Overdeveloped Jackson Heights wants to convert street to a park

From CBS 2:

More than 100 people gathered at Travers Park in Jackson Heights calling on the city to keep promises they say were made about expanding a pedestrian plaza, reports CBS2’s Aundrea Cline-Thomas.

“We are here today yet again to demand that Howard Koeppel and his car dealership get this service road out of our park,” said one protestor.

Koeppel Mazda opened a location last fall along Northern Boulevard.

The $1 million construction project included creating a service entrance on 78th Street, an area the protestors say the city promised would become a pedestrian plaza.

Why demand an actual new park when the government has you begging for crumbs...

Woodside train overpass is crumbling

From CBS 2:

A Queens train overpass is crumbling to pieces and nearby workers and residents worry if something isn’t done to fix it it could cost someone their life.

Take a walk underneath an Amtrak span in Woodside and you might be stunned at what you’ll see. Crumbling concrete. Exposed steel. Holes the size of a child in the pillars that hold it all up.

And that’s not even the worst of it.

“Chunks of cement coming down, raining down off of this bridge. It’s very dangerous,” said Woodside resident John Moutopoulos.

“A lot of people are at risk, vehicles, children, adults,” resident Sehar Kaddough added.

“It’s scary that you never know what’s going to hit you in the head,” resident Eli Monahemi said.

Monahemi said the overpass at Northern Boulevard and Broadway could have killed him.

Northern Blvd rework coming

From NBC:

Safety changes are on the way for a street that has been dubbed the new boulevard of death -- the Northern Boulevard in Queens.

Controversial McDonald's closes

From the Queens Chronicle:

A company representative forwarded the Chronicle a statement from owner/operator Jack Bert, who thanked the community for its patronage over the years, as well as his employees, “all of whom have been offered the opportunity to work in our other restaurants,” a number believed to be between 20 and 25. Most if not all have accepted the jobs, a McDonald’s spokeswoman said.

The company would not give a reason for the abrupt shutdown, though Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) and John Choe, the executive director of the Flushing Chamber of Commerce, offered their takes.

Kim said in the big picture that new restaurants and eateries — many of them well-financed by conglomerates — are springing up in Flushing all the time with access to marketing money, technology and social media expertise.

He said Flushing’s economic success has driven up property values, with commercial rent on Main Street “now higher than what is found in Midtown Manhattan.”

But he also said this particular McDonald’s had a strained relationship with the neighborhood’s Korean community going back more than five years when the owner attempted to keep elderly Korean residents from taking up tables for hours at a time to socialize while he was trying to keep customers flowing.

Major World seeks major rezoning

From The Real Deal:

A disgraced car dealer from Queens who recently pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud is now looking to rezone one of his auto lots in Long Island City under the city’s affordable housing program.

Bruce Bendell, a former senior manager at the Major World family of dealerships, is looking to upzone the site of a shuttered Kia dealership on Northern Boulevard to make way for an 11-story mixed-use building with 244 apartments.

But the 64-year-old is facing up to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty in July for failing to report $3.5 million in receipts and payroll expenses on Major World’s 2009 tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service.

Property owner traps kittens by building a wall

From PIX11:

The clock is ticking to rescue a group of cats trapped behind a brick wall in Queens.

They’ve been stuck for three days and are likely thirsty and hungry. Animal rescue groups and concerned residents are trying to save them; they reached out to PIX11 for help.

For months, the cats had been living in a narrow alley like area between an apartment building and garage on Northern Blvd. They’ve won the hearts of people in this neighborhood who stopped by to feed them.

A wall about 15 feet high was built on either end trapping the felines inside.They’re now out of sight - and their conditions unknown.

Sadly, the one cat that did escape before the wall went up now wanders on the other side and gazes up at the wall, trying to find a way to get back with his family.

[Carol] Yao says they have offered to pay for the cost to knock down a section of the wall.

Another tall building for Northern Blvd.

