Far Rockaway YMCA 8 months behind schedule

From the Daily News:

The News got a sneak peek into the $23 million, 44,000-square-foot Y on Beach 73rd St. which is undergoing the final phases of construction. It’s slated to open on Feb. 14, 2014.

The facility was built as part of the Arverne-by-the-Sea urban renewal project. The funding came from the developers, city officials and private dollars.

“We’re building a community in Arverne,” said Gerry Romski, project executive for Arverne-by-the-Sea. “The Y is a very important component.”

Owners of that community will get a free one-year family membership, he said.

Correction: The funding did not come from city officials, it came from taxpayer dollars. And offering free membership to the people who can most afford it isn't elitist or anything. Funny thing is, the last we heard, this place was supposed to have opened this past June and the total cost was $25M.

Beware of developers that call themselves "Bad Ass"

From the Daily News:

A dozen first-time homeowners say a developer known as the Bad Ass Group steered them into purchasing shoddily-built homes that the city had not even cleared for permanent occupancy.

The group filed an $18 million class-action lawsuit in Bronx Supreme Court Friday against at least six companies — including real estate agents, attorneys, an architect and a builder — that collectively did business as an umbrella entity called the Bad Ass Group.

“Our American Dream has been stolen,” said one homeowner, Johanny De La Cruz, during a rally in front of the courthouse Friday, after they filed the court papers that sought damages for a litany of alleged offenses including breach of contract, fraud, conspiracy, negligence and attorney malpractice.

The residents complained they were rushed into buying the properties, and began having problems with heat, black mold, sewage backups, plumbing, leaky roofs and faulty boilers almost as soon as they moved in.

Another homeowner, Martha Diaz, sounded a similar tune.

“When it rained, the water came inside of the house,” said Diaz, a mother of seven who purchased her two-family house for $618,0000 in 2006.

On top of that, the plaintiffs said, the developer never obtained permanent certificates of occupancy for the houses of horror, which put the homeowners on the line for thousands in fines from the city.

When homeowners complained, they said the Bad Ass Group referred them to lawyers they now believe were in cahoots with the schemers, who did nothing to resolve the approvals or stop the city fines from accruing, said Andre Ramon Soleil, the homeowners’ attorney.

The group is also suing the city, charging that the Department of Buildings was negligent in issuing temporary approvals before the properties were inspected — a policy that has since changed.

Tax break proposed for new businesses

From CBS 2:

A slick new television ad makes a promise most business owners would jump at: Start-up or expand a business in New York and enjoy a 10-year exemption from property, sales and even state income taxes.

As CBS 2’s Tony Aiello reported Friday, it’s a pet project of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but can it really live up to the hype?

“It’s one of the most expensive places in the country to do business. And that’s a problem,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo admits the problem and thinks he has part of the solution: a new ad campaign is touting his “Start-Up NY” initiative.

Why not just make it less expensive to do business here instead of spending money on an ad campaign?

Did spy shop peddle phony DOT placards?

From the Daily News:

The feds have uncovered something other than cloak-and-dagger stuff going on at the Queens Spy Shop.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted a shipment of 1,000 counterfeit hologram logos for New York City Department of Transportation parking permits sent from India to the East Elmhurst store, which sells high-tech surveillance equipment. DOT issues only about 500 legitimate permits.

An airway bill which described the contents of the shipment only halfway truthfully as "plastic pouches" didn't fool the agents who made the seizure on Aug. 18 at Kennedy Airport, according to a search warrant affidavit unsealed Thursday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The counterfeit items were indeed clear plastic sleeves with the official-looking DOT hologram embossed on the surface and is used as a cover for the parking permit which authorizes employees to parking just about anywhere in the city.

The Queens Spy Shop on Astoria Blvd. is not an authorized vendor of the parking pass, Homeland Security special agent Rosanna Licitra stated in the affidavit.

"There is probable cause to believe that the (Queens Spy Shop) manufactures counterfeit NYCDOT permit parking passes," which makes it a federal crime to traffic in goods using a counterfeit mark, the agent stated.

The spy shop is operated by Jonel Van Demark who was charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors with bank fraud last July.

WTC sphere is staying

From the NY Times:

Rededicated in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan on March 11, 2002, as New York City’s interim memorial, the “Sphere” has been sitting for months behind a construction fence while the park is renovated. No one in a position to know what might happen to the 25-foot-tall bronze globe, which still bears the scars of Sept. 11, 2001, would disclose anything publicly about where it might end up. Or when.

So when a work crew arrived on Wednesday and began dismantling the sculpture, placing one hemisphere on the back of a flatbed truck, and a crew member said that he could not divulge where the “Sphere” was headed, it seemed as if the cloak of secrecy was about to swallow the sculpture whole.

