Bayside cyclist thinks Alley Pond bike lane is stupid

From QNS:

Longtime Bayside resident Helina Cheung, an avid cyclist and runner, said she and neighbors are left befuddled by a bike lane project recently installed in the neighborhood.

“When my husband and I saw the project, we said, ‘This project doesn’t make sense at all,'” Cheung told QNS while onsite.

The project along the Alley Pond Park edge, between Northern Boulevard and Springfield Boulevard, was installed by the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) this past winter. It is one part of a larger safety project presented by the DOT to Community Board 11 in June 2017.

Community board members voted unanimously in favor of the Alley Pond segment of the project, while support for the Northern Boulevard segment, which has faced community scrutiny, has since been revoked. In March, QNS spoke with a local property owner who claimed the project causes “mass confusion” for drivers and pedestrians.

The Alley Pond safety project flipped the existing bike and parking lanes at the location and installed a four-foot protective buffer between the two. The bike lane is now situated closest to the park’s edge and cars are to park in a “floating parking lane.” A lane for moving traffic is situated next to the floating parking lane.

According to Cheung, many cars drive in the floating parking lane or bike lanes, creating dangerous conditions. A lack of signage and worn paint at the site add to this confusion, she said.

A public service announcement

Ozone Park getting f*cked with a shelter for mentally ill homeless men

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Department of Homeless Services will be opening a shelter in Ozone Park this coming winter as part of Mayor de Blasio’s “Turning the Tide on Homelessness on New York City” program.

In an email obtained by the Queens Chronicle, Amanda Nasar of the DHS outlined details of the shelter.

“DHS notified the electeds and [Community Board] ... that we’re opening a new shelter at 85-15 101st Avenue, Ozone Park, for 113 single adult males with mental illness,” said Nasar. “We anticipate this shelter opening in late winter.”

The site for the shelter is the location of the former Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church.

De Blasio’s plan includes creating around 90 new homeless shelters and renovating and expanding 30 existing shelters to combat the closing down of more than 350 “cluster sites.”

Flushing's Mormon church to become big development

From The Real Deal:

Developer Xin Xiang Lin is looking to building a residential complex on the site of a Flushing Mormon church.

Xin filed a permit application to build an eight-story, 131-unit mixed-used building at 144-27 Sanford Avenue. The 113,000-square-foot property will be built on a 24,000-square-foot lot that sits between 147th Street and Parsons Boulevard.

Plans call for 93,000 square feet of residential space, with apartments having an average size of about 710 square feet. The building will also contain 20,000 square feet for an unspecified community facility.

The site will replace a two-story structure that was built in 1931. Demolition permits have yet to be filed.

Elevator inspections are lax

From PIX11:

Subcontractors paid by New York City’s Department of Buildings are — in thousands of cases — not properly inspecting elevators, a report by the New York State Comptroller’s office alleges.

The City Department of Buildings is responsible for inspecting 71,000 elevators every year. To do this, an army of subcontractors are hired. In some cases lack of data suggests inspections mights not be happening at all.

A multi-year audit by the Comptroller said there is no data for thousands of inspections assigned to those sub-contractors. In 2016, more than 6,700 inspections may have been skipped. In 2015, 8,800 inspections were possibly ignored.

City files lawsuit against AirBnB landlord

From AMNY:

One of the city’s “worst landlords” is accused of turning rent-stabilized apartments in Hell’s Kitchen into illegal hotel rooms and listing them on websites like Airbnb.

The Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement (MOSE) announced a lawsuit Wednesday against Big Apple Management LLC for allegedly converting seven buildings on 47th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues, into illegal hotels despite years of complaints, violations and fines.

Based on the city’s inspections, at least seven of the unlawful hotel rooms had been rent-stabilized units before 2009.

Deregulation causes hell for tenants

From the NY Times:

Because the building was so unsafe, the city moved the tenants to a Days Inn in Queens, filled mainly with other refugees from damaged apartments, their rent now paid by taxpayers. Ms. Wilkie, her daughter and granddaughter shared a cramped room with two queen-size beds. The hotel’s single, shared microwave became their kitchen.

With help from the Legal Aid Society, Ms. Wilkie and Mr. Brathwaite sued to fix the building on Sterling Place.

That case will take years. Mr. Brathwaite eventually settled, accepting another apartment from Mr. Sussman. Ms. Wilkie decided to fight.

Her family stayed at the Days Inn for more than a year, until the city tried to move her to a homeless shelter in November. To avoid that, she temporarily rented an apartment in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood still ungentrified, with a bathroom too small for Wendy’s wheelchair. The monthly rent is $2,110, almost triple what she paid before.