From Queens Beans:

A new mixed-use building will shortly arrive to Flushing. The tower will have 17 stories and it will be addressed at 144-49 Northern Boulevard. The necessary permits have been filed and a neighboring building will be demolished in order to make room for this new project.

Behind the applications there is developer CW Northern and the design has been handed to My Architect PC.

Once completed, the tower will feature 132 residential units that will be condos, spanning 116k sf combined and 880 each.

Just when you thought you'd seen everything Flushing has to offer

Not sure who did this (Frank Lloyd Crap?) or why they thought it was a good idea but it's freaking hideous! Here's the view as you enter Flushing from the Northern Blvd Bridge:

Western Beef will not become hotel

From the Queens Gazette:

The developer of a massive hotel at the site of a former Western Beef Supermarket in Long Island City has scrapped plans for the project.

The site at the northwest corner of Northern Boulevard and Steinway Street includes the former supermarket property and four adjacent parcels formerly controlled by the food retailer. JMH Development leased the Western Beef supermarket and the four parcels from Western Beef in 2014 for $19.6 million.

Plans for the hotel included 119,722-sauare-feet of commercial space, a bar and a breakfast room on the ground floor of the 60-foot-tall building, along woth14 hotel rooms in the cellar level of the hotel, 28 rooms on the ground floor, 67 room on the second floor, 66 rooms on each of the third and fourth floors, and 49 rooms on the fifth floor, for a total of. 289 rooms.

Plans for the new development feature a six-story rental building with 140 residential units, 40,000-square-feet of retail and an undetermined number of indoor parking spaces.

The developers “re-thought” plans for the hotel and decided to scrap the project due to an overabundance on similar hotels located in Manhattan and Long Island City, according to a spokesperson for JMH Development.

Lawsuit to be filed over Northern Blvd bike lanes

From the Queens Chronicle:

Douglaston Civic Association President Sean Walsh announced on Monday that his group plans on filing a lawsuit against the city over the Northern Boulevard bike lane.

“Our civic, at its annual meeting, decided to sue the city,” he told members of Community Board 11 at the advisory council’s meeting on Monday.

The suit will be against city Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, Mayor de Blasio and the City of New York and will seek the path’s removal.

Suspension-busting pothole on Northern Blvd next to new bike lane

Bike lane casualties continue to pile up

From CBS 2:

Drivers in Queens say new bike lanes continue to cause crashes.

CBS2 first covered the problem last month, but no changes have been made the crashes keep happening, Dave Carlin reports.

On Friday night, one driver was left hanging on a concrete barrier to protect the city’s newest bike lanes.

Vallone mailer is a laugh riot

Independent? Really? Well, let's look into this further.

"Opposed every bill that tried to hand cuff our public safety or police department."
I'm not sure how you hand cuff public safety and I'm pretty sure it's one word - handcuff. Also, the bills were overwhelmingly passed anyway after you asked the Speaker to vote no to cover your ass politically, so this isn't really something to brag about.

Next, Vallone completely made up that there was a threat of a homeless shelter coming to Bayside so he could then take credit for stopping it. DHS said many times that they weren't even looking at Bayside.

You kept Northern Blvd "car friendly", which is why there have been at least 4 accidents there in the last month after you failed to stop the city from installing a barrier and bike lane there.

Voted against ZQA! Yet simultaneously voted in favor of MIH...which is actually worse.

Fighting against a jail in College Point, but happily endorsed the guy who wants to put one there - Mayor de Blasio.

Great dictator pose.

Queens' DOT disasters

From the Queens Chronicle:

Construction to accommodate Select Bus Service at the confluence of Cross Bay Boulevard, Rockaway Boulevard and Liberty Avenue will not be complete until next month.

But residents and civic leaders are already saying things appear to be as bad, if not worse, then they have feared.

“This,” said a grim-voiced Vance Barbour of the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association, “is our ‘I told you so.’”