To make matters even more puzzling, officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the sculpture, and those of the National September 11 Memorial, which is frequently mentioned as a possible final setting for the “Sphere,” said they knew nothing about the move.

The parks department did know about it, however. On Wednesday evening, Arthur Pincus, an assistant commissioner of the agency, said the “Sphere” was simply being moved about 550 feet within the park, to a spot much closer to Castle Clinton, to accommodate the renovations.

Originally they were going to remove the statue.

Why did Vallone, Sr. vouch for this guy?

From the NY Post:

A playboy used-car dealer who looted his Queens employer out of millions to fund a filthy rich lifestyle was smacked with a seven-year prison term in Central Islip federal court Wednesday.

Luxury-loving Chris Orsaris spent his cash on everything from a Trump World Tower apartment to a mansion in Southampton. He has already served nearly four years of the sentence after his 2010 arrest and faces an additional three behind bars.

Orsaris – who fashioned himself as an opulent thug and surrounded himself with flashy hoodlums – inflated commission paperwork from the Major World Automotive dealers while he served as a general manager there, papers state.

Showing boundless greed, the 41-year-old fraudster once bought an $860,000 boat called “B Low Me” – and later claimed that it was stolen so he could collect on an insurance claim.

Court papers further reveal that Orsaris plunked down wads of cash to pay for a $5.5 million Trump World Tower apartment, a $3 million Hamptons home, and a $2 million Miami condo.

Judge Leonard Wexler ordered Orsaris to forfeit those prized properties – and to fork over $13.8 million to his former employer.

In addition, Orsaris owes $2.7 million in back taxes to the IRS and another $500,000 to an insurance company for the bogus boat claim.

Orsaris’ high powered attorneys from the firm of Benjamin Brafman unsuccessfully argued that he be given time served for his crimes. “He has done things wrong, he has admitted to them, and he has done his best to make this situation right,” they wrote in a court filing.

Orsaris even had former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone – a former Major World client – write a letter to the court to vouch for his character.

“He had an excellent reputation in my community and attended meetings of various civic and charitable groups where I was present and was always helpful and courteous,” Vallone wrote in March.

Dominican Republic and China are largest sources of immigrants

From Capital New York:

China is poised to overtake the Dominican Republic as the largest source of immigrants to New York City.

Today, New York City is home to 8.34 million people. More than three million of them, or 37 percent, come from other countries. That compares to just 18 percent in 1970.

In the last decade, the growth of the foreign-born population, at 7 percent, outpaced the growth of the city's overall population, at 3 percent.

Those numbers are actually less impressive than the decade prior, when the foreign-born population increased by 38 percent and overall population increased more than nine percent.

Immigration from Europe has fallen dramatically as a proportion of overall immigration to New York, while Latin America has surged to the top spot, followed closely by Asia.

By country, the biggest source of the city's foreign-born continues to be the Dominican Republic, with 380,000 Dominicans in New York City in 2011, to China’s 350,000.

But not for much longer, if the current trends bear out. In the past decade, the population of foreign-born New Yorkers from China grew by a whopping 34 percent, compared to the Dominican Republic’s three percent.

This week in developer spin

A think tank has proposed a shortened environmental review.

A developer thinks that industrial zones can contain housing, and still somehow comply with zoning guidelines (they can't).

And queen tweeder Christine Quinn's spokesman is heading to REBNY, so I guess he'll be saying nasty things about preservation and preservationists, which I suppose isn't all that different from working for the City Council.

Styrofoam & e-cigs banned by Council

From the NY Times:

In its last scheduled legislative session of the year, the New York City Council passed major health and environmental regulations on Thursday, establishing a ban on plastic-foam food service containers, extending the city’s ban on public smoking to cover e-cigarettes and requiring composting at large restaurants.

The plastic-foam measure was a final victory of sorts for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, though it came with a caveat. In his State of the City address this year, Mr. Bloomberg said the plastic-foam containers were virtually impossible to recycle, and environmentalists have long complained that the foam cups, trays and containers, stained by beverages, grease and food, were needlessly clogging landfills.

In response to concerns that small businesses would be hurt by switching to costlier alternatives like paper and plastic, the bill allows small establishments and nonprofit organizations to apply for a waiver from the ban.

E-cigarettes, which use a battery to vaporize a nicotine solution, have grown in popularity based on a perception that they are a safer alternative to regular cigarettes, but the health implications remain in question. The bill limiting their use, pushed by two departing council members, James F. Gennaro of Queens and Speaker Christine C. Quinn of Manhattan, bans e-cigarettes wherever smoking is now prohibited, including restaurants, bars, parks and office buildings. The Bloomberg administration supported the measure.

Proponents cited the potential, if not yet fully known, health effects of e-cigarettes and their secondhand vapor, and said e-cigarettes confused bartenders and others who had to enforce the existing ban.

