall and would have 4,054 square feet of retail space. It would also have 86,562 square feet of residential space, meaning each apartment would average just over 700 square feet.

The Court Square Civic Association is attempting to fight back against the development, as the site has long been used as a public gathering space, despite the fact that it is privately owned.

The group has launched an online petition today calling for elected officials to work with Rockrose to save the property as open space and to generally create more open space and public parks in the area.

Post tells de Blasio to knock off the racism crap

From the NY Post:

If Mayor de Blasio thinks the Queens folks who’ve derailed his push for a new homeless shelter in Maspeth are just racists, he should say so himself. If he doesn’t, he needs to fire the aides who keep pushing that smear.

It’s been more than a week since mayoral aide Aja Worthy-Davis said city Comptroller Scott Stringer should be “ashamed” after “courting a group advocating for kicking women and toddlers onto the street [and] using ‘White Lives Matter’ as their protest song.”

Stringer had merely visited the Juniper Park Civic Association in Maspeth to hear concerns about the mayor’s ill-advised shelter plan for the area. More, he’d made a point of warning that the city needs more homeless shelters — but that communities deserve to have input on siting issues.

Cue Worthy-Davis’ harsh words — which themselves echo two videos put on the City Hall Web site by the mayor’s aides.

State Sen. Joe Addabbo accuses the mayor — rightly so — of hiding “behind an imaginary racial battle” that has no place in solving homelessness.

Worse, it seems de Blasio is leaving it to his aides to play the race card for him.

Man up, Mr. Mayor.

Civic group may file slander suit against BdB administration

From the Times Ledger:

The Juniper Park Civic Association is threatening to sue the de Blasio administration for slander by one of its spokeswomen, according to its president, Bob Holden. After city Comptroller Scott Stringer was invited to Middle Village last week speak to a town hall meeting addressing concerns with the city housing single men at the Holiday Inn Express, Aja Worthy-Davis released a statement saying, “Scott Stringer is courting a group advocating for kicking women and toddlers onto the street, using White Lives Matter as their protest song. He should be ashamed.”

The civic group hired attorneys who fired off a letter to City Hall asking for an apology and a retraction before taking the matter to the next level. They have not heard back, Holden said.

“It’s so slanderous and we’re going to take action on it because it’s so irresponsi­ble,” he said. “Nobody connected with the Juniper Park Civic Association used that term during our rallies, only the mayor’s office heard it. It has no remote connection to our group. We invited Scott Stinger to speak to us. It’s the mayor’s office that made this political and racial. I don’t have words, but it reflects the kind of people this mayor has hired. It is false. It is slanderous.”

In late September, the city produced two videos of the Maspeth group protesting outside a Bellerose hotel, and released them to social media. Holden and Addabbo believe the White Lives Matter chants were edited into one of the videos.

De Blasio will go to ridiculous lengths to malign his constituents and protect his donors

From the Queens Chronicle:

Comptroller Scott Stringer on Thursday called for empathy toward the homeless population in Queens and elsewhere, but added that the mayor’s policies are not working to solve the crisis facing the five boroughs.

Stringer, who is reportedly considering a primary challenge against Mayor de Blasio next year, spoke in front of hundreds of people concerned about the placement of single men at the Holiday Inn Express in Maspeth, as well as the 60,000-plus people in the shelter system.

Toward the end of the Q&A session, a homeless couple with two small children living in a Brooklyn shelter told Stringer of the deplorable conditions they’ve lived in — including a lack of privacy, curfews that inhibit them from keeping jobs and mouse droppings in their unit.

“The shelter system is not working for us,” Alan Diaz, the husband, said.

Stringer told Diaz his office would work with the couple to remedy their situation. A member of the Juniper Park Civic bought dinner for the family and the 50/50 raffle winner donated their winnings to the Diazs.

Asked about the comptroller's remarks on the mayor's policies, mayoral spokeswoman Aja Worthy-Davis said in an emailed statement “Scott Stringer is courting a group advocating for kicking women and toddlers onto the street, using White Lives Matter as their protest song. He should be ashamed.”

