Close call prompts petition

From DNA Info:

When Alexa Weitzman lost sight of her 20-month-old son on Sunday for several seconds while playing at a popular neighborhood playground, her heart sank, she said.

As she looked around Katzman Playground, at Yellowstone Park, she saw that its three gates, adjacent to busy streets, including Yellowstone Boulevard, were wide open.

The toddler was quickly located, but the Forest Hills mom said the experience prompted her to start an online petition on Change.org on that same day, in which she asked the Parks Department to install a locking mechanism on the gates.

Forest Hills mystery accident

From Edge of the City. Anyone know what happened here? Looks like a doozy.

Proposal to gate entrances to FMCP at night

From DNA Info:

The city is considering adding gates to entrances of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park to put the brakes on late-night partying and "reckless" racing after dark, officials said.

Roads through the park stay open overnight because drivers use it as a shortcut to highways, officials said.

But it also gives late-night partiers and "drifters" — drivers who speed their car then let their wheels spin out of control — access to the park, according to police.

While local precincts have boosted enforcement — a recent bust yielded dozens of summonses — the Parks Department, along with the NYPD, said they're now looking at other ways to control the activity.

At a recent Community Board 3 meeting, Deputy Inspector Christopher Manson from the 110th Precinct said the entrances will be closed by July 1. The entrances are near Meadow Lake and Marina West inside the park.

Illegal gates make parking more difficult

Hello,

Love your blog. It's wonderful to see someone keeping an eye on the borough. Here's a piece of crap from my neighborhood (Hollis) that drives me crazy. Some illegal "no parking" signs in front of unapproved gate. What drives me even more crazy is that, in the three years I've lived there, the gates haven't been open once. Ahhhh!!! Thanks for letting me vent.

- Anonymous

Rolling over the roll down gate

This comes to us courtesy of John from Auburndale. Not sure why it looks this way, although there is a demo permit on file. No doubt, some ugly mixed use building with a community facility is headed to the corner of 167th Street and Northern Blvd.

Kaufman-Astoria to take over 36th Street

From the NY Times:

Dust off the Duesenberg. New York is getting two new studio gates.

The gates will close off a one-block stretch of 36th Street in Astoria, Queens, allowing Kaufman Astoria Studios to consolidate its complex on either side of the street. This will allow the studio to create — in the former roadway itself — a 34,800-square-foot back lot, almost exactly where many outdoor scenes were filmed in the 1920s and ’30s for movies that are themselves long forgotten.

“When you think of going to a studio, you expect to pull up to a gate,” said Hal G. Rosenbluth, the president of Kaufman Astoria. “This will become an iconic symbol for the area.”

The historical heart of Kaufman Astoria complex is an enormous studio building on 35th Avenue that was opened in 1920 by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, the predecessor to Paramount Pictures. Directly behind this building was a back lot, now occupied by soundstages and offices, that was used for dozens of movies produced or distributed by Paramount until 1939.

The new back lot will be 60 feet wide and 580 feet long, running from 35th Avenue to 34th Avenue. Studio executives and city officials envision it as an alternative to some of the location filming that snarls neighborhoods and tests New Yorkers’ patience. It would offer filmmakers a controlled outdoor environment on which temporary sets could be constructed, stunts and car chases could be staged and large-scale equipment could be used.

Kaufman Astoria rents its studios to producers. (All Saints Hospital from “Nurse Jackie” occupies Stage G, for example, while “Sesame Street” can be found on Stage J.) It has not been affiliated with Paramount Pictures for many decades. It will lease this one block of 36th Street from New York City and effectively control it until 2049.

As a technical matter, the 36th Street segment has been closed — or “de-mapped” — since June 2012. In 2015, Kaufman Astoria will begin paying rent; it will start at $140,000 annually and escalate every five years. It has already begun making payments to the city in lieu of real estate taxes. These began at $33,137 annually and will increase every year.

DOB doesn't see anything wrong here

How can DOB state "The Department of Buildings investigated this complaint and determined that no further action was necessary" when as of today, the situation in the photos still exists? I have reported this twice and have gotten the same response. What is wrong with this picture? What does it take to get this situation taken care of?

SERVICE REQUEST #: 1-1-786704011
CREATED ON: 09/27/2012 12:28:41 PM
REQUEST TYPE: General Construction/Plumbing
DETAIL: Debris - Falling Or In Danger Of Falling
INCIDENT ADDRESS: 153-12 HILLSIDE AVENUE
INCIDENT BOROUGH: QUEENS
STATUS: The Department of Buildings investigated this complaint and determined that no further action was necessary.
LAST UPDATED ON: 09/28/2012 12:00:00 AM

- Joe Moretti

Solid metal gates on their way out

From NBC:

The metal roll-down gate on storefronts, part of New York City's landscape for decades, will be officially phased out starting Friday, when a law takes effect that requires new gates to be partially transparent.

All businesses will ultimately have to replace their current opaque gates, but have until July 1, 2026 to do so.

The City Council voted in 2009 to ban the solid gates as a quality of life measure.

Public Safety Committee Chair Peter Vallone, Jr., said at the time that the gates attracted graffiti and transformed city blocks into "dark, graffiti-strewn metal alleyways" when they were rolled down at night.

Vallone also claimed the opaque gates blocked the view of the store's interior, frustrating first responders during emergencies.

What Anthony couldn't accomplish, Peter did.

Cast iron gates getting stolen

Council bans metal roll-down gates

From the NY Times:

Citing high rates of graffiti, the City Council voted unanimously on Monday to gradually ban the use of roll-down metal security gates, a move that would eliminate what has been an enduring if forbidding feature of the urban streetscape.

Other kinds of security gates — like rolling or sliding grilles, which permit passers-by to gaze into plate-glass store windows and are seen by some as being harder to vandalize — would still be permitted.

The Bloomberg administration gave its support to the legislation — championed primarily by Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat who is chairman of the Public Safety Committee — only after the Council agreed to a lengthy grace period. Not until 2026 will the roll-down metal gates be entirely banned.

This bill would require that after July 1, 2011, any roll-down gate that is being replaced must be replaced with a gate that allows at least 70 percent of the covered area to be visible.

By July 1, 2026, all of the businesses covered by the legislation must have the new higher-visibility gates installed.