Landmarked Bronx school is coming down

From the Daily News:

The Castle on the Concourse will face the wrecking ball — even though the city Landmarks Preservation Commission tried its best to save it.

Panel members said Tuesday they did not agree with the city’s plan to tear down the old Public School 31 building on the Grand Concourse in Mott Haven, but they could not stand in the way.

“It’s distressing,” Robert Tierney, the commission’s chairman, said at the hearing. “I do not see a solution. Right now, our options are severely limited.”

His fellow board member, Elizabeth Ryan, agreed.

“From a community point of view and an architectural point of view, I cannot condone this demolition,” she said.

Despite their reservations, they were unable to save the shuttered 114-year-old Gothic-style academy.

The Department of Buildings’ emergency order to wreck the structure, issued on Nov. 8, overrides the Commission’s advisory report.

City officials said Tuesday that the building was a public danger and would cost too much to shore up.

RKO Keith's sold again

From the NY Post:

The fabled but long-shuttered RKO Keith’s cinema building in Flushing, NY, has been sold to a well-heeled developer for $30 million, The Post has learned.

The deal climaxes a 25-year saga of scandal and failure by previous owners of the Queens building.

New York-based JK Equities, headed by Jerry Karlik, plans to build a 17-story, mixed-use apartment tower on the site at 135-35 Northern Blvd. at the corner of Main Street.

The plans conform to city approvals granted years ago to a prior owner, Shaya Boymelgreen, and later amended for another owner, Patrick Thompson — who sold the property to JK Equities, which is experienced in redeveloping properties with historic character.

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank Capital Markets senior managing director Kenneth Zakin, who worked both sides of the deal, said, “The building, vacant for over 20 years, is the development linchpin of northern Flushing, and its rebirth will eventually drive growth for the whole area.”

As much as I'd like to see this place cleaned up and made into something useful, in its current state, it represents all the corruption that Queens has had to deal with over the past 30 years or so. Someone should put up an historical sign in front of it to tell the tale.

Problems at Mary Immaculate site

From DNA Info:

Mary Immaculate Hospital near downtown Jamaica had become an eyesore since it went bankrupt in 2009. Many windows are broken and, neighbors said, squatters have lived inside.

Now, as the work to transform the building into market-rate apartments begins, the community hopes it will become an asset in the neighborhood that's undergoing a number of changes.

But the demolishion of the interior of the building, which started several weeks ago, has already run into problems by producing "excessive debris at the site," said Gloria Chin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, and on Monday the city issued a stop work order.

"Work cannot continue until this matter is resolved," Chin wrote in an e-mail.

Residents said that over the years the building has become home to trash and vandals. Squatters have also lived there, said Joe Moretti, 55, a database manager, who has long advocated to clean up the site.

“It’s not like a desolate area," Moretti said. "This is right near downtown Jamaica, it’s right across from Rufus King Park, it’s right near a section where there are apartment buildings.”

Huang on the hook for replacing mature trees?

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Department of Buildings and the city Planning Commission decided this week that removal of trees in a Fresh Meadows Special Planned Community Preservation District constitutes substantial modification.

The word “substantial” had been debated for a week before the DOB took action against the owner of the former Klein farm for cutting down several large shade trees on the 2.5-acre property at 194-15 73 Ave.

An Environmental Control Board violation was issued Wednesday for the significant modification of an existing landscape at the site in violation of zoning, according to DOB spokeswoman Kelly Magee. The ticket cites illegal removal of trees.

No date has been set for the ECB hearing and possible fines were expected to be determined later this week.

The site is owned by Audrey Realty, a firm of convicted developer Thomas Huang. Henry Huang, his son, denied knowledge of the tree removal last week.

Marie Adam Ovide, Community Board 8 district manager, said Huang may be forced to plant large trees to replace those felled.

Forest Park to get cameras

From the Queens Courier:

Criminals should say cheese before they commit a crime in Forest Park.

State Assemblymember Mike Miller, who represents the park, allocated $250,000 for more than a dozen cameras inside the park, and received permission from the NYPD on Monday to have the devices installed within the next few months, following a string of sexual assaults in the green space.

“I think it will be extremely helpful in being a deterrent to crime,” Miller said. “If somebody thinks of doing something there, and they see the camera, they will think twice before committing a crime.”

Miller said they haven’t decided the exact locations of where the cameras will be placed in the park, but he wants to put them in entrances and areas where many people gather, such as Victory Field.

There will be a total of seven $35,000 units with two cameras on each, for a total of 14 cameras. Miller hopes installing the devices will not only be a crime deterrent, but will also help the NYPD identify suspects.

1) Entrances and areas where many people gather are not where crimes are happening.
2) Without adequate lighting, the cameras might as well be turned off.

