NYPD detective shot to death trying to stop a holdup in Richmond Hill

NY Daily News 

A NYPD detective was shot and killed, and a sergeant was wounded in a furious gunbattle Tuesday night with an armed robber in Queens, law enforcement sources said.

The death is the first line-of-duty fatality for 2019.

According to sources, police were responding to an armed robbery at a T-Mobile cell phone store at Atlantic Ave. and 121st St. in Richmond Hill at around 6:14 p.m.

A 19-year veteran detective and a squad sergeant were struck by gunfire as at least one suspect holed up inside the store, sources said. A suspect was also shot in the confrontation.

The detective was hit in the chest; he has a wife and two children, sources said. The sergeant was struck by gunfire in the hip. It wasn’t clear if the officers were wearing bullet-proof vests.

Update:

NY Post 


The NYPD detective killed while responding to a robbery in Queens was struck by friendly fire, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said at a press conference Tuesday night.


Detective Brian Simonsen, 42, was fatally shot by a fellow officer while responding to a robbery at a T-Mobile phone store on Atlantic Avenue near 120th Street in Richmond Hill soon after 6 p.m., police said.


A sergeant who responded to the robbery with Simonsen was also shot in the leg during the incident but is expected to recover.


The suspected robber, a 27-year-old with a lengthy rap sheet, was also shot and is in serious condition, authorities said. He was using an imitation gun during the robbery, O’Neill said.

Another update:

NY Daily News

Simonsen and Gorman opened fire on the suspect, and as they retreated from the store, they were struck by bullets from cops outside, O’Neill said.

Simonsen was fatally shot in the chest and Gorman was hit in the hip.

“Make no mistake about it — friendly fire aside, it is because of the actions of the suspect that Detective Simonsen is dead,” said O’Neill, who appeared near tears.

“We lost a very good man,” Mayor Bill de Blasio

The situation by the detective and his partner was under control and the backup panicked and shot at the two cops. This is going to get national attention regarding the issue of the justification of excessive force and the leniency meted by the justice system towards officers who commit it. But mostly this falls on the shoulders of the lousy and distant "leadership" of presidential wannabe Mayor de Blasio.

And this comes a week on the day two decades ago when Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times by police who thought his wallet was a weapon.

 

 Sympathies go out to the family of Det. Simonsen, who did a stalwart job tracking down this recidivist criminal.

Well wishes go out to Sgt. Gorman and his family.

As for the stupid knucklehead who got shot. You had it coming.

Another Update:

NY Post

 
The deadly barrage, which officials said unfolded in all of a minute, was the chaotic culmination of Ransom’s interrupted robbery of a T-Mobile store Tuesday night, according to cops.

Ransom, 27, stormed into the Richmond Hill store at about 6 p.m. wearing a black mask, ordered two workers into a back room and tied them up, police sources said.

 Outside, at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and 120th Street, cops alerted by two 911 callers were massing, among them 19-year NYPD veteran Simonsen, who was working on his day off to crack a robbery pattern ahead of a Thursday CompStat meeting, sources said.

Gorman, 31, and two fellow officers were the first to push into the mobile store, which they found abandoned — until Ransom sprang from the back room, pointing the fake gun at them and pulling the trigger, authorities said.

Assuming Ransom’s firearm to be real and simply jammed, the trio took no chances and retreated to the street, where they took up tactical positions along with Simonsen and four other cops, according to police.

Still holding his gun high and dry-firing it, Ransom emerged from the store to find himself in the middle of two waves of blue, with a group of cops including Gorman to his right, and Simonsen among a squad to his left, sources said.
 
Seven officers opened fire, squeezing off a total of 42 rounds.

Gorman fired 11 times. Simonsen shot twice.

“Be advised, I’m shot,” a cop, presumably Gorman, can be heard telling a dispatcher in a police radio recording of the drama, posted to Twitter by @NYScanner. “Please set up a route going to Jamaica [Hospital].”

Though the recording is apparently partially redacted, Simonsen’s voice is never heard above the din of gunfire and frantic calls of “Shots fired!”

The mayhem was over in seconds.

 Once Ransom was down, the toll of the fusillade, all NYPD rounds, became apparent to cops.

Gorman had caught a round in the leg, while Simonsen, who hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest, was shot through the chest.

Gorman was treated at Jamaica Hospital, where he remained Wednesday. In the same hospital, Simonsen was pronounced dead, leaving behind a wife and a mother.

 

Rally at NYCHA Queensbridge Houses supports Amazon's HQ2

 

QNS

Bishop Mitchell Taylor and Queensbridge residents rallied on Monday to support employment opportunities that the online retail giant could possibly provide to Long Island City and beyond.

Taylor told reporters that negativity from opponents of the proposal does not represent the wants or needs of NYCHA residents or the involvement of their leaders in discussions about Amazon coming to their community. But more than anything, they spoke out against perceived outsiders stoking discontent within the confines of the housing complex.

