Courier declares Bloomberg to be 'King of Queens'

Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be the keynote speaker and recognized as the “King of Kings” on Thursday, October 2 as The Queens Courier and Queens Business Today hold the first annual “Kings of Queens - A Champions Breakfast Awards and Networking Event.”

Honor Bloomberg at ‘Kings of Queens’ event

During the first annual event, which will be held at Douglaston Manor, Bloomberg will receive the “King of Kings” award. Borough President Helen Marshall will be given the “Queen of Queens” award.

Has Kevin James been notified of this?

Joining the mayor in receiving the unique recognition will be: (insert names of developers, bankers and hospital honchos...Mattone, Hemmerdinger, etc.)

Honorees were selected based on their business leadership, civic mindedness, and philanthropy. The criteria also called for “someone who rises above all others to accomplish his goals in a kind and just manner.”

You mean it's not because they take full page ads out in Vicky's paper?

Jet Blue meets the Jetsons at JFK

Imagine this, frustrated fliers: automated baggage screening, zippy security lines, clean bathrooms, top-notch dining - and food orders delivered to the gate as you wait for your plane to board.

Jet Blue's New Terminal Gallery

The 72-acre Terminal 5, which has yet to be completed, will boast nine high-end restaurants offering tapas, sushi, steak, Italian cuisine and American café-style food.

Jittery fliers who don't want to leave their gates can use touch-screen monitors to order meals for delivery.

JetBlue officials are hoping that the terminal, set to open Oct. 1, will attract more business.

Terminal 5 is connected by two vintage tubular walkways to the famous, Eero Saarinen-designed TWA terminal, which has sat vacant since 2001.

But when the new terminal opens, passengers won't be allowed into the old terminal, which has appeared in movies such as "Catch Me If You Can."

Unsuitable to handle modern jet aircraft, the TWA building may be turned into a museum by the Port Authority, according to JetBlue officials.

Quinn wants to stop developer harrassment of tenants

QUINN'S RENT RANT AT 'VULTURE' LANDLORDS
By JOHN DOYLE, GEORGETT ROBERTS and SUSAN EDELMAN, NY Post

It's time to go after landlords who prey on vulnerable tenants, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn demanded yesterday after The Post reported a state employee had been charged with selling lists of rent-stabilized tenants to builders.

The employee, Keith James, 53, was arrested Aug. 12 on charges of illegally accessing computer records and giving out names of rent-stabilized tenants to developers.

Builders often target facilities with fewer or older rent-regulated tenants because those buildings are cheaper to redevelop.

"We have to find out who these names and lists were sold to, and those individuals should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," an outraged Quinn said.

"Clearly, they didn't want this list to send these people holiday cards. They wanted this list to force people out of their homes."

Such behavior demonstrates the need for a newly passed law that bars harassment of tenants by landlords, Quinn said.

"If they didn't have someone to sell the list to they wouldn't have a currency for this," Quinn said.

Additional reporting by Kathianne Boniello

Bloomberg dozes at memorial ceremony

A female friend of Graffagnino’s family nudged this reporter during the speeches and gestured toward Bloomberg, who sat facing the rows of family membeers.

“He’s sleeping!” the woman whispered indignantly.

And, indeed, Bloomberg did appear to have briefly dozed off. His chin was angled toward his chest, listing to the side. His eyes were closed. The friend, who did not want to give her name, said Bloomberg had been nodding off throughout the ceremony. A freelance photographer also noticed Bloomberg’s catnap, which she said lasted for about 15 seconds. A round of applause soon startled him to his feet.

Jason Post, a Bloomberg spokesperson, said Bloomberg was not asleep.

“It’s a little strange,” the Graffagnino friend later said of the ceremony, “what with city being at such fault for what happened…. And then to have the mayor sleeping during it, that’s…”

Disrespectful?

“Quite,” she said.

Deutsche firefighters remembered at memorial ceremony

Vantage neglecting rent controlled units?

Shoukat Ali of Jackson Heights made call after call for three weeks, pleading with his landlord to fix the "waterfall" raining down on his bathroom from a leaky pipe in the apartment above.

Tenants say owner Vantage Properties ignores pleas, yet still renovates

What happened next was almost inevitable.