Bob Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, called Worthy-Davis’ statement “slanderous” and that he has consulted his attorney.

Henry Berger, counsel to the mayor, said in an emailed statement, "We are entitled to present facts and to express our opinions. Neither provides a basis for legal action."

The video produced by the Mayor’s Office has audio of a “White Lives Matter” chant as protesters earlier this month demonstrated outside the Bellerose Inn, which is being used as a homeless shelter but is in the process of transitioning people inside there to other locations. A Chronicle reporter at that rally did not hear the chant and some said the city may have added the audio to make the protesters seem racist.

Here are some of the speakers from the event. I can totally see them at a Klan rally, can't you? (end sarcasm)





Who is trying to divide the city?

Mayor de Blasio.

Who is working toward bringing it together?

The people.

Being mobilized helps

From DNA Info:

The low-income communities of the Lower East Side and the Rockaways both suffered extensive damage from Superstorm Sandy four years ago.

But advocates on the Lower East Side were able to engage more effectively in post-storm resiliency efforts than their counterparts in Queens because they already had a robust network of community activism in place from years of fighting gentrification, according to a recently published study from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice & the Graduate Center.

Researchers focused on the role of community organizations and being able to respond to the “climate change politics” of the city, which is increasingly important as the frequency of storms is expected to rise along with rising sea levels, noted Leigh Graham, John Jay environmental psychology professor and lead author of the study.

While both areas have high concentrations of public housing residents and low-income households, the Lower East Side’s pre-existing civic infrastructure of community based organizations and social services fighting against development pressures enabled residents to recover more quickly, according to researchers who spent six months interviewing community groups in the area and 18 months in the Rockaways.

The Rockaways, on the other hand, were at a disadvantage, not only because the area is more geographically isolated on the far edge of the city, but also because it’s more racially and economically segregated.

There’s a high concentration of poverty along the eastern part of the peninsula where the residents have suffered from decades of economic “malaise,” which in effect weakened and undermined their post-storm response, researchers found.

“The Lower East Side and the Rockaways had similar levels of exposure in terms of storm flooding,” Graham said, “but the Lower East Side groups were basically a partner in a lot of the resiliency efforts after the storm, in part because residents, who live there, have been fighting gentrification for 30 to 40 years and established a level of organization, trust and power, that they were able to get a seat at the table as important stakeholders.”

Community groups on the Rockaways did not have the same level of organization prior to the storm and remain more focused on meeting present economic needs than on pursing long-term resilience planning, she noted.

Court Square "civic" forming

From DNA Info:

Court Square, a longtime hub for office workers that's grown increasingly residential over the last few years, is getting its own civic organization dedicated to shaping future development.

The Court Square Civic Association will hold its first public meeting Sept. 29 at 7 p.m. at MoMA PS1. It will feature a panel discussion with City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, Penny Lee of the Department of City Planning and Paul Januszewski of the local developer Rockrose.

You all always have developers at your civic meetings, right? Say no more. ROFLMFAO!!!

Maspeth appears to defeat shelter plan without electeds' help

From the Daily News:

The co-owner of a Queens Holiday Inn that had been slated to become a homeless shelter said he wants out of the deal because the community opposition is too much.

Harshad Patel told neighborhood groups opposed to the Maspeth shelter that he wouldn’t go forward with the plans after they organized a protest in front of his home.

The protest was later nixed.

He confirmed he no longer supported the shelter to the Daily News on Thursday — and said he already told Acacia Network, the non-profit that had contracted with the city to run the shelter, he was done with the plan.

“The community doesn’t like it, so we decided not to move forward,” he said.

Calls to Acacia were not returned.

Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, said, “We’re going to celebrate, but cautiously.”

“We’ve seen things happen where someone tells us something is going to happen and it doesn’t,” he added.

A Twitter account linked to the Holiday Inn franchise posted Thursday that the deal was off.

“We would like to confirm that the Hotel will not be converting to a shelter as suggested. It will continue to operate as a Hotel,” the tweet said.
__________________________________

This is interesting, considering that yesterday the electeds met with the DHS Commissioner and were told that the plan was moving forward. Also, Queens Community Board 5 received an official "notice" letter from Acacia notifying them of their intentions.

