Fabianville

The before shot.





This is sandwiched between the Metro Mall in Middle Village and the LIRR freight tracks.

How many? Dunno. Too many to count.

Great Queens mosaic extends to Little Neck

When the Chinese-owned multi-ethnic grocery store, New York Mart, began attracting droves of customers shortly after opening last month, complaints poured in about the lack of available parking. Its owners thought they had the problem beat with the creation of a new parking lot, but that measure, in turn, has sparked a new round of outrage among nearby residents upset over the removal of trees and what they describe as poor maintenance.

Parking woes dog Little Neck market

"This is terrible. The entire block is up in arms," protested Shelly McKeever, a 30-year-resident of Deepdale Gardens on 56th Avenue, located behind New York Mart and other stores along the Horace Harding Expressway strip.

For her part, McKeever rattled off a host of complaints about problems associated with the tree removal as well as the property manager's overall performance: the smell of fish, dumpster leakage, car fumes, light shining from parking lot lamps, and honking as people fight over space.

Community Board 11 District Manager Susan Seinfeld said her office has fielded a number of complaints from Deepdale residents. Addressing their concerns, she spoke with the property owner, Musso Properties after sending them a letter from the board reflecting worries over fumes, rodents and harsh lighting.

...a company official told her 22 new parking spaces would be created as the current retaining wall comes down. A new wall will be erected when the project is completed in an estimated four or five weeks ---roughly coinciding with the completion of a new multi-ethnic restaurant right next to the grocery store, run by the same owners.

Holding court in Brooklyn

With foreclosures and Housing Court cases up in Brooklyn, court officials have launched the state's first courtroom just for small-building disputes.

Small-building squabbles to get own housing court

The new court, which opened two weeks ago on the fifth floor of Brooklyn Housing Court, seeks to settle disputes in one- and two-family buildings - where homeowners are at high risk of foreclosure if there is any gap in rental income, officials said.

Illegal LI rental has tragic consequences

For just one night, Tanisha Armstrong and her little daughter returned to their West Babylon apartment, despite problems with the landlord and the lack of electricity.

It was a fatal decision.

Family: Carbon monoxide victims avoided apartment

Armstrong and Talani Johnson had been living with family for weeks, her relatives said, but went back Monday because the next day Talani Johnson, 4, a bubbly girl who liked her princess-themed bedroom, was going to have her photo taken for the first time in her Head Start class.

Everything they needed -- the outfit, hair clips, curler and more -- was in the apartment in a two-story Sunrise Highway house that town officials condemned in June but was still occupied.

"She didn't want to be in the house," her mother, Bettina Lewis, said Thursday at her Hempstead apartment. "She wouldn't have went in there if she knew it had been condemned."

The mother, 24, and daughter, died Tuesday after carbon monoxide fumes from a kerosene heater and basement generator filled the house. They were found in their second-floor beds. A downstairs tenant, Ricardo Pearce, 27, also was dead at the scene.

On a day when other families were giving thanks, Armstrong's family, cousins and friends had harsh words for landlord Wilson Milord, whose rental house had been condemned by the town because it did not have multifamily permits.

A day before the tragedy, Milord, 47, appeared in court to answer multiple Babylon Town code violations of illegally renting out the home. A judge adjourned the hearing.

That Space Is Fair Game

From the New York Times:

Q. Many of the large apartment buildings in my neighborhood put signs in the street in front of the building that say, “Please do not block entrance of building.” Presumably this is so that residents have easy access when getting out of taxis. But a sign in the street blocks what could be a parking space. Is this legal?

A. It is legal for some large hotels, but not for apartment buildings.

“If you are talking about an apartment building, it is illegal to reserve parking in front of the building,” said Craig Chin, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation. Traffic rules forbid reserving a space or preventing a vehicle from parking by putting something in the roadway, including an unauthorized sign.

Hotels, provided they have at least 100 rooms, can apply for a loading zone. (They can’t merely create one.) A 100-room hotel will be allowed two parking spaces (40 feet). For 500 rooms, a hotel can get three spaces, and for 1,000 rooms, five spaces.