“I’m incensed when I see people from Connecticut, from other boroughs, from other places, convene upon Queensbridge, knocking on doors telling people because of Amazon, because of this, you’re going to lose your apartment,” Taylor said. “Let me tell you something: if you’re concerned about gentrification, that happened 15 years ago … You cannot speak for us. You haven’t lived here.”

Taylor’s roots in Queensbridge go deep with his father, also a pastor, first serving a northwest Queens congregation in 1960 and Taylor himself leading worship for 28 years. He is a founder of Urban Upbound, an organization which works to break cycles that keep families in poverty and serves on the Community Advisory Committee for the implementation of Amazon.

 “We are negotiating. We are talking. We are trying to figure out what is the best possible outcome for the residents of northwestern Queens and New York City,” Taylor said. “Twenty-five thousand jobs, possibly 40,000 jobs coming to this neighborhood and we want to know how that’s going to happen, how that’s going to benefit our residents. Nobody is cutting any deals here.”

NY Daily News

Supporters of Amazon’s plan to bring a new hub to Queens gathered Monday in front of the Queensbridge North Houses to counter critics who say the deal has little to no grassroots backing.

Their event attracted a diverse — and unlikely — mix of about a dozen people to the Long Island City public housing complex and included tenant leaders, a representative from the pro-business Association for a Better New York and Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

April Simpson, president of the Queensbridge Houses Tenant Association, was front and center. She contends that, unlike other new arrivals to the area, Amazon has been talking with the group since “Day One” and believes the Seattle-based company will hire people living in the NYCHA complex.

“You know why? Because we have a voice,” she said. “We’re at the table. That’s the blessing.”
 

If Amazon has been meeting with these people and there is so much alleged support for the HQ2 deal, why would they keep it such a secret?

"Day One" is Jeff Bezo's credo for running his empire.

City Council holds hearing on Con Ed transformer explosion

CBS NY

 The New York City Council held a hearing Monday on what caused December’s “Astoria Borealis.”

A malfunction at a Con Edison substation in Queens sent out a blue light that could be seen for miles, CBS2’s Jenna DeAngelis reported.
When the city skyline lit up that night, it was a moment that was hard to believe and impossible to forget.
And if you just so happened to be on social media at the time, you likely saw the supernova shades spark some interesting theories.

Fortunately, there were no major injuries, but there were temporary power outages, among other community concerns.
“Families’ homes shook. There was air quality concerns. There was safety concerns,” council member Costa Constantinides said. “We’re gonna get some hard answers from Con Ed as to what happened.”


The council’s Environmental Protection Committee, which Constantinides chairs, heard more from the utility at a meeting on Monday.
“We replaced the faulty equipment, installed a redundant system, and are working directly with the manufacturer to minimize the chance of this happening again,” said Milovan Blair, Con Ed’s senior VP for central operations.

 I have two theories on how this occurred. There is the possibility that the plant at the time couldn't take the amount of energy consumption being used by the growing populace in the area, particularly by the tower hyperdevelopment in Long Island City.

Or the Highlander returned to Queens....

Recent de Blasio appointee to monitor city census finds time to go electioneering

NY Post


Mayor de Blasio’s new census czar may be counting votes for her next election campaign, rather than Big Apple residents, stunned Democratic Party officials said.

Newly minted 2020 Census honcho Julie Menin is supposed to be finding ways to improve the city’s abysmal 60 percent participation rate in the every-10-year census by getting undocumented immigrants to participate.

But at the same time, she’s courting tony East Side 
political clubs to help solidify a future run for Manhattan district attorney, according to three borough district leaders.

“She’s doing this to build up her political relationships. Everyone assumes she took the job to brush up her political chops,” said one observer, who requested anonymity and said it’s an open secret that Menin plans to run for Manhattan DA in 2021.

 “The city does have major underrepresentation problems with the census count in lower-income and immigrant neighborhoods. But the East Side of Manhattan doesn’t fall into either category.”

MTA removes elevated train viaduct decorative tiles weeks after a bunch of shards fell off

Sunnyside Post

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is working to remove some overhead tiles along parts of the 7 line viaduct after chunks of the decorative yellow and green strips dislodged and fell to the parking lot below—even piercing a car windshield—last month.
The agency inspected the entire viaduct for loose tiles on Jan. 17, two days after the Sunnyside Post reported that pieces of the decorative terra cotta tiles had fallen near 45th Street and Queens Boulevard, with one of the 4-by-8 inch tiles slicing through the windshield of a parked car underneath.
The report came after a local resident, alarmed after stumbling upon the scene at the municipal lot, sent images to the site that showed the damaged car windshield with the tile still wedged upright in it, and a pile of yellow and green tiles strewn on the ground by the car’s tires.

 The MTA said the inspection done four weeks ago revealed a few locations along the roughly 20-block viaduct where tiles showed some minor signs of movement, but were not actually loose. The agency insisted that the identified tiles did not pose a public risk to safety.