When completed, what was three travel lanes and a service road headed northbound will become two; bus stops along the curb will be moved across the service road to a median; the travel lane adjacent to the median will become a 24/7 bus lane; and the left turn from northbound Cross Bay to Rockaway Boulevard will be eliminated, along with the turning lane, forcing cars — and trucks — to take more roundabout routes.

Bus stops already are being installed on islands on the southbound side, with machines selling SBS tickets not far behind.

Residents long have complained that the intersection forms a bottleneck during rush hour, backing traffic up for blocks.

The city’s Department of Transportation has asserted that reducing the number of lanes will improve traffic by helping create a more uniform traffic pattern along the entire corridor.

A more uniform lane configuration, along with the elimination of some left turns such as the one at Rockaway Boulevard, are designed to reduce the amount of lane merging that is said to be responsible for a great deal of congestion.

The construction is nearing completion, even over the constant and strenuous objections of residents and community leaders such as state Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) and Assemblyman Mike Miller (D-Woodhaven).

“Nothing makes sense,” Howard Beach Resident Joseph Cerbone told the Chronicle. “We didn’t OK any of this ... They did just what they wanted to do. It was nightmare and they’re making it worse.”

From the Queens Chronicle:

In his letter, Avella added that there was a dangerous lack of signage for drivers at the location, which is an active construction area because of ongoing work for the bike lane. The senator also urged de Blasio and the DOT to abandon the bike lane plan and take up a different proposal for Northern supported by Community Board 11.

The office of Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside) said he too has been in touch with city authorities.

“In response to the accidents and the community’s concerns, we reached out to the DOT to ask them to expedite the installation of signage and reflective panels to both inform motorists of the change in the traffic pattern and make the barriers more visible,” Vallone’s office said in an email.

Vallone’s opponent in November, Paul Graziano, said the bike lane has created “an extremely dangerous situation” and that the city shouldn’t install them on “what is essentially a highway.” Graziano, who lost the Democratic primary to Vallone but remains on the Reform Party line, is an urban planner who helped design the alternative bike lane proposal now backed by CB 11.

“You do not create something unless it’s well thought out, well planned and won’t be a negative,” he said.

In a statement, the transportation agency defended the barrier.

“These barriers did their job to protect those in the bike lane from accelerating turning vehicles,” the DOT said in an email last Friday. More signs, the agency said, are coming.

“In the next few days we will be installing additional safety treatments like reflective tape and flexible delineators that have been part of the design from the beginning of this project, to increase protection and awareness for all street users,” the agency said.

New bike lane causing car crashes

From CBS:

Last week, the city installed the bike lane on heavily traveled Northern Boulevard between Douglaston Parkway and the Cross Island Parkway. It’s protected by a concrete divider, which some some say has led to accidents, including one Thursday.

The problem, opponents say, is that some motorists traveling along Northern Boulevard don’t know there’s a bike lane ahead, as the road narrows from three lanes to two. The bike lane and concrete divider appear to come out of nowhere, critics say.

There are no warning signs posted.

State Sen. Tony Avella said the bike lane is dangerous and needs to be scrapped.

“I think this is a nightmare,” he said.

Avella said the city Department of Transportation installed bright orange cones in front of the concrete barriers just Friday morning.

The senator said his office has received reports of four accidents there since the lane was installed, reports he is still trying to confirm. He said you can see scrape marks on the divider from where cars have apparently hit it.

“All of a sudden, you’re coming around a curve, and you’re hitting a concrete barrier,” he said.

Avella said the community board in the area wants the bike lane replaced with a lane built onto an expanded sidewalk off the road. Trottenberg said that would take too much time and money and that the current bike lane provides safety for cyclists now.

Has DOT ever listened to a community board?

Rezoning a car wash

From the Queens Chronicle:

The city Planning Commission on May 24 cleared the way for a Jackson Heights car wash to be replaced by an eight-story commercial building by unanimously approving a rezoning measure for the site.

The matter will now go to the City Council for a vote and is expected to pass as area Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras-Copeland (D-East Elmhurst) is in favor of the rezoning and proposed development.
Developer H&M LLC plans to replace Classic Car Wash, located at 74-04 Northern Blvd., with a commercial-use building, with the ground floor holding retail space.