City Council planning major crackdown on AirBnB

From The Real Deal:

The City Council is slated to consider a controversial bill seeking to fine Airbnb up to $25,000 for every listing it fails to disclose to the city.

The legislation, which will be introduced in the City Council on Thursday, requires online home-sharing companies to submit data on individual listings — including the host’s name, home address and phone number — to the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, which goes after illegal hotel operators, Politico reported. Under the bill, Airbnb and similar companies can be fined between $5,000 and $25,000 for each listing that isn’t shared with the city.

Temporary cultural center coming to Hallets Point site

From The Real Deal:

While part of the project remains stalled over a funding squabble with the city, the Durst Organization plans to temporarily make use of another site at its Hallets Point development in Queens.

The developer plans to set up a temporary cultural center where the final phase of the mixed-use project will eventually rise, at 27th Avenue and 1st Street, said Durst spokesperson Jordan Barowitz. The 30,000-square-foot space will include a stage and a fenced off area for film, dance, music and other events, he said.

“Hallets is something of a blank slate, and we want to start to highlight the cultural and arts community in Astoria,” Barowitz said. “It’s the final phase of the project so construction is a few years away. The views it has of Lower Manhattan, it would be a shame not to activate it.”

The cultural center is expected to open sometime this summer.

Meanwhile, a 163-unit affordable housing project planned for the development’s second phase is being held up by a lack of funding. In January, the city Housing Development Corporation pulled $43.5 million in bond financing for the project.

Gentrification trolley has already cost taxpayers a pretty penny

From the NY Post:

There’s not a single rail in the ground, but the mayor’s plan to create a trolley along the Brooklyn waterfront has already cost the city at least $7 million in taxpayer money, The Post has learned.

That’s the current price tag on a delayed feasibility study — spearheaded by the consulting firms KPMG and WSP — that will determine whether the controversial project is even plausible.

Economic Development Corp. officials had initially said the review would be completed in the fall of 2017, but this week they wouldn’t put a timeline on its release.

BDB proposes change to admissions procedures for specialized schools

From the NY Times:

In the face of growing pressure to tackle New York City’s widespread school segregation, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Saturday a proposal that would change how students are admitted to eight of the city’s specialized high schools, a group of highly sought-after institutions where students gain entry based on a single test.

Black and Hispanic students, who make up 67 percent of the public school population, are grossly underrepresented at the specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science.

Mr. de Blasio campaigned on the issue when he first ran for mayor in 2013, saying the specialized schools should “reflect the city better,” but he has yet to make a dent in the problem. This year, black and Latino students received just 10 percent of the offered seats at specialized high schools, a percentage that has held essentially flat for years.

The most significant change Mr. de Blasio proposed was replacing the test, called the SHSAT, with a new method that would admit students based on their class rank at their middle school and their scores on statewide standardized tests. That change would require approval from the State Legislature, which has shown little appetite for such a move. A bill outlining those changes was introduced in the Assembly on Friday.

Mr. de Blasio announced another, smaller change on Saturday, one the city can do on its own. Beginning in the fall of 2019, the city would set aside 20 percent of seats in each specialized school for low-income students who score just below the cutoff; those students would be able to earn their spot by attending a summer session called the Discovery program. Five percent of seats for this year’s ninth graders were awarded this way, the city said.

A spokesman for the city’s Education Department said the way students were chosen for the Discovery program would also change. Currently, poor students with certain scores from all over the city qualify, but under the new plan, the city would target students from high-poverty schools instead. Those schools tend to have a higher proportion of black or Hispanic students.

Two squatters injured in Flushing fire

From CBS 2:

At least two people are in critical condition after a fire breaks out at a home in Queens.

More than 100 firefighters responded to the blaze, which started around 2 a.m. Monday at a home on 41st Avenue in Flushing. By the time firefighters arrived, they say the home was engulfed in flames.

Fire officials say the home was vacant, but the two people who get out on their own were squatters who were inside when the fire broke out.

“The fire building is a vacant building, but I am told there were squatters who self evacuated prior to fire department units arriving on the scene and they were transported to the hospital by our EMS,” McSweeney said.

He wanted them to chill forever

From QNS:

A Rego Park man who runs his own maintenance company faces criminal charges for allegedly pouring mercury into a Queens family’s air conditioning unit after getting one too many complaints about the malfunctioning system.