Train delays are the longest and happen most frequently on transit lines starting at Eastern And Southern Queens Stations

 Queens Eagle

 If you’ve commuted to or from Queens by subway this year, odds are your train has been delayed, a new report from data-scraping tool ReadyPipe shows. Using data from the MTA’s own website, the web-scraping platform determined that the A, F, N, E trains are among the city’s top-10 most-delayed subway lines.

“A negative surprise was the fact that every morning there are at least five routes that had a delay at some point,” Chad Horner, a data analyst with ReadyPipe, told the Eagle. “The MTA can’t make it through that time without a bunch of things going wrong.”

 

The A train, which takes straphangers from the Rockaways, Howard Beach and Ozone Park into Brooklyn and Manhattan, was delayed more than 11 percent of the time throughout the entire month of January. During the weekday rush hour (between 6:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m), nearly one in every five A trains experienced delays.

The F train, which serves Queens from Jamaica-179 Street to 21 Street-Queensbridge, was delayed more than 10 percent of the time in January. The N and the E trains were delayed over 6.5 percent of the time and three of every 10 trains experienced planned work.

In fact, there wasn't a single weekday morning in January that didn't see at least one delay during the morning rush, according to Horner’s findings — the fewest number of lines delayed in a single morning was five. 

On the bright side, at least we are not getting poisoned during our daily commutes. Yet.

Steinway & Sons plays their customers like pianos

 

NY Post


Angry buyers of Steinway pianos say they were duped by salespeople who told them the instruments would increase in value, though they actually plunge in price by 50 percent or more as soon as they leave the showroom floor, according to a report Saturday.

Owners of the ultra-expensive instruments, which cost between $70,000 and $150,000 when new, said salespeople lied to them about what their pianos’ worth in the future, the Hatch Institute reported Saturday.

Customers said they were shown charts of steadily rising prices for new models and were told that buying a Steinway made a better investment than Wall Street stock, the investigative journalism site said.
 
One Steinway brochure, titled “Your Steinway Investment,” claims that “for more than a century and a half, every handmade Steinway has increased in value,” adding that their pianos were “an investment instrument unique in all the world.”

But when owners tried to sell, they learned their Steinways were worth tens of thousands less than what they’d paid, even when the pianos were just months old or had never been played, the site reported.

Amazon considering abandoning Long Island City location for their second headquarters due to pressure from officials, unions and the citizens objections to the deal

NY Daily News

The billion-dollar deal to bring Amazon to Queens has New York Democrats and union leaders at each others’ throats as rumors swirl that the plan could crumble at any minute.

“The question is whether it’s worth it if the politicians in New York don’t want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming,” an anonymous source familiar with internal discussions told the newspaper, which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

But the venture has faced a barrage of criticism from local and national politicians, including state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who has argued that one of the nation’s richest corporations should not be getting handouts at the expense of New York taxpayers.

The Queens Democrat, whose district includes the proposed campus, had previously signed a letter asking the company to build its headquarters in New York. He has since soured on the offered incentives.

“Amazon’s pattern of extortion leaves me to believe that they should pack their bags,” he said.

Gianaris, appointed earlier in the week to a panel that could veto a $500 million grant that was part of the construction deal, said he wasn’t sure what Amazon’s next move would be, nor did he seem to care.

“I don’t know whether to believe them or not,” he said. “What I can tell you is that no amount political machinations from Andrew Cuomo are going to mask the fact that this deal stinks"

While some speculated that the rumblings of a reneging Friday might be a power play by Amazon — or even the governor — Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens), who opposes the plan, thought the deal was earnestly “in trouble.”

“I think there's a possibility that this is gamesmanship and they're trying to call a bluff — but we're not bluffing,” Van Bramer said. “If in fact it is an attempt to call a bluff, it’s yet another strategic blunder in a series of blunders that the governor, the mayor and Amazon have committed since they announced the deal in November.”

 While it's refreshing to see Jimmy vociferously reject this deal due to the efforts of the people organizing against the corporate welfare deal in his district, he sure was all gung ho a year ago in an letter Crappy sent to me:

Last year he was calling LIC a "mixed-use" neighborhood. So it's kind of good to see he's seen the light and the error of his tone-deaf description of a neighborhood he represents right?

Governor Andrew Amazon on the other hand:

NY Daily News

Gov. Cuomo took aim at Senate Democrats on Friday, accusing his fellow party members of “governmental malpractice” and “political pandering” in their opposition to Amazon’s planned Queens campus and eyeing an unpopular income tax hike.

Addressing business leaders on Long Island, Cuomo warned that his colleagues in the legislature are taking their fate in their own hands by continuing to speak out against the deal to bring the eCommerce titan, and tens of thousands of jobs, to Long Island City.

