Governor Cuomo ejects students from CUNY and SUNY dorm rooms to be triaged for COVD-19 patients

NY Post

Students who reside at CUNY and SUNY colleges have been kicked out of their dorms as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and health authorities eye the campuses as sites for make-shift emergency medical centers to help treat a wave of coronavirus patients, officials said.

“New York State is sending its CUNY and SUNY students out into pandemic through dorm closures,” fumed Petra Gregory, a student government representative at the College of Staten Island.

Dorm students at CUNY’s Hunter and City College campuses were also ordered to vacate as were resident-students at several SUNY campuses — including Stony Brook, which the Army Corps. of 
 Engineers has chosen as one of Long Island’s emergency medical sites.

Stony Brook already has a hospital on campus and already serves as a Suffolk County COVID-19 drive-thru testing center.

Gregory said dorms residents at CUNY’s Staten Island campus were abruptly told that they were getting the boot Monday night when a resident assistant knocked on their doors.

“I am currently being unfairly evicted out of my dorms, and I have a mother who is immunocompromised and a 6-month-old baby sister. My family is unable to pick me up, and I have to travel with my support animal and pack for him on this short notice as well,” one of the college’s resident-students, Jasmine Shaikh, said.

A CSI official sent an email to students on Tuesday confirming the state ordered the students booted to make room.

“Governor Cuomo has asked private and public universities across New York State to be ready for the possibility that dormitories might need to be converted into temporary emergency medical centers,” said Jennifer Borrero, CSI’s vice president of student affairs.

Wonder if there has been any discussion about triaging empty condos that haven't been sold or that are being used as pie-e-terre's in all those luxury towers and empty "affordable" apartments in mixed use buildings that the state and city gave tax breaks to.

Actors hired to attend rally

From the Daily News:

At a rally outside City Hall, an activist calling for the city to move forward with a developer’s plan to turn a long-vacant landmarked school in the East Village into college dorms poured his heart out about how the group was just comprised of concerned community folks.

“We have jobs here. We don’t get paid for this, and literally we spent hours uncovering information,” Jose de Yarza said.

But while de Yarza doesn’t get paid for his advocacy, that doesn’t appear to be true for some of the 30 people standing quietly behind him, holding signs bashing Mayor de Blasio and local elected officials.

The Daily News obtained a casting email seeking people to “beef up attendance” for the rally, held by the newly formed group East Village Cares, in exchange for a rate of “$50 CASH / 2.5 hour booking.”

One person holding a sign at the event confirmed attending as a result of the casting call. Another declined to answer, saying it wouldn’t be right to discuss whether he’d been paid. Two others approached by The News denied being paid or getting the casting call email.

Glendale yeshiva tries for BSA variance

From the Queens Tribune:

After clearing their violations with the City Department of Buildings, the Yeshiva Gedolah at 74-10 88th St. in Glendale is once again seeking variance to expand its dormitory quarters to accommodate 1,050 students with an additional 50,000 square feet of space.

At a land use hearing at Borough hall last Thursday, attorney for the yeshiva Jay Goldstein said that the goal is to keep more students on site so they can take advantage of early morning classes and decrease busing to and from the site, which is a major complaint in the neighborhood.

Goldstein noted that the current dorm only allows for 282 students to stay on site. He added that with rising rent costs, parents of the students who have in the past lived in Queens and Brooklyn have now moved upstate. “That number will increase,” said Goldstein.

He said if they do not receive this variance, the school will continue to operate as a Use Group 9 trade school and find facilities for the dorm elsewhere.

The school does not have a C of O for dorms and was vacated last year for that reason. They also still have active building violations. How about building a yeshiva upstate where these kids live instead of in the middle of Glendale where they require busing?

College Point rectory rented out as hotel

This Craigslist ad was sent to me by an anonymous tipster.

This appears to be the rectory for St. Fidelis Church in College Point. It is also for sale, according to this ad:

So who now owns it and is renting it out illegally as dorms/hotel rooms "great for large groups" with a minimum of a 1-month stay?

DOB says yeshiva dorm is not kosher

From QNS.com:

The dormitories at Glendale’s Yeshiva Godolah Seminary exceed legal limits, according to one city agency.

After Community Board 5 (CB 5) voted to recommend denying the yeshiva’s request for a zoning variance earlier this month, the school was hit with a violation from the Department of Buildings (DOB) for violating current zoning regulations by housing students within the school.

The yeshiva is located within an M1-1 zone, which does not allow for dorm facilities. The violation, issued on Oct. 16, is for the illegal conversion of the school to have dormitories outside of the zoning regulation.