Scarano makes peace with his past by hiding it

Back in 2007 scandal-plagued architect Robert Scarano was caught scrubbing his Wikipedia article.

Scarano has been in the news again recently, reinventing himself as a 'green architect' with a net-zero building in Brighton Beach. And coincidentally, two new Wikipedia users have taken an interest in his page (and only his page); information about Scarano's past violations and sanctions has been pushed to the bottom or deleted entirely.

These new Wikipedia users - Erikabogner and Exineb - are the same person -- Erika Bogner, a Brooklyn "creative consultant" and "social media manager". Her list of clients includes (surprise) Scarano.

That was nice of them...

From CBS New York:

New York City has agreed to deal more thoroughly with the removal of mold in public housing.

The New York Times reports that it’s part of an agreement by the Bloomberg administration to settle a federal lawsuit by tenants.

The city was accused of allowing mold to persist, aggravating tenants’ respiratory ailments.

“They would come and scrape the mold off the wall and then they would just paint over it, but the problem would come back again in three or four months because they never addressed the issue of moisture,” the Reverend Getulio Cruz told 1010 WINS. “Now they’re committed to not just dealing with the mold, but also addressing the issue of moisture.”

The settlement requires the city Housing Authority to remove the mold and fix leaks, insulate pipes and deal with other moisture issues. It covers all of the authority’s 400,000 tenants.

In most cases, the authority will have to fix the problem within seven to 15 days of a work order.

Even more of Greenwich Village landmarked

From the NY Post:

Greenwich Village — stage to generations of American cultural greats, from Edgar Allan Poe to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen — is the city’s newest historic landmark.

About 250 buildings in the neighborhood that reach back to the early 1800s, including houses and small theaters that produced artists like Lenny Bruce and Eugene O’Neill, gained historic-district status on Tuesday from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The 13-block South Village Historic District also includes America’s first Italian coffeehouse, the San Remo Cafe. It was the hangout of everyone from Miles Davis and Jack Kerouac to Dylan Thomas.
Advocates say the buildings have been threatened by developers looking to demolish or change 19th-century housing stock.

Since the 1960s, nearly 2,500 structures have been landmarked in Greenwich Village, which the commission described as “one of the most important cultural and social centers of the city.”

Wills tries to be a bigger bum

From the Daily News:

That raggedy guy earning tips by pumping gas at the Gulf station on North Conduit Ave. on Tuesday was no homeless bum. He was your councilman.

Jamaica lawmaker Ruben Wills made $14 manning the pumps at 150th St. — part of his self-guided three-day odyssey as a “homeless” man.

Later in his “humbling” day, Wills (D-Jamaica) lunched at a local soup kitchen and was set to sleep incognito in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.

Over the next two days, the married father hopes to navigate the city’s shelter system and get medical care without insurance or identification. He’ll bag groceries for tips on Wednesday.

“I needed to experience homelessness to really properly advocate for the homeless population,” said Wills. “The whole objective of this experiment is to find out where the city has weaknesses in terms of providing services for the homeless.”

Being homeless, even for just a few hours, was a life-changing experience, Wills said, citing how people would walk away from him when he laid down on a bench inside a bus shelter.

Ah, so the council member fell for the old stereotype of what a homeless person is. Most are not "raggedy bums". But I love the political stunt. I'm sure the homeless population in your district is now 100% behind you after you told them to take a hike a few years back.

Machine wants Garodnick for Speaker

From City and State:

Multiple sources have told City & State that the three Democratic county leaders, Rep. Joe Crowley of Queens, Assemblyman Carl Heastie of the Bronx, and Frank Seddio of Brooklyn have coalesced around Councilman Dan Garodnick for City Council Speaker.

A source close to the county organizations said that the county leaders believe that they have 30 or more votes, more than enough for Garodnick to win the Speakership. The minimum votes needed is 26.

Condos proposed on site of dying hospital, then plan withdrawn

From the NY Times:

Long Island College Hospital, which became a symbol of New York City’s struggling community hospitals during the mayoral race, is considering an offer to redevelop the property to include condominiums and an urgent care center.

The hospital, in Cobble Hill, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, has been emptied of all but a small number of patients over the last several months, as the State University of New York has tried to shut it down and doctors, unions and community groups have successfully sued to keep it open. The state has said it cannot afford to continue operating the hospital at a loss, but the unions have said it is needed by the community.

SUNY officials said on Monday that a developer has offered to buy the property and lease much of the block that now houses the hospital back to one or more health care providers, who would run an urgent care center, a fitness center and other non-hospital facilities. The facilities would not receive ambulance calls. Other nearby buildings — the hospital comprises about 20 structures — would be turned into condominiums.

Yes, because an urgent care center and a bunch of luxury condos makes up for the hospital that was there. Well, they changed their mind about the whole thing. Once again, it's not in Queens.