“For the state Senate to oppose Amazon was governmental malpractice,” Cuomo said. “If they stop Amazon from coming to New York, they’re going to have the people of New York to explain it to.”

Cuomo’s comments came on the heels of a Washington Post report that the online retailer is “reconsidering” its options in light of mounting criticism of the project.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and her counterpart in the Assembly, Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), have both raised concerns about Amazon’s opposition to unionization of its workers and the nearly $3 billion in tax incentives used to entice the company to the Empire State.

Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the Democratic majority in the Senate, lamented the divisions.

"It is unfortunate that the Governor is trying to divide the Democratic Party at this crucial and historic time,” Murphy said. “The Senate Democratic Majority Conference and our partners in the Assembly finally returned New York as the progressive beacon to the rest of the country.”

Andy doth project too much, for it was he who committed malpractice against his constituency and pandered to Bezos to circumvent laws to fast track this rancid deal.

 

Update:

de Blasio announces leniency towards bike lane parking violators

NY Post


Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday the city won’t be going after vehicles clogging bike lanes because it doesn’t have adequate “resources” for such a crackdown.

“We don’t have the resources to do that right now in the way I think … the bicycle community would like to see, but we do believe that anybody who is parked in the bike lane, of course, is going to be summonsed and there will be consequences,” de Blasio said during his weekly appearance on WNYC radio.

“So these are just different priorities that we need to work with every single day.”

Host Brian Lehrer pointed out that callers to the show regularly question why the city is concerned about clogged bus lanes, but not bike lanes, where “someone can get killed or seriously injured by having to swerve into traffic.”

De Blasio responded that bus lanes are a higher priority because “of the sheer number” who use them, meaning the 2.5 million daily passengers.

His comments came a day after de Blasio announced that seven NYPD tow teams would be dedicated exclusively to clearing bus thoroughfares.

Of course this would not be complete without another incriminating display of his brazen sense of entitlement and defiant hypocrisy, for he's also a recidivist scofflaw concerning this pervasive issue.

President Trump's first luxury hotel will be demolished for new tower

 

NY Post


Midtown’s Grand Hyatt Hotel is getting torn down.

The glass-sheathed tower — Donald Trump’s first major Manhattan project — is being bought out by developers who plan to raze it and replace it with a 2-million-square-foot, mixed-use space.

Manhattan developer TF Cornerstone and computer billionaire Michael Dell’s MSD Partners are in contract to buy the 100-year-old hotel and take over its ground lease, which expires in 2077, from Hyatt, they announced on Thursday.

In its place, they’re planning a new skyscraping project that would include offices and a scaled-down Hyatt hotel.

The land under the Hyatt, which includes numerous underground concourses that connect to Grand Central Terminal, was owned by the New York State’s Urban Development Corp. — until it was sold to the MTA in December 2017 for $13 million. Changing ownership of that lease would require city consent.

Building the new project would also require state approval.

This was the bad orange man's project genesis. A fitting and more productive use of this re-development would be a tower jail or homeless shelter.

A modern tale of Queens' King of Crap and his port-a-potty empire.

New York Intelligencer

Charles W. Howard is the porta-potty king of New York City. The seat of his vast empire is Broad Channel, Queens; from this windswept rock in Jamaica Bay, you can see the lights of Manhattan twinkling across the water. Early every morning, while the city sleeps, dozens of trucks — tagged with WE’RE #1 AT PICKING UP #2 decals — snake through the five boroughs to clean his 18,000 toilets. The company boasts more than $35 million in annual revenue, thanks in part to “salesgirls” who head out each day in the company’s signature Volkswagen Beetles to poach contracts from competitors who are too shy to sell with sex. Charlie himself arrives at work only around midday in a black Cadillac Escalade. Young female dispatchers and clerks cry “Charlie! Charlie!” while men in orange slickers hose down toilets in the yard.

On a recent Thursday, the gleaming Escalade stops at a pizzeria, and Charlie, 53, steps out, a bit heavy and wearing a rumpled purple dress shirt. He’s brought along Kimberly, the star of his company’s YouTube channel. She’s beautiful, blonde, and his wife. Charlie favors superlatives, like another Queens businessman, and speaks with the accent you’d expect from a man so old-school New York there’s a neighborhood named after his family. And now, not far from Howard Beach, he explains why he’s the greatest toilet man in America. “I had different theories about business,” he says, “and they all turned out to be correct.”

  Nationally, portable toilets are a $2 billion business. Construction rentals are three-quarters of New York’s market, and as America’s real-estate sector has rebounded over the past half-decade, the industry has exploded. Developers pay $100 a month for a pump truck to visit once a week and hoover up blue-tinged waste. Profits are made by building dense routes: lots of toilets at a stop and lots of job sites close together. Events are a growing corner of the business. Go to Smorgasburg and count the toilets: Daily rentals run about $225 each. Use a luxury restroom trailer with flushing toilets at an upstate wedding? It cost the bride’s parents a few thousand bucks just for the night.