“Based upon a recent audit, there is an intent to revoke issued,” a representative from the DOB told the Ridgewood Times. “The audit determined that the space used was nonconforming for a Use Group 9 facility. The legality of the use of the dormitory space is currently under review.”

CB5 says no to yeshiva dorm

From the Queens Courier:

After months of deliberation, Community Board 5 (CB 5) voted to recommend denying the Glendale yeshiva’s application for a zoning variance to expand the building during the monthly community board meeting on Wednesday night at Christ the King High School in Middle Village.

The board’s Land Use Committee met last month to hear the yeshiva’s proposal on the need for the school’s expansion from 360 dormitory beds, to 710 beds and the addition of a four-story building on the site located at 74-10 88th St.

Questions over the yeshiva’s original Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) raised community concerns with how the dorms were allowed to be placed in the building, which is in an M1-1 zone, where sleeping accommodations are not permitted.

Hasids want variance to expand illegal dorm

From the Queens Courier:

Glendale residents can speak out at next week’s Community Board 5 meeting regarding plans to build additional dormitories and classroom space at the neighborhood’s Yeshiva Godolah Seminary (YGS).

Plans to expand the campus located at 74-10 88th St., the former Monarch knitting mill, will be the focus of a public hearing at the Sept. 9 meeting of CB 5, which will begin at 7 p.m. in the CNL Center at Christ the King Regional High School in Middle Village.

Currently serving 1,050 students within two buildings on the site, the YGS is seeking a Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) variance to erect an extension and unite the buildings into one, four-story campus. The expansion would result in the creation of 28 new classrooms and 177 dormitory rooms, accommodating approximately 710 dormitory beds.

Abraham Markowitz, YGS building manager, told the Ridgewood Times on Monday the extension will allow more students to reside on campus; currently, the facility offers dormitory rooms accommodating 360 individuals. The remaining pupils are shuttled from their homes in Williamsburg to Glendale each day via school buses that the yeshiva charters.

The additional dormitories would reduce the number of daily school bus trips from 15 to between four and six, Markowitz said. The expansion plans also call for the creation of a second curb cut from 88th Street, which would allow school buses to queue up on the yeshiva grounds rather than along the roadway.

I seem to recall that the school got permission to build so long as there were no dorms on campus. But now the Hasids are admitting that they built them anyway. Why should they now be rewarded with a variance if they were operating illegally this whole time? Why should Glendale residents be bombarded with a school for hundreds of kids from Rockland county and Williamsburg? Two interesting facts: this "building manager" Abraham Markowitz, somehow finagled himself the position of President of the 104th Pct Community Council although he doesn't live in Queens, and the DOB inspected the yeshiva after complaints of illegal occupancy, noted the presence of the dorm and did nothing.

1000-person yeshiva dorm planned for Glendale

From the Queens Chronicle:

The United Talmudical Seminary at 74-10 88 St. in Glendale has filed an application with the Department of Buildings to construct a four-story, 142,183-square-foot structure containing office space, classrooms and student dormitories on a plot of land adjacent to the facility.

The Brooklyn-based rabbinical school, which opened its Glendale location in 2006 after years of heated opposition from area residents, buses its students in from Williamsburg every day.

The new structure would allow the students to live next to the school, with the busing of students being all but eliminated.

The application has been sent to a plan examiner for analysis. The site is zoned M1-1, a light manufacturing district.

Plans call for the ground floor to contain offices and three classrooms, with the top three floors being set aside for an unannounced number of student dorms.

The Monarch Knitting Machinery Corp. sold the former textile factory to the United Talmudical Seminary for $3.5 million in January 2004, and the DOB shot down plans to build 100 units of housing at the site later that year over zoning regulations.

Hey folks, this is a continuation of one of the earliest stories that was reported on this blog back in 2006. They tried to slip a dorm past DOB and the community back in 2006, and now they are trying to go the legal route, although I don't know if this will pass muster with the zoning. Certain groups in this city seem to always get their way, though, and the city seems hellbent on blockbusting Glendale lately, so be prepared for 1000 students to inundate the quiet manufacturing area and further overtax city services.

Jewish dorm unwelcome in Cambria Heights

From CBS 2:

Some neighbors in Cambria Heights, Queens are fighting a synagogue’s plan to expand a building in a cemetery, where already hundreds of worshipers pray each day.

The place: the Old Montifiore Cemetery on Francis Lewis Boulevard, where crowds come, especially on the high holy days. A community center has been constructed near the graves, behind five single-family homes owned by the Lubavitchers.

But now, the congregation wants to join all five homes into one large structure that would essentially be a dormitory.

The people who live in the modest homes and always had the solitude of a cemetery nearby, now find their homes in the path of a pilgrimage that keeps growing and growing.

The issue must go before the zoning board and would require a variance for approval in the predominantly residential area.