Naturally, Liz Crowley, totally caught off guard, is trying to inject herself into the victory at the last second:

This would just be sort of a par for the course type of thing if it wasn't for the fact that Crowley stated that protesting in front of the hotel was a waste of time and that action should be taken in an official capacity. Thankfully, Maspeth residents were smart enough to realize that you can NEVER count on elected officials to do anything, and protesting is actually what brought this development about, along with Tony Avella's letter to the US Attorney.

For added fun, Curtis Sliwa is showing up tonight at the hotel.

Mosque variance going to court

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Kissena Park Civic Association and state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) are considering filing an Article 78 lawsuit over a controversial plan to build a mosque in Flushing at 46-05 Parsons Blvd.

The group behind the plan, Masjid e-Noor, sought approvals for variances from the Board of Standards and Appeals, which has not yet published the resolution that includes the waivers and conditions for the project. All of the waivers sought were approved, according to BSA spokesman Ryan Singer.

“They got what they were asking for,” Singer told the Chronicle.

The site is a small, unusually shaped lot at the corner of 46th Avenue and Parsons Boulevard.

The lawsuit — which would aim to overturn the BSA’s decision — has to be filed within 30 days after the agency publishes its resolution with the waivers and conditions for the project, which it will do early next week, according to Singer.

“The Board of Standards and Appeals approved the applicant’s request to waive regulations pertaining to maximum floor area regulations, front yard and height and setback to permit a house of worship to be built at 46-05 Parsons Blvd in Queens,” Singer said in an emailed statement. “The building did not change during the hearing process although waivers were added to accommodate the proposed dome.”

The variances sought were for parking, floor area ratio, sky exposure plane, side yard and other construction regulations. Community Board 7 rejected the plan after members of the board tried to get the applicants to consider another site.

Singer insisted that the proposal was considered as any other would be.

“The Board treated this application with the same rigor as any other before it and found that it met the findings for a variance,” he said.

“We have a situation where the city is letting this particular group and this mosque go forward by waiving the building codes applicable to them,” Carsten Glaeser, the vice president of the KPCA, said.

The civic association, he added, is “trying to come up with money” for representation in court. According to Glaeser, other civic associations might get involved with the lawsuit.

Big turnout at Broadway-Flushing rally

Hi Crappie,
Here’s a photo from our rally yesterday. It was well attended with about 200 people, Senator Avella, Assemblyman Ed Braunstein, Paul Graziano and many representatives from our neighboring civic associations.

Broadway Flushing has been seeking help from the Landmark's Preservation Commission for 10 years and have been met with continual and unwarranted disdain. We continue to enforce restrictive covenants in order to protect our community from development that is not covered under New York City zoning or building ordinances we currently have the strictest zoning in NYC and it is not protecting us. We are an excellent example of early to mid Century development of a suburban enclave within an urban setting along with our sister community, Douglas Manor, which was landmarked in 1997. The last few years, we have been under attack from developers who are preying on our large lots, tearing down houses and trees all the greenery that goes with it and building large brick boxes. We must break this pattern of destruction immediately or we will lose the very reason we all live here. We all bought into Broadway Flushing because of its architectural integrity and stately, suburban character.

-Janet McCreesh
Flushing

NY1 report

Queens Chronicle report

Where the hell is Bill?

From the Forum:

In the past year, the WRBA said it has had several interactions with city agencies that were challenging. For example, in October 2014, the civic asked the Sanitation Department to end what the WRBA characterized as its unfair practice of issuing tickets to property owners in the middle of the night for garbage dumped on their properties.

In a release, the organization said it had become a common nighttime occurrence for people to leave trash outside Jamaica Avenue storefronts, and for Sanitation enforcement agents to write Notices of Violation in the middle of the night, fining property owners for failing to dispose of trash they didn’t know was there.

The WRBA said this was costing struggling business owners hundreds of dollars.

And although Bill de Blasio wrote DSNY when he was Public Advocate, asking the agency to end the practice, nothing has been done on the issue since he became mayor, the Woodhaven civic noted.