Last Saturday, a large chunk of the ceiling crashed to the floor, flooding his bathroom with water and soggy drywall.

Several days after the catastrophe, his landlord, Vantage Properties, had yet to fix the gaping hole.

What makes the hardship even more frustrating, Ali said, is that Vantage recently remodeled a vacant apartment across the hallway and another in an adjacent, company-owned building.

Vantage, which owns roughly 5,000 rent-controlled units in some 80 buildings in northern Queens, has made headlines for allegedly harassing tenants in an effort to vacate units and rent them at market rates.

Mishmash mess in Woodside

When construction is happening on BQE ramps, traffic gets backed up on the available approaches. But that's ok, you get to enjoy the scenery longer. These twin lovelies are on 69th Street in Woodside just north of 41st Ave. Besides matching paved-over lawns, they have matching graffiti. But what's really striking about this vibrant, diverse corner of the borough are the patchwork walls of the houses. You can tell these folks have real pride in their homes.

Bloomberg seeks advice from media moguls about term limits

Even as he publicly remains coy about his political future, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has quietly approached some of the city’s most powerful media figures to assess whether their publications would endorse a bid to overturn New York City’s term limits, which could clear a path for him to run for re-election next year.

Bloomberg Said to Test a Term-Limit Reversal

Over the last several weeks, Mr. Bloomberg has held confidential conversations with Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corporation, which owns The New York Post; Mortimer B. Zuckerman, owner of The Daily News; and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, to gauge their views on the issue, according to people familiar with the talks.

The conversations are the clearest evidence to date that Mr. Bloomberg is seriously considering a challenge to the term limits law that will force him from office January 2010.

So Bloomberg wants advice from news guys about whether term limits should be overturned, eh? He must think the voters are too stupid to know what's good for us and our City. Sounds like Council Speaker Christine Quinn may be looking to extend term limits, too:

If Quinn joins Mayor Bloomberg in tacitly supporting an extension so they can run for another four-year term, it will set up the choice of her political life.

She would win wild praise from Council colleagues still smarting over the spring slush-fund scandal. She would presumably get another four years as speaker. And she would get a graceful exit from a mayor's race that looks increasingly worrisome for her.

"The candidates running leave a lot to be desired," said Councilman Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn). "Post-slush, suddenly there's a new interest in extending term limits."

Funny how those who achieved their positions because of term limits don't think it's such a great idea now that their own days are numbered.

Hotel builders discover Dutch Kills' downside

While it has been hailed as the next hot spot, when it comes to hotels, Long Island City appears to be struggling to live up to the hype, as new zoning restrictions and the credit crunch appear to be stymieing some projects.

Thirteen hotels are in the pipeline for the Dutch Kills section of Long Island City, which stretches from the Queensboro Bridge to 35th Avenue and from the East River to 37th Street. The list of projects includes buildings from established chains like Holiday Inn and Clarion Inn. But so far, only three hotels have started construction.

At least three proposed hotels have been rejected by the Department of Buildings.

During a recent meeting at The Real Deal, budget hotel czar Sam Chang, who already has a hotel there, called the area the "worst" for new hotel development in the city (along with Williamsburg), saying "you are dependent on overflow business from Manhattan."

Hoteliers struggle in LIC

Adding to the pressure: New zoning restrictions approved by the local Community Board could be put into place, barring hotels from most of the Dutch Kills area and restricting hotel development to an area along Northern Boulevard.

The rezoning, which is up for review by the City Planning Commission, could move forward by September 23. The City Council would then have 50 days to consider the proposal.

However, developers with a completed foundation would be exempt from any changes; as a result, many hoteliers are racing the clock to finish their foundations.

Earthquake make shake city up

An analysis of recent earthquake activity around New York City has found that many small faults that were believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous earthquake.

STUDY: NEW EARTHQUAKE DANGERS FOR NYC

The study's authors, who work at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Observatory in Palisades, acknowledge that the biggest earthquakes - in the 6 or 7 magnitude range - are rare in the New York City region. They say a quake of magnitude 7 probably comes about every 3,400 years.

But they note that no one knows when the last one hit, and because of the population density and the concentration of buildings and financial assets, many lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk.