 

But now, Charlie might fall off his throne. More than 1,300 former pump-truck drivers, the men who literally haul his shit, are part of a class-action lawsuit that could put him out of business. The rest of the big five covet his empire.

“They would love for us to get destroyed,” Charlie says, though it’s quite a vague “they.” Spend enough time in his world and you wonder if he’s perhaps the most hated man in the city. Kimberly Howard nods. “Business,” she says, “is war.”

Mayor de Blasio and his EDC, luxury real estate developers and their "friends" still trying to make idiotic and loathed BQX trolley a reality

 NY Daily News

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for a shiny new streetcar through Brooklyn and Queens took a step forward Wednesday.

The NYC Economic Development Corporation, which also runs NYC Ferry service, announced it approved a contract with a consultant to oversee the environmental review process for the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, or BQX.

The trolley, which was first announced in 2016, looked to be dead in the water last April when Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen questioned whether it was worth its $2.5 billion price tag.

But the city released a revised plan for the BQX in August, which slashed the length of the streetcar's 
route from 16 miles to 11, and inflated its cost to $2.7 billion.

The updated route terminates in Gowanus in the south and Astoria in the north.

The new transit option has garnered a good deal of controversy since it was announced. Like the NYC Ferry, it has raised concerns about gentrification and housing prices.

Friends of the BQX, a real estate-backed nonprofit that has been advocating for the project, praised the progress Wednesday.

“We are pleased with the city's commitment not just to moving the project forward, but to community engagement, which must play a central role,“ said the group’s executive director Jessica Schumer, daughter of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “As the city grapples with a transit crisis, now is the moment for it to take control of its mass transit destiny and expand access wherever it can.”

The city hopes to have the trolley completed in 2029 — it still hasn’t determined how it will be funded.

Yeah, the headline above is a little bitty bit of editorializing, but I said that this was going to happen regardless. Because what the real estate overlords want, the real estate overlords get. And I don't like it anymore than you do.

Gianaris finds exploitative faults with President Trump's "Opportunity Zones" real estate investment program

NY Daily News

State Sen. Michael Gianaris’ war on Amazon has led the Queens lawmaker to target tax incentives tied to the Trump administration and meant to spark investment in poorer neighborhoods.

Gianaris, whose Queens district includes the Long Island City blocks being eyed for the company’s proposed new outpost, announced legislation on Wednesday that would eliminate state tax breaks for capital gains when investing in federal Qualified Opportunity Zones.

“What was intended to benefit investment in economically distressed areas is now being used to boost investment in very wealthy area,” Gianaris said. “It’s completely bastardized the intent of the program and turned it on its head.”

 The area around the waterfront site is one of 306 census tracts in the city that Gov. Cuomo recommended as “opportunity zones.” The Treasury Department signed off on the designations late last year.

The company is already in line for $2.8 billion in grants and tax breaks from New York state and the city. Lawmakers and labor leaders argue the company is not doing enough to earn the incentives.

Gianaris and other critics also contend separately that the Trump administration program provides deep tax cuts to companies investing in already gentrifying areas.

 Meanwhile, a poll, conducted by HarrisX on behalf of Amazon, found 69% of New Yorkers approve of the internet retailer coming to the city, with 19% opposed.

Grand Street Bridge is finally getting renovated

QNS


The Grand Street Bridge on the Maspeth/Brooklyn border could be getting a contractor for a rebuild 16 years in the making.

Community Board 5 District Manager Gary Giordano said the advisory board received an email notification on Jan. 22 that followed up to a request for proposals (RFP) put out in June looking for bids.

“It’s a very, very important project that we shall not give up on,” Giordano said. “It is an example of how cooperative one can be that people can stop and let another vehicle go by. I wish other drivers on other roads and bridges were as considerate these drivers are. We need more consideration on our roads and bridges.”

The Grand Street Bridge was originally built in 1903 and 227 feet across, but at a 19 foot, 7 inch width, cars and trucks generally need wait for other vehicles already making the crossing to pass before taking the road despite it being two lanes.

Senate Majority Leader gives Gianaris ability to quash Amazon corporate welfare deal as de Blasio starts job training program designed for it

 

QNS


Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins recommended state Senator Michael Gianaris as a member of the state Public Authorities Control Board, which could potentially veto the Amazon project.

 
Gianaris, the deputy majority leader of the Senate, has been a leading opponent of the Amazon deal due to the incentive package worth nearly $3 billion in taxpayer funds.
 
“New York needs responsible fiscal stewardship now more than ever and ensuring our economic development dollars are well spent is a responsibility I take very seriously,” Gianaris said Monday. 

“I appreciate Leader Stewart-Cousin’s faith in me and am honored she submitted my name to serve on the PACB.”

We shall see.

Meanwhile...