In another report earlier this year, the WRBA called out the Department of Transportation for failure to correct inadequate and “dangerous” lighting in Forest Park, to “years’ long” delays in installing needed speed bumps in Woodhaven.

Asked about the mayor’s interaction with civic groups, some leaders said he needs to engage more with the borough organizations that are the voice of residents.

“Mayor de Blasio is not as active with community groups as previous mayors,” said Joann Ariola, president of the Howard Beach-Lindenwood Civic.

Bob Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, was blunt when asked about accessibility.

“We write letters and fill out online forms and we NEVER get a response,” Holden said, adding that when de Blasio was Public Advocate, his office reached out to the JPCA often.

“Since he’s been mayor, nothing,” Holden said, noting that while some city agencies are better than others when it comes to responsiveness, he noted that the Mayor’s Office is “totally unresponsive.”

Groups join forces to stop the insanity

From Brownstoner:

Now, more than 50 neighborhood groups have joined together to fight large-scale development city wide — and the ties between politicians and the real estate industry.

New Yorkers for a Human-Scale City is calling for an end to “the violence that real estate developers have inflicted on our skyline, parks, public areas, and cityscape.” The group has created an online petition that calls for changes to laws, requires regulatory appointees be “free of ties to the real estate industry,” and low-rise development and affordable housing that will protect the historic character of the city.

As for Mayor de Blasio, the group wants a “policy change” from him, said Save the View Now founder Steven Guterman in a letter to members. New Yorkers for a Human-Scale City “calls for an end to the way the real estate lobby has captured our city government and all its regulatory bodies like City Planning and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. As has been often reported in the press, developers are major contributors to the Mayors election campaign and his nonprofit Campaign for One New York,” he said.

You can see the full petition here.

BSA grants St. Albans variance

From the Times Ledger:

The community opposition was not enough to prevent developers, which includes the church that owns the land, from erecting an affordable housing five-story building on Farmers Boulevard in St. Albans.

The city Board of Standards and Appeals approved Tuesday the zoning variances the developers were seeking to build the complex that will also house a community center in the ground floor.

The project had three votes in favor and one abstention. The board member who abstained explained she did not know enough about the proposed plan.

“The board seemed to be supportive of the plan,” said a source familiar with the BSA hearings about the construction plans.

“I believe this is wrong,” said Karen Plummer, president of the St. Albans Civic Improvement Association. “Too many people will move in and the neighborhood can’t sustain it.”

The developers, including the St. Albans Presbyterian Church, needed variances involving maximum building height, maximum dwelling unit and minimum parking.

The project consists of a 67-unit structure of one- and two-bedroom apartments that will be built in two empty lots located on Farmers Boulevard between 118th and 119th avenues.

“This is just too much for us,” Plummer said.

Once the decision becomes public, the people in the community who opposes the project will have 30 days to appeal.

Juniper Park area tagged with graffiti

Recently, there has been graffiti painted around Juniper Park. There are instances on the sidewalks and in the street around the park and just within the last 24 hours, someone sprayed graffiti (with explicatives) on the fence of a well kept private home. We need more police presence, especially at night, to catch these vandals! There is a curfew around the park starting at 9PM but often into the wee hours of the night there are juveniles hanging around. This will only get worse if nothing is done! Graffiti is a NYC crime. Our local precincts (104th for Middle Village) need to be constantly made aware of what's going on so they can (hopefully) take action. NYC offers rewards (up to $500) to anyone who provides information on the graffiti vandal.

I trust Elizabeth Crowley, our NYC Council Member and the Juniper Park Civic Association will assist in apprehending these vandals so we can keep Middle Village a "neighborhood" and not "the hood".

Anonymous

I have been informed that the graffiti is scheduled for removal on Friday. - QC

Civic calls for landlords to be forced to pay up

From the Times Ledger:

The Juniper Park Civic Association says it is time the city abandon its tactic of trying to fine landlords who fail to address building violations.

The civic association sent a slew of photos and a memo to the de Blasio administration outlining properties the association said have racked up thousands of dollars in fines for city Department of Building violations yet are not compelled to address the infractions.