1912 reads a lot like 2008

Get into a conversation with a long-time Queens resident and you're likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star-Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star-Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper's name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal--The Flushing Journal (1841).

Welcome to August 1912!

Development, eminent domain, making a greener city, and reckless bicyclists led the headlines.

Wow, give it a read - that's some weird, wild stuff! Proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same...

MLB kissing Harlem goodbye

The MLB Network, which is scheduled to begin broadcasting to 50 million subscribers in January, was to be the anchor tenant in what was originally to be a new 21-story office building at 125th Street and Park Avenue, a short distance from Yankee Stadium and players who would be among its guests.

Harlem Plan for a TV Base Deteriorates

Now baseball executives are balking at new lease terms proposed by the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, that would have required them to take additional space and pay $2 million a year more in rent, said real estate executives and government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are involved in the negotiations.

That has placed the future of the entire building, which was to be the first office tower built on 125th Street in three decades, in jeopardy.

The MLB Network, in turn, is reconsidering its own plans. It is operating out of temporary quarters in the old MSNBC studios in Secaucus, N.J., not far from Giants Stadium and the National Basketball Association’s network studios. The baseball network is now assessing whether to stay in Secaucus, rather than moving to Harlem in a couple of years.

Hey maybe that anticipated upzoning of 125th Street won't be necessary now...

Contractor cited for contaminants at SI demo site

The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has criminally cited the contractor demolishing Sun Chemical plant in Staten Island's Rosebank neighborhood for allegedly spewing contaminants into the air.

The citation was levied yesterday against LVI/Mazzocchi Wrecking Co. of East Hanover, N.J., less than a week after the Advance chronicled neighbors' complaints about escaping dust that has shrouded their property with a pink residue and even tinted some animals. On Wednesday, Borough President James P. Molinaro contacted DEC, expressing concern about the project at the former color pigment plant on Tompkins Avenue.

Contractor demolishing Staten Island chemical plant cited for alleged contaminants

The misdemeanor charge accuses LVI/Mazzocchi of violating DEC regulations prohibiting the emission of air contaminants outdoors "injurious to human, plant or animal life or to property" or which "unreasonably interfere" with the "comfortable enjoyment" of life or property.

The conditions must be rectified immediately, according to a DEC spokesman, who added the agency will conduct further inspections.

LVI/Mazzocchi potentially faces a fine ranging from $375 to $15,000, jail time of up to a year for an official or both. A cursory review showed no other violations on file for the company, said the DEC spokesman.

The blight of Brooklyn

When someone leaves behind a pile of shit in Brooklyn, Miss Heather finds it, whether it falls from a dog's rear end or comes courtesy of a developer.
I fully realize that you can't legislate taste, but some of these designs should be crimes.
How, in our supposedly advanced society, did we get to the point where we allow architects to blight our streets this way?

BSA rejects antenna renewal at North Shore Towers

The NYC Board of Standards and Appeals at their last meeting rejected the application by Continental Communications to renew its permit for ~300 cell antennas at North Shore Towers, a large apartment/co-op complex in the Floral Park area of eastern Queens.

The board rejected the application because the board of North Shore Towers revoked its approval pending the results of tests that will be conducted next month to determine the effects the antennas are having on health and safety.

As you can see from the above photo of the roof of one of the buildings, there are quite a number of antennas along the edges of the roof (look for vertical lines).

Litigation will likely now be the result as Continental stands to lose millions of dollars. NST receives $120,000 from the company for permission to post the antennas on their building roofs.

This many antennas may also represent a breach of contractual limitations. Pressure should be put on Greenthal Management, who manages the complex, to keep track of the antenna count in the event that it is deemed excessive.

The tanks that supply the co-op's drinking water are located inside the bulkheads, which have all kinds of accessory equipment strapped to them in addition to a collection of antennas. Might residents here be drinking irradiated water and could that be a contributing factor to the high cancer rates found in the area?

And let's not forget that the presence of antennas and other pieces of equipment surely will lower the value of penthouse and high floor apartments should adverse health effects be discovered.

DOT wastes time doing studies

In 2001, Tony Nunziato, a current candidate for assemblyman, helped to formulate a plan called the “Maspeth Bypass,” that would redirect trucks to Maurice Avenue instead of Grand Avenue.