Yuriy Kruk, 48, of Alderton Street owns and operates the A+ HVAC and Kitchen Corporation. According to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, a Jamaica Estates family contacted Kruk during the summer of 2015 to perform various repairs to their home.

Prosecutors said the victim repeatedly complained to Kruk that the second-floor air conditioning unit wasn’t working properly. Kruk replied that the system needed to be replaced, and in July of 2015, a new unit was installed.

Soon after the unit’s installation, law enforcement sources said, one of the victim’s noticed drops of a silvery liquid on the floor near the air conditioning units, and the same liquid dripping out of the vents in which Kruk had worked.

Members of the Fire Department’s Haz-Mat Unit responded to the home after receiving a 911 call and determined that the substance was mercury — the highly-toxic liquid metal. The family of three, which includes a husband, wife and their son, complained of having symptoms of mercury poisoning — including joint pain, headaches and lethargy.

All three family members were tested and found to have elevated levels of mercury in their bloodstream, Brown said.

Queens Blvd bike lanes to be extended through Forest Hills/Kew Gardens

Courtesy Forest Hills Post

From the Queens Chronicle:

The Department of Transportation has unveiled Phase 4 of its extensive Queens Boulevard redesign plan, but the project has lost one of its biggest original supporters.

Speaking before Community Board 6’s Transportation Committee last week, DOT officials detailed the agency’s proposal for the 1-mile section of Queens Boulevard from Yellowstone Boulevard in Forest Hills to Union Turnpike in Kew Gardens.

This phase of the project is similar to the past three, as it includes bike lanes along the median separating the service road from the main drag.

The stretch of roadway in question will also see the creation of a new crosswalk at 78th Avenue, redesigned slip lanes between the main and service roads, an improved pedestrian island on the north side of the boulevard at 75th Avenue, extended median tips, 200-foot-long left-turn bays at Queens Boulevard and Ascan Avenue and 10 new unloading zones for trucks.

To install the bike lane, the DOT will remove the service road’s parking lane along the median, which contains 220 spaces along the one mile stretch of road.

Originally a supporter of the plan, Koslowitz began to waffle last year, once her office started receiving complaints about the lack of parking and drops in business experienced by entrepreneurs that were blamed on the bike lanes.

The lawmaker said she did not know what kind of compromise could be had between cycling enthusiasts who vehemently defend the bike lanes and area residents who oppose them.

But what she did know, the lawmaker said, is that the boulevard project is both “saving lives” and “killing business.”

“They have to redesign it to where the stores have parking and people have their bike lanes,” she said. “How many people do you see riding bikes down Queens Boulevard? Hardly any. I drive all the way into Sunnyside and I can count the cyclists on one hand.”

LIRR discounts for some Queens residents

From the Times Ledger:

The MTA will temporarily offer discounted rates with a pilot program for commuters traveling between Brooklyn and Queens from Atlantic Terminal on the Long Island Rail Road to experiment how offering lower fares will affect ridership.

The study, called Atlantic Ticket, will offer lower rates to LIRR riders who commute through the Brooklyn hub in an attempt to fill seats on these trains, which have greater capacity than those traveling to and from Penn Station.

The stations in Queens where commuters can take advantage of $5 rates at all hours are in Hollis, Jamaica, Laurelton, Locust Manor, Queens Village, Rosedale and St. Albans.

The $5 fare will represent a 51 percent reduction in price from the peak hour charge of $10.25 and a 33 percent decrease from the off-peak $7.50, the MTA said.

The MTA said this would make up for the $2.75 a customer would have to pay for a transfer to the subway.

Sort your trash!

From CBS 2:

When it comes to cardboard, a little cheese on the pizza box is OK, Aiello reported. Lid soaked with grease? Tear it off and toss it in the garbage.

Experts say disposable paper cups are a common recycling blunder. Most have been treated to be leak-proof, making them difficult to recycle.

Bottom line: Every municipality has a website or annual mailing, spelling out how to do the recycling thing the right way.

I think washing garbage is incredibly stupid, especially considering that they get washed at the recycling center anyway.

Carsharing companies to get exclusive access to public parking spaces

From Crains:

Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking back the streets—and then giving them to two massive multinational companies.

Starting June 4, residents of certain neighborhoods will see signs reserving parking spaces for Enterprise and Zip Car rentals. It's part of a two-year pilot program unveiled Thursday by the mayor to promote carsharing. It will allocate 230 spots at curbside, 55 in municipal garages and 24 in New York City Housing Authority lots for the members-only autos.