The second and third would hold 219 parking spots, with a community space on the fourth and offices on five to eight.

To do so, the site must be rezoned from a C8-1 District to a C4-3.

H&M LLC states in its application to the Department of City Planning that construction on the site could begin sometime in 2018 and be completed in a little over a year.

And while housing is not proposed for the site at this time, the CPC also unanimously approved a request by the developer to require 25 percent of any residential units that could be built in the future to be affordable — under the controversial Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program approved by the Council last year.

Work on RKO Keith's will soon commence

From the Queens Tribune:

Plans to redevelop the site of the historic RKO Keith’s Theatre in Flushing are “progressing according to plan,” according to the property owner and developer, Xinyuan Real Estate.

“The company is in the selection process for the general contractor and expects to begin construction on this property in the first half of 2017,” a statement from Xinyuan, which is based in China, read. “The land allows for a mixed-use development comprising approximately 372,598 gross buildable square feet with approved plans.”

When Xinyuan purchased the property, located at 135-35 Northern Blvd. in Flushing, in August 2016, plans for a mixed-use development had already been approved by Community Board 7 in 2015. Those plans were put together under supervision of the property’s former owner, Jerry Karlik, of JK Equities, and were designed by architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed. The development calls for 269 condos, a 24-hour doorman, gym, tenant lounge, 305 space parking garage, landscaped courtyard, and ground-floor and second-floor retail space.

Xinyuan acknowledged the status and apparent adherence to Karlik’s development plans in its most recent statement.

“The property was formerly a performance theater with a landmarked interior known as RKO Keith’s Theater,” the statement read.

“Designs for the buildable development have been prepared by the architectural firm of Pei Cobb Freed.”

Steinway Street hotels will be quite large

From DNA Info:

Construction will start later this year on a 289-room hotel planned for the corner of Steinway Street and Northern Boulevard, on the site of the now-shuttered Western Beef supermarket, according to the developer.

JMH Development and Mettle Property Group will build the five-story project at 36-20 Steinway St., in what will be a "dual branded" hotel featuring a Homewood Suites on one side and a Hampton Inn on the other, according to a press release.

And you can bet that they'll both end up with homeless in them!

Supermarket site to become giant hotel

From Queens Gazette:

Developers last week released plans for development of a parcel at the northwest corner of Northern Boulevard and Steinway Street, where a six-story, 272-unit hotel will rise on a site formerly occupied by a Western Beef Supermarket.

Initial plans indicate that the development will include 18,200-square-feet of retail space on the ground floor, with a potential to expand the retail space to 30,000-square-feet.

Plans show that a car wash, spa and restaurant located next to the property on Northern Boulevard will be demolished to make way for the hotel and retail space.

Plans for the development include parking spaces for approximately 60 vehicles.

And how long will this remain a hotel before its inevitable conversion into you-know-what?

RKO Keith's bought by Chinese developer

From the Queens Tribune:

RKO Keith’s, the historic and long-defunct theater in downtown Flushing, was purchased by a Chinese developer, Xinyuan Real Estate Co., for $66 million on Monday, the company announced in a press release.

The announcement marks the next chapter in a long history of changing hands and stalled development at the landmarked theatre, which is located at 135-35 Northern Boulevard.

The theater’s ornate lobby and ticket foyer were landmarked by the Landmarks Preservation Committee in 1984. Over the past two decades, the landmarked interior has made it challenging for developers to move forward on plans at the site. Xinyuan Real Estate will now be the next developer to try to repurpose the theatre.

Xinyuan Real Estate was one of the first Chinese real estate developers to enter the U.S. market. In September 2012, the company made its entry in the New York market by purchasing land at Kent Avenue and South 8th Street in Williamsburg. That project, known as the Oosten, is still under construction, and will contain over 200 units of luxury condos. The company has another project in Midtown Manhattan as well.