Under the plan, which was reportedly pitched several times to city officials, the truck traffic would be redirected to the outskirts of the neighborhood through its industrial corridors.

City Ignores Truck Traffic In Queens

At a city council hearing in 2006, then-Department of Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall said her agency was committed to solving the problem, saying the goal was to have something finalized by that summer.

Two years later, a DOT spokesperson said the agency is working on a plan but adds that more studies are needed.

"In order to identify the best ways to reduce truck congestion in the Maspeth area and to identify the capital improvements needed for a bypass to be successful, we intend to begin an engineering study soon,” said the spokesperson. “This study is a recommendation made during a previous review of the area."

Fed up with the city's response, some residents said they can't wait for any more studies and they are planning to take matters into their own hands.

Latimer House joins Historic House Trust

The Lewis Latimer House in Flushing has officially joined the Historic Housing Trust, the city Parks Department announced last week.

The move transfers the landmarked home, at 34-31 137th St., from the control of the city Cultural Affairs Department to the Parks Department, a move which could open up more funding possibilities for the historic home of inventor Lewis Latimer.

As an official member of the trust, Parks will now collaborate on the house's conservation, interpretation, promotion and property along with the current operator, the Lewis H. Latimer Fund Inc.

The petite Queen Anne-style home was constructed in the late 1880s and home to Latimer from 1903 until his death in 1928. The house remained in the Latimer family until the 1960s and was threatened with demolition in the 1980s until receiving its landmark status and being moved from its original home on Holly Avenue.

Latimer House in Flushing now under historic trust

Bloomberg press guy now works forTishman

Former City Spokesman Gallagher Heads to Tishman Construction
by Eliot Brown, NY Observer

John Gallagher, who served as first deputy press secretary for Mayor Bloomberg until he quit in early June, is moving into the real-estate and development business, taking a newly created job with the title Director/Vice President of Public Affairs for Tishman Construction.

Mr. Gallagher's not a stranger to the development world; his City Hall job included work on economic development, PlaNYC and the city budget. He starts his gig at Tishman early next month, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The move comes as the city is tightening its oversight of the construction industry, an industry where Tishman is a giant, responsible for building the Freedom Tower, the new Goldman Sachs headquarters and the Bank of America tower near Bryant Park. Tishman—a separate company from megalandlord Tishman Speyer—also has a development arm, and has plans for a hotel on Eighth Avenue and 44th Street that needs some city approvals.

Mr. Gallagher, who came to City Hall in 2006, worked previously at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, on Jeanine Pirro's campaign for attorney general, for the Senate Republicans and for the Assembly Republicans.

Photo from Daily News

2 from Queens charged in LI prostitution case

BY JOSEPH MALLIA | joseph.mallia@newsday.com

Two men and a woman were arrested on prostitution charges at a Huntington Station house Wednesday night after an investigation and surveillance by Second Precinct officers, police said.

Henry Monzanarez, 27, of 67 East Third St., Huntington Station, and Jaime Garcia, 33, of 33-28 29th Ave., Astoria, were charged with promoting prostitution.

Monzanarez was also charged with false personation, criminal possession of a weapon, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest. The third suspect, a 34-year-old Queens woman, was charged with prostitution.

Second Precinct Crime Section officers executed a search warrant at 110 Lenox Rd. at 8:40 p.m. Wednesday, seizing money, condoms and other prostitution-related items.

The three suspects were to be arraigned Thursday in First District Court, Central Islip.

Queenscape: The door to nowhere

A scene in lower Ridgewood. It's rather depressing, isn't it?

Baldeo exits senate race; endorses Addabbo

Democratic sources confirm Albert Baldeo, who came within some 800 votes of ousting veteran Republican Sen. Serphin Maltese in 2006, will throw his support to the Democratic establishment candidate, Councilman Joe Addabbo, this afternoon and stop campaigning.

Baldeo To End Campaign, Endorse Addabbbo

Technically speaking, Baldeo can't officially drop out of the race since it's too late to remove his name from the primary ballot.

The formal announcement will be made at 3 p.m. at Baldeo's law offices on Liberty Avenue. Also expected to attend are Addabbo, Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith, Rep. Greg Meeks and Queens Democratic Chairman Joe Crowley.