QNS

As it gears up for the full arrival of Amazon’s HQ2 campus in Long Island City is the coming years, the de Blasio administration announced Jan. 28 it is offering up to $300,000 in micro-grants to qualified organizations that specialize in workforce development.

The grants will support research and planning into innovative approaches the city could take to promote training and hiring of underrepresented New Yorkers in tech and other in-demand sectors.

“Preparing New Yorkers for the jobs of tomorrow and making sure those jobs are accessible to residents from all backgrounds with different skill sets is critical to leveling the economic playing field,” the New York City Economic Development Corporation President and CEO James Patchett said. “We are excited to partner with the Office of Workforce Development to catalyze innovative workforce training programs that will help ensure New Yorkers are ahead of the game as the city’s tech sector booms.”

 Through a request for expressions of interest, known as an RFEI, the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development and the NYCEDC will work with community-based organizations with funds to develop effective, innovative programmatic concepts the city and its partners can use to help ensure local talent is prepared to access new hiring tech opportunities.

Rents are inflating in Ridgewood, Flushing and Rego Park

QNS


A recent report found that rental units in Queens saw slight increases in the new year.
MNS Real Estate released their January 2019 Rental Market Report, which took a look at the trends in real estate rental prices throughout January.

 
According to the report, average rental prices in January 2019 increased from $2,202.98 to $2,210.32, marking a 0.33 percent increase from December 2018. Compared to January 2018, average rental prices have increased 1.67 percent year-over-year.
 
Compared to December 2018, average rental prices for studios in January 2019 decreased from $1,834.60 to $1,783.31. Average rental prices for one-bedroom units increased from $2,094.52 to $2,117.10 and two-bedroom units increased from $2,679.83 to $2,681.02.
 
Flushing and Ridgewood each saw the largest increases in average prices for one-bedroom units during January 2019, raising 5.2 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively. The largest decreases in average prices for studio units were found in Jackson Heights and Long Island City, decreasing 9.9 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively.

Councilman Holden's road safety bills focuses on gravel and cement spill damage

Queens Chronicle

 
Councilman Bob Holden (D-Middle Village) has been bothered for years by gravel and mounds of concrete spilled on roadways as well as speeding tow trucks.

Now he’s got a series of bills to do something about it.

Int. 1354 would require cement-mixing trucks to install certain spillage prevention equipment to avoid materials falling into the roadways. Holden says without the spillage bags, materials like cement and gravel can fall out of trucks and make for dangerous mounds and hazardous conditions.

“When driving around the city, it is common to find mounds of cement or piles of gravel and sand that can be hazardous to drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians alike,” Holden said in a statement. 

“Before these mounds cause any more accidents, damage to tires, fenders or other parts of a car or bike, or a trip-and-fall incident, requiring spillage bags on all trucks is a simple and easy solution.”

This has been a constant sight for years, especially in Queens. Something like this should have been implemented when the Blaz rolled out his "Vision Zero" program at the start.

City Council unanimous bill proposal gives tax deferments to senior citzen homeowners

Queens Chronicle

 
Without fanfare or much opposition, the City Council last week passed a new bill that allows low-income, senior homeowners to put off paying property taxes for the rest of their lives.

The bill, now awaiting Mayor de Blasio’s signature, represents a sweeping change for city homeowners — for the first time, allowing qualified owners full tax deferral essentially until death.

The new bill will permit homeowners over 65 years old and earning less than $58,400 a year to apply for a property tax deferment. The deferral would allow them to pay just some — or even none — of their property taxes until they die or the house is sold.

The city then would collect the accumulated tax debt — without interest — when the house changes hands.

The new tax deferral could be available to an estimated 17,000 homeowners in Queens, a spokesman for the City Council said.

DHS promises New Ozone Park shelter will not house the mentally ill.

 Queens Chronicle

 
In a suprise, last-minute move, the city this week said it is dropping plans to put 113 men with mental problems into a shelter in Ozone Park next month.

“We won,” read a post on the Ozone Park Residents Block Association’s Facebook page last Tuesday night. “It is a small win. But a win nevertheless.”

The excitement was over a report issued late Tuesday afternoon disclosing that the shelter would house a large group of men, but that it would no longer be designated as a residential home for those with histories of mental disorders.

Instead, the building on 101st Avenue, a former church bought two years ago and converted into a shelter late last year, will be used as “temporary” housing for “single adults.”

In the parlance of the Department of Homeless Services, that includes men who are simply homeless and seeking permanent housing.

“We fought against the mentally ill men being placed on 10st Avenue and we won that battle,” said the OPRBA’s post.

“We realize that we still could be faced with some problems with 113 men, but it is a far cry from the challenges we were facing,” it read.

The residents association last summer sued to stop the shelter but lost in court recently.

Melinda Katz supports Rikers shutdown but doesn't say where new Queens tower jail should be located

Queens Chronicle

 
Borough President Melinda Katz last Friday backed Mayor de Blasio’s plan to close the jails at Rikers — but came up short of endorsing the construction of a new 30-story lockup on Queens Boulevard to replace it.