The carsharing services allow people to unlock cars via smartphone and use them for short periods of time.

The mayor characterized the program as an anti-congestion measure "pointed in the same direction" as CitiBike and his public ferry program: to diversify transit options and promote sustainability. De Blasio asserted it would ultimately liberate more parking spots across the city, citing a study finding that carshare options take autos off the street.

"There are just too many cars here," the mayor said, highlighting the five boroughs' swelling population and the costs of car ownership. "If people only sometimes really need a car, let's help them get a car only when they need it."

Both companies will give free memberships and discounted rates to public housing tenants. Zip Car will also give a free membership to holders of the IDNYC public identification card.

Yearly memberships with Enterprise start at $40, and the cost for a rental starts at $8 an hour or $69 a day. At Zip Car, the annual fee is $70, plus hourly rates beginning at $7.50 and daily ones at $70 to $80.

De Blasio said he hoped to see the pilot eventually grow "much bigger" and prompt thousands of New Yorkers to get rid of their personal autos and to stop hailing for-hire cars.

You can't park here!

From Brooklyn Daily:

A group of Canarsie homeowners has secured a court order authorizing them to call in tow companies to haul away cars that illegally park on the narrow, private roadway that runs behind their houses, where scofflaws routinely block their rear driveways and can even deny access to emergency vehicles.

The private road runs behind houses on E. 78th and E. 79th streets between Flatlands Avenue and Paerdegat First Street. It’s a tight pathway, owned by the individual homeowners rather than the city, and the homes’ driveways are located there. Parking on the road rather than in the driveways can easily block the way for wider vehicles and sometimes prevent homeowners from being able to turn out of their driveways.

The 78–79 Street Block Association, which represents the homeowners forbids parking on the private street, but outsiders and even some residents often ignore the rule, which is why the association went to court to get permission to tow.

The association asked the Kings County Supreme Court for an injunction against cars parking along the road in March, being represented by the law firm Novick, Edelstein, Lubell, Reisman, Wasserman & Leventhal, P.C. On May 10, a justice ordered that cars, including those belonging to residents, cannot park there and thus blo ck the “right-of-way easement.” Members of the association are now authorized to call a private towing company to remove any delinquent cars parked there, according to court documents.

Because the road is private, it is not the city’s responsibility to arrange for towing, but rather that of the homeowners, but they wanted a court document stating their rights to have illegally parked cars towed at the owners’ expense because some of the towing companies have refused in the past.

Slán do anois, Shannon Pot!

From LIC Post:

The Shannon Pot, a longstanding Irish dive bar in Long Island City, will be closing down for a second time, but with plans already in the horizon to remain in the neighborhood.

The bar and restaurant, currently located at 21-59 44th Dr., will close on Friday as developers plan on bulldozing the one-story building to make way for a seven-story residential and commercial project.

The business, in the neighborhood since 1999, was already forced to relocate to its current 44th Drive site in 2014 from its prior spot at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Davis Street, which was also demolished as part of the two-story project under construction at the former 5Pointz site.

But a spokesperson for The Shannon Pot told the LIC Post that the developer, Kyriacos Stavrinou, has promised them a place at their upcoming development.

The spokesperson said The Shannon Pot will be back in business when the new building is completed. The bar currently has no plans to reopen elsewhere in the meantime, but could potentially do so if a short-term lease were obtained.

How de Blasio marketed affordable housing is a joke

From City Limits:

Consider the calculations behind the June 12, 2017 official opening for the 535 Carlton tower in Prospect Heights, the first “100 percent affordable” building in the Pacific Park (formerly Atlantic Yards) project.

The emails show developer Greenland Forest City Partners scripting quotes from a grateful new 535 Carlton resident; a mayoral aide transforming a corporate press release into a governmental statement; and seeming distance from affordable housing advocates who once strongly backed Atlantic Yards, slated to include 2,250 below-market apartments.

Unmentioned: the grateful tenant was hardly representative of a building with 148 of 297 units aimed at middle-income households paying, for example, $2,680 for a one-bedroom apartment or $3,223 for a two-bedroom unit.

As this reporter wrote for City Limits in April 2017, the “real math” behind that building’s housing lottery showed some 67,000 households aiming for the 90 low-income apartments, while only 2,203 made the first cut for the 148 middle-income units. Ismene Speliotis, former ACORN housing head and now Executive Director of MHANY Management, which manages the housing lottery and tenant intake for the project expressed concern, telling City Limits that the limited response for the middle-income units indicated “a disconnect between the population’s need and the apartment distribution.”