So much for the dorm

From the Daily News:

An industrial building in Long Island City that was on track to become a dorm for graduate students could now turn into a satellite campus for a university.

Alma Realty, which recently purchased the five-story vacant building at 30-30 Northern Blvd. for $21.5 million, is in talks to develop the property into a campus, said officials for Greiner-Maltz, which brokered the deal.

A university has expressed interest in developing 400,000 square-feet into classroom and auditorium space, said John Maltz, president of Greiner-Maltz.

North 30 Associates LLC., which sold the property in January, had planned to build a 19-story, 900-room, state-of-the-art dorm. Community Board 1 gave a thumbs-up in May for the project, but the company decided instead to use its money to develop residential buildings in Manhattan, Greiner-Maltz officials said.

Alma Realty officials declined to confirm whether the company was in talks with a university and would only say there are no set plans to build anything yet.

Locals who were anticipating the economic boom the dorm would have brought said they are still hoping that whatever moves in will benefit the neighborhood.

Looks like EDC needs to update their website. Also find it interesting how their touting Jerry Wolkoff's 5 Pointz redevelopment, even though his building has all those violations...

LIC dorm site sold

From the Real Deal:

Developer Edward J. Minskoff Equities abandoned plans to build a 635-room dormitory in a rapidly-changing section of Long Island City in order to concentrate on larger projects in Manhattan, the company's president said.

Edward Minskoff, president of the commercial firm, had sought to build the 19-story tower on the property at 30-30 Northern Boulevard in Queens Plaza.

He sold it to Long Island City-based Alma Realty, which paid $21.5 million for the 238,000-square-foot building and the 103,000-square-foot parcel under it on Jan. 27, city property records published last Friday show. The sale went into contract in September 2010.

The Queens Plaza neighborhood is undergoing a transformation thanks to the city's rehabilitation of the streets underneath the elevated N and 7 trains, as well as the completion of Tishman Speyer's $316 million Gotham Center Tower office building. Yet brokers said the site still presents challenges because it faces the elevated subway tracks.

Minskoff's dormitory was slated to house 1,640 students on the parcel wedged between the elevated N train and Sunnyside Yards. He bought the site in 2006 for $15.75 million, city records show.

CUNY pulls out of brownfield site, developer now wants undergraduate dorm

From the Times Ledger:

Representatives from a real estate investment firm went to Community Board 2 last Thursday hoping to amend their already approved city Board of Standards and Appeals resolution and build a residential tower before a planned dormitory for CUNY students. But they ended up having CB 2 reject their resolution entirely.

“I feel that there’s a significant difference between 300 to 400 undergraduates in our community and 300 to 400 graduate students and faculty in our community,” said John Bradley, an area resident.

CB 2’s recommendation last Thursday involved two buildings to be built at 511 47th Ave. in Long Island City. O’Connor Capital Partners, a Manhattan real estate investment firm, originally planned to construct a 12-story residential building and a six-story dormitory for graduate students and faculty, said Joe Conley, chairman of CB 2. The plan was recommended for approval by CB 2 and approved by the BSA in 2008. Yet the City University of New York, which was a partner in the plan to build the dormitory, ended up pulling out of the project.

“It was very distressing that [CUNY] didn’t even have the decency to call and say, ‘Sorry, we changed our mind,’” Conley said.

Harold Goldman, attorney with GoldmanHarris LLC, spoke for O’Connor Capital Partners and said the firm is still planning to build, but has opened up the option of using the dormitory for undergraduates, or possibly another use entirely. In addition, O’Connor wanted to start construction the high-rise residential building first, which would be sold at market price, and went to CB 2 to get permission to change the resolution for that purpose.

This did not meet the approval of CB 2, although it objected to the plan primarily because of the possibility the dormitories might be for undergraduates. Lisa Deller, chairwoman of the Land Use Committee for CB 2, said the dormitories were originally approved back in 2008 with a deed restriction saying the residences should only be for graduate students and faculty.

“What does it do to the community?” Deller asked. “What does it do to the one- and two-family houses on that street?”

Would you let your kid live in a dorm like this?

From the Village Voice:

The city is suing a cracked building that markets itself as a dorm for City College students.

City College students should be wary. The 21-unit walk-up, which is adjacent to the school's Harlem campus, has 118 housing code violations, including hazardous leaks from the roof, mice, lead paint violations, and there's no janitor (And the building's owners disobeyed the city's orders to hire one.)

511 West 135th Street, City College says, is not an official dorm (The school only has one official dorm, at 401 West 130th Street, called The Towers at the City College of New York.) The company that owns the building on 135th Street calls itself City College Dorms, LLC.