Katz, who announced last month that she is running for Queens district attorney, chose what may be her final State of the Borough address to call for an end to the current jail system.

“Let me be clear,” she said for emphasis. “I have been, and I remain, a strong supporter of closing Rikers Island.


“It is a moral imperative that we overhaul our city’s jail system ... And closing Rikers is an integral part of that.


However, the borough president said, she was “deeply disturbed” that people in Kew Gardens, where a new jail is slated to be built, have not had “meaningful community engagement and input.”


She called for the city to “start anew” and come up with a better plan.“There’s still plenty of time to do it the right way,” she said.

Update:

This is the Kew Gardens town hall meeting concerning the jail QB President Katz obligatorily acknowledged in her speech which she did not engage to attend.

Murder at Jackson Heights train station in broad daylight in front of commuters

NY Daily News

A man was shot to death Sunday on a crowded Queens subway platform, in a chaotic confrontation that’s captured on a shocking cell phone video posted on social media.

Police believe the victim and other men were fighting on a Manhattan-bound No. 7 train when it pulled up to the platform at 90^th St. and Elmhurst Ave. in Jackson Heights around 12:45 p.m.

The melee spilled out onto the platform when the doors opened, and that’s when one commuter starts recording with his cell phone camera.

“I thought they were fighting for no reason, as drunken people. I just kept taking video, and all of a sudden one person pulled out a gun and started shooting,” that commuter, Bidur Bista, told the Daily News.

 The victim, believed to be in his 20s, was shot in the head and died on the scene, cops said.

Investigators believe the shooter may have wrested the gun, a .22-caliber pistol, from the victim during the struggle, then killed him with it, police sources said.

 NYPD Transit Chief Edward Delatorre said cops are still trying to sort out why the men were fighting and whether they knew each other before the melee.

 "The New York City subway system remains incredibly safe for the millions of riders who use it every day, with an average of approximately one crime for every million riders per day,” Delatorre said Sunday.

Why the necessity to bring up that statistic? This guy emptied his clip and blew his head off on the busiest transit line in Queens in front of witnesses and a guy filming it on his phone.


The Bad Days are back.

Flushing's little red light district

NY Post


A tiny Queens block has become a booming hotbed of hookers operating out of at least eight Chinese massage parlors, The Post found.

The slim strip of 40th Road in Flushing’s Chinatown, just a short walk from Citi Field, has become a 24/7 destination for sex-seeking horndogs from all over the metro area, as “masseuses” brazenly compete for johns on the narrow sidewalks.

One former NYC crimefighter said he hasn’t seen such a dense concentration of flesh factories in years.

Non-Asian men are specifically targeted by the Chinese pimps, working girls and spotters who steer customers into storefront spaces or second-floor “spas” for hour-long encounters.
 
It’s the same block where a prostitute committed suicide in 2017 by leaping from a building as she was about to be arrested during a NYPD sting.

 The Flushing Business Improvement District says it’s identified eight brothels on that block, between Prince and Main, just around the corner from the Flushing Main Street MTA/LIRR station.

A beach grows in Manhattan

 NY Post


The same firm that designed the High Line will soon plan out the borough’s first public beach just a block away — on the 5-acre spit of land jutting off Gansevoort Street in the West Village, The Post has learned.

When the $60 million Gansevoort Peninsula portion of the Hudson River Park Trust’s $900 million park renovation project is completed, after two years of construction, in 2022, it will be the largest single greenspace in the 4-mile-long Hudson River Park, planners said Wednesday.

 The beach and its rocky Hudson River shoreline will be built on Gansevoort Peninsula, which until two years ago was the site of a Department of Sanitation salt storage building. An FDNY fireboat house and dock remain at the site, at least for now.

 The future design will provide direct waterfront access to the public while serving as a protective barrier against flooding and storm surge, trust CEO Madelyn Wils said in a statement.

 The construction money will come from a combination of state, city and private funding, she said, along with $152 million secured by the trust through three air rights sales, she said.

The waterfront will be “unlikely to include swimming access,” said Wils.

Climate change? What climate change?

 

Seven story aparment building development will squeeze onto Astoria block.

YIMBY

Permits have been filed for a 70-foot tall residential building at 25-22 30th Drive in Astoria, Queens. Located between Crescent Street and 29th Street, the interior lot is two city blocks west of the 30 Avenue subway station, serviced by the N and W trains. Salvatore Lucchese is listed as the owner behind the applications.

The proposed seven-story project will yield 27,452 square feet, with 21,927 square feet designated for residential space. It will have 31 residences, most likely rentals based on the average unit scope of 707 square feet. The concrete-based structure will also have a cellar, 10 on-site parking spaces, and six off-site parking spaces.

Gerald Caliendo of Caliendo Architects is responsible for the design.