At the association’s Feb. 27 meeting, Juniper Park Civic Association President Robert Holden held up enlarged photos of properties with graffitied commercial vehicles parked in the yard or a fence towering above a residential street.

“DOB is doing its job,” he said, emphasizing that many landlords had been fined for the infractions. “We’re calling on the mayor and the Department of Finance to go after these guys.”

For instance, the owner of 57-65 75th St., near the Elmhurst-Maspeth border, has four open violations with the city Environmental Control Board and $6,100 in unpaid fines. Yet the association said the same commercial trucks that were sited in all four infractions for a violation of the residential zoning code remain a common sight.

Holden said ideally the city would hire contractors to go in and fix infractions and then bill owners for the work.

De Blasio’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Avella & civic leaders rally against BSA application

(Bellerose, QUEENS) On Saturday, September 7, Senator Tony Avella, Bellerose civic leaders and residents rallied against the Indian Cultural and Community Center (ICCC) for moving ahead with their Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) application despite the recent release of a report by the New York State Office of the Inspector General that criticized the ICCC’s involvement in a state land sale.

Two years ago, Avella reached out to the Inspector General and the Attorney General and asked for an extensive review of the New York State Dormitory Authority’s sale of 4.5 acres of land on the Creedmore psychiatric-hospital campus in a no-bid deal to the politically connected nonprofit group for a fraction of its value.

This past week the Inspector General released their report which showed clear and convincing evidence that the ICCC not only “exploited loopholes in the statute and lapses in oversight by the Dormitory Authority” but purposely sought to deceive that agency as well as members of the community and elected officials regarding their intention to build residential housing on property which is the subject of the applications currently before the BSA. The findings in the report have been referred to the Attorney General’s office.

Despite this information, the ICCC is moving ahead with their BSA application, which is scheduled to be heard at a public hearing on September 10th.

Avella stated, “From the very beginning, I have had my suspicions regarding the ICCC’s involvement in this shady land deal. The Inspector General’s report confirms my suspicions, that at the very least the ICCC intentionally engaged in deceptive practices with the intent to mislead the public about its intentions with this property and at the very worst engaged in possible illegal activity. Obviously, this is completely unacceptable and the public deserves better. That is why I am pleased that this matter has been referred to the Attorney General for further review. We must get to the bottom of any misconduct committed by anyone involved with this land deal.”

“I am calling on the Attorney General to fully investigate the potential illegal conduct of the ICCC and for BSA to postpone any hearing until such a review is conducted,” concluded Avella.

Goodbye, gold coast

From the NY Times:

Inside the mansion it looked as if all parties — and anything else that had taken place in the mansion since the Jazz Age — were most certainly over. Movers had carted away just about everything from the 87-room, Elizabethan-Tudor-style mansion, which was designed by John Torrey Windrim and completed in 1920 for Nicholas F. Brady, an industrialist who was the head of numerous utility companies.

It was named Inisfada — Gaelic for Long Island — and it was one of the grandest of the Gold Coast mansions on Long Island’s North Shore, with 37 fancifully decorated chimneys, stately slate roofs and a facade decorated with scenes from fairy tales. It served as the summer residence for Mr. Brady and his wife, Genevieve, who never had children. After her husband’s death, she donated the home in 1937 to the New York Province of the Society of Jesus, the local branch of the Jesuits, which turned it into a seminary and later the Saint Ignatius Retreat House.

But now, local civic groups fear that the building faces demolition. Inisfada and its 33 overgrown acres were listed for sale last year for $49 million. The Jesuits are on the verge of closing a deal with a developer from Hong Kong who some preservationists fear will knock down the building as part of a plan to create a gated community of luxury homes, said Richard Bentley, president of the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations, which is mounting a grass-roots campaign to save the mansion.

It is unclear what the developer intends to do, since neither the Jesuits nor the buyers have addressed the issue publicly, but Mr. Bentley said he was under the impression that the developer’s plans did not include keeping the structure, because “They could avoid all this opposition and bad press by simply saying they’re preserving it.”