According to court documents, when the city tried to enter the building to remove mold and make other repairs last spring, the building manager, William Molina, wouldn't let them in. The city sued, and the case is making its way through housing court.

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.

Brownfield dorm site seems dormant

When you wander down 47th Avenue in LIC, you come across this scene. First off, you know there is some governmental interest at stake if Claire Shulman's favorite architect is involved.

A scaffold that expired more than a year ago? Nice. So that's why there was no activity on the site in the middle of the day on a Monday.

Holding true to half-assed Queens preservation/adaptive reuse efforts, we have one wall of the original building still standing.

Brownfields are the perfect venue for CUNY dorms.

And who were the Toch Brothers? Well, they still exist, but just not here anymore. They mixed some really toxic stuff at this location. If you want the whole history, visit this link.

CB1 approves Northern Blvd dorm

From the Queens Gazette:

The way is clear for a 19-story dormitory at 30-30 Northern Blvd.

Community Board 1 voted to approve a variance to permit a Use Group 3 dormitory with as of right convenience retail and mini-storage and accessory parking with conditions at its May 18 meeting.

The facility is to be a dormitory only. That was a major concern last month when the project was proposed by Edward J. Minskoff Equities, a commercial developer and the owner of the property. Minskoff chief financial officer Ben McGrath agreed to prohibit the use of clubs, bars or liquor stores by tenants in the retail spaces as well.

McGrath, in response to a letter from Community Board 1, said M1-5 zoning doesn’t permit use as a student dormito- ry and that a variance would be for 10 years, after which it must be renewed by the board.

John Carusone, chairperson of the zoning committee, specified other conditions: preference for dormitory space to students living within Community Boards 1 and 2 in Western Queens, as well as preference to residents in those same boards for jobs during construction and after.

Carusone also said the board required landscaping and beautification outside the dormitory building and security by car around the building. The dormitory will have 635 rooms with 1,640 beds and 100 parking spaces.

In a second action, the board unanimously turned down a car sharing zoning text amendment submitted by the Department of City Planning.

Dorm for Dutch Kills?

From the Queens Gazette:

Officials at the Dutch Kills Civic Association this week said they need answers to a number of questions regarding plans for a proposed 19-story building located at 30-30 Northern Blvd. before the community can approve of the plans.

Building owner North 30 Associates LLC is seeking a variance from the city Board of Standards and Appeals to permit use of the proposed site as a dormitory for city college students, along with as-of-right convenience retail and mini storage facilities.

In a request for the variance, attorneys Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel said the proposed building would be 19 stories in height with an accessory parking garage for 100 vehicles.

In a Statement of Facts outlining plans for the building, the attorneys cite a 2003 study into the housing needs of college students in New York City that estimated a demand for more than 5,000 beds in Queens for students from four CUNY institutions: Baruch College, Hunter College, CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

After studying the financial feasibility of two alternative development plans, i.e. a new, 16-story office building or a new, 26-story mixed office/hotel building, the owner decided to proceed with the proposal for student dormitories and retail use at the site, the attorneys state.

Dutch Kills Civic Association president Gerald Walsh and Executive Director George Stamatiades, both members of Community Board 1, said questions remain regarding future use of the proposed building.

Walsh and Stamatiades said their members need some sort of guarantee from the building owner that the site will not be “flipped” for future use as a homeless shelter or similar facility.

In a joint statement Walsh and Stamatiades said the Dutch Kills community would welcome students in the proposed dormitory setting with a written guarantee by the building owner that the building will continue to serve as a student dormitory.

“We are greatly concerned that approval of a variance for dormitory use of this building could lead to the future establishment of a homeless shelter at the site,” Walsh said.

“We need answers to a number of questions and a guarantee by the building owner that the site will remain a student dormitory before our community can sign off on this request for a variance.”

Do they really think grad students will want to live next to a train? Does the owner have a contract with CUNY? Would CUNY students living next to a subway own cars? How would you enforce this ban on homeless shelters if the property is sold?

Doesn't this all sound extremely shady?

Queens College dorm almost done

From NY1:

As students are preparing to take their finals, Queens College officials are putting the final touches on the college's first-ever residence hall.

Yay! 500 more people are coming to Flushing!

CUNY incubator unpopular

A newly constructed incubator facility in Queens that provides cheap rents to fledgling design businesses is struggling to fill its units. The $6 million, 35,000-square-foot development run by CUNY's LaGuardia College can't seem to fill its six remaining units, despite its rents being as low as $2.50 to $3 per square foot and its location being close to a large community of designers. Amenities include free internet hookups, discounted phone service and courses on design and small business management. Lack of demand has been blamed on its remote Long Island City location.

Queens design incubator a hard sell

So why not put your dorms here, CUNY?