Yeah you know those guys, QC readers. And it's the little house on the right.

 I have an analogy for this: One of my favorite scenes from the Simpsons is where Stan Lee shows up to Comic Book Guy's shop and bothers a kid who was about to purchase a batmobile for his batman doll. Stan yanks the car away and takes a doll of The Thing and forces it into the car, telling the kid it will fit perfectly. Stan did manage to squeeze it in but the toy car is ruined.

When the kid whined that he broke it, Stan replies "broke, or made it better"

That is the mindset of these developers and the city departments responsible for approving these parasitic buildings.

Futuristic cartoon high rise luxury tower development gets approval from D.O.B. and City Planning.

YIMBY

Rafael Viñoly has become one of the more prominent designers of Manhattan’s residential real estate in recent years, and today, YIMBY has the first rendering for the architect’s latest skyscraper, at 249 East 62nd Street on the Upper East Side. While the tower will technically comprise only 32 floors, it will stand 510 feet to its rooftop, taking advantage of a Jetsons-esque podium to boost its upper levels high into the neighborhood skyline.

The Schedule A for the project reveals the exact configuration, and shows that retail and a townhouse will occupy the base of the building. Those will be topped by apartments rising through to the 12th floor.

Above that, the 13th through 16th floors will all be mechanical, with the 15th floor holding the residential amenity spaces, including a bar/wine tasting area with private dining room and pantry, a media lounge, and a study.

Residential space will then continue, with three units per floor from floors 17 through 29, and then another three mechanical floors up on the very top. The 17th floor will start about 350 feet above street level.

 The configuration of 249 East 62nd Street begs the question of whether Viñoly’s design for the site could start a trend to rival the cantilever. The extended mid-section of the tower results in the displacement of a substantial amount of residential space to an elevation far above what one would normally expect for a 32-story building, and is likely to result in pricing that is far higher than what would otherwise be possible.

 As engineering continues to improve, it seems that the premiums people are willing to pay to live in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side could be a driver behind additional developments that mimic 249 East 62nd Street.

I think it looks more like an e-cigarette cartridge than someplace the Jetsons would live in but they definitely wouldn't be able to afford to.  Mr. Spacely or Cogswell would more likely be residents.

Rockaway activists protest the installation of another natural gas pipeline by the towns and beaches

 The Wave


Activists took to City Hall on Thursday, Jan. 24 to try to stop the building of a 23-mile long pipeline that will carry fracked gas under New York Harbor. The planned pipeline, which is being called the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) Pipeline and would be constructed by Williams of Oklahoma, would run along the Staten Island coast and extend out to four miles off Rockaway.

Williams’ already existing Transco pipeline covers approximately 10,200 miles, extending from South Texas to New York City, according to their website.
A coalition of groups made up of The New York Public Interest Research Group Fund (NYPIRG,) Food & Water Watch – New York, New York Communities for Change, 350 NYC and more formed to prevent the NESE pipeline from happening. Patrick Houston, Sara Gronim, Eric Weltman and Lee Ziesche are some of the people at the helm of this campaign to prevent the NESE construction.

 “To lay this pipeline, Williams must excavate a giant trench across New York harbor,” reads an excerpt from an online document published by the coalition. “The harbor seabed is contaminated by toxins like PCBs, dioxin, lead, and arsenic. These toxins will be churned up into the water and washed ashore by the tides, contaminating marine life and the shoreline.”

 Williams’ perspective on the pipeline is rooted in a belief that it will provide cleaner energy and economic opportunities. “Natural gas is a critical part of New York’s energy mix and the demand for it continues to increase. The additional natural gas capacity created by the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project will support new economic projects, environmental initiatives, and continue to allow homes and buildings to convert from dirty heating oils to a cleaner source,” reads an online statement by the company. 

  I’m originally from Pennsylvania, so I’ve seen the dangers of fracking and the harm that it’s causing there,” said Ziesche. “People can’t drink their water, they can’t breathe their air. And in New York, we said that fracking wasn’t safe. So why would we ban fracking here, but use more fracked gas?”

New Woodside luxury apartment building's mandated affordable housing units start at $1,890

Jackson Heights Post


More than 20 apartments are up for grabs in a new affordable housing lottery for a soon-to-be completed development along Queens Boulevard in Woodside.

J&J Tower, a nine-story project at 46-02 70th St., is offering 23 apartments ranging from studios and two bedrooms, starting at a monthly rent of $1,890 a month and going up to $2,530.

The units are available to households earning 130 percent of the Area Median Income.
Five studios are available to households of up to two people, with two available at $1,890 and three going for $1,920. The latter three studios require a household income between $65,829 and $95,030 for a single-person household to quality, and goes up to $108,550 for a family of two.

 

That's right, there are studios that are accepting applications for two people. And the max is at 100,000?  It's clear what this affordable housing is being offered to in this area and how unobtainable it is to, let's say, 80% of this city's citizenry.