House renovation in limbo used as billboard ad for parade and foodie festival

 

 

Since our governor and mayor keep botching the housing crisis, why not use a house to advertise a local event instead of finishing the job and making it livable?

 

Check out the garage...

 

 

 

The owner of this renovation even raised the cellar windows for more housing for people.

 

 

But wait a minute, turns out there is a big reason why this house has been in housing crisis suspended animation, it's got tons of violations and it's been recently occupied by squatters.

And maybe the latter still is judging by this Citibike ebike.

  

Guess the tactic of not building a stoop will deter desperate people from getting shelter.

Caption Mayor Adams

 

Dumping ground arises in Queens Village

http

 

Lovely site along the Cross Island service road here in Queens Village for all the people to see while going to the UBS arena. Junked cars, excessive litter, illegal dumping, and people camping out in an RV. Really makes Queens Village look like a welcoming community.

  

 

 

Moda Crap Upgraded Living 153-30 89th Ave.

 

This is AFTER Sanitation came. And those boxes are food for the supermarket. 

This is the back entrance of the Moda building

Jamaica is still a mess

 

Queens Chronicle

Borough President Donovan Richards, joined by several other community leaders, led a walking tour of Jamaica Avenue from Parsons Boulevard to 165th Street to address quality-of-life issues in the rapidly changing downtown area.

During the tour on March 11, business, crime, homelessness, drugs, busways and poor infrastructure were just some of the topics discussed by Richards, fellow elected officials, business owners and other community stakeholders.

Richards said that Downtown Jamaica needs a facelift that may cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The pavers got to go, new lighting, paving the boulevard over, planting new trees for clean air, but aesthetically this whole place needs an uplift,” said Richards. “The vacancy rate is 6 percent, because the customer base is so loyal. But imagine how much more of Southeast Queens would shop here if it felt safe, if it felt modern and if the city made a commitment in addressing many of the systemic issues here.”

Richards, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Jamaica), Mayor Adams, state Sen. Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans) and new edition Councilwoman Nantasha Williams (D-St. Albans) all grew up in the Jamaica region, said the borough president.

“What we have discussed is putting together a task force,” said Richards. “This can’t just be a one-day tour. We need to meet monthly, not to just talk, but to incentivize the agencies to do some improvements here as well.”

Those agencies will have no shortage of issues to address.

Property owners say that they have trouble trying to lease to quality tenants in Jamaica, according to Jennifer Furioli, the executive director of the Jamaica Center Business Improvement District.

“One of the biggest issues that people are concerned about is the quality of retail here,” said Furioli. “We have property owners who are trying to lease to responsible tenants.”

Mark Lucaj, the property manager of the retail building at 159-02 Jamaica Ave., which includes Jamaica Multiplex Cinemas, said the landowner that he represents missed out on a deal with a national retailer as a tenant.

“They want a safe place to operate,” said Lucaj. “We had a national retailer come in for one of vacant spaces, which was vacant for some time ... they saw someone peeing on the side of the building and said that this is not for us.”

Lucaj said that retailers who come to Jamaica want to see a clean, safe and walkable area.

“You got the traffic at least,” Richards said, as dozens of people walked by the corner of the movie theater.

The building where the movie theater, eateries and other retail outlets reside used to be a parking lot over 20 years ago, Lucaj told the Queens Chronicle.

“The landowner here was one of the first people to invest in this area 20 years ago and saw what Jamaica could be,” said Lucaj. “They built this building and it now it’s a landmark to a certain extent ... People reference the movie theater and say, ‘That building. Got it.’”

Samantha Champagnie, who co-owns the Golden Krust Caribbean Restaurant with her husband, Conrad, at 92-21 Parsons Blvd., said that a man pulled down his pants in front of the place on March 6.

“We had to get him out of the store because he was dealing with a mental health issue,” said Champagnie. “We have people with those issues, but it doesn’t seem like there is any place for them to go.”

Champagnie, Conrad and Beverly Hills Furniture storeowner Leran Ruben also had issues with the new busways that were implemented on Jamaica Avenue, a major shopping corridor.

“These busways have impacted my business,” said Ruben. “It’s decreased foot traffic from more than 50 to 75 percent. Passenger vehicles from Sutphin Boulevard all the way to 168th Street can’t stop by for business.”

Queens Chronicle 

Six days after a Queens Chronicle report on placard abuse was released Leran Ruben, one of the business owners who had made complaints about city workers parking in truck-loading docks and busways, which was causing traffic in Jamaica and driving customers away, had a meeting at his store with representatives of the NYPD’s crime lab and the city Department of Transportation on Feb. 16.

“They said they are going to look into the placard abuse and discuss with their employees who were abusing and who wasn’t abusing it,” said Ruben. “What I got out of the meeting, was that only someone who was on active duty is allowed to use their placard, and not just someone coming to work.”

Earlier, Ruben said he noticed most of the placard vehicles seem to belong to members of the NYPD Forensics Laboratory at 150-14 Jamaica Ave., which is near his business, Beverly Hills Furniture, at 149-01 Jamaica Ave.

Ruben was confounded by why employees at the crime lab would park in busways when they have their parking garage at the corner of their building.

“They said only part of the garage was theirs,” said Ruben about the crime lab employees. “Some of the garage belongs to the court, some of it belongs to the Police Department and some of it belongs to the parole officers.”

After sending the story to the Mayor’s Office, Ruben said that he got a call from Deputy Inspector Brian O’Sullivan of the Transportation Bureau.

“He’s a gentleman,” said Ruben. “He said that he was going to make sure that his officers were not abusing plaques over here, but he has no pull over other agencies. He said he will reach out to parole officers and others to see if they could assist in this matter.”

Despite the meeting, not much has changed since, according to Ruben.

“But, when you go outside, I don’t see any improvement,” said the furniture store owner on March 1. “When the placards take up the truck parking and the passenger vehicle parking, trucks don’t get to stop where they need to stop to unload.”

Ruben showed the Queens Chronicle pictures from Feb. 22 of placard vehicles taking up a loading spot, resulting in a truck double-parking in the road and buses going in the opposite lane to get around the delivery driver.

Another truck had to park in the crosswalk to get enough space to deliver goods.

“Nobody is obeying the bus lane, so it’s not even serving its purpose to increase speeds for public transportation,” said Ruben. “Now this is forcing pedestrians to scatter in the streets, which is unsafe.”

With too much traffic plaguing the area and a lack of parking spots for customers, even at metered parking spaces, which were also taken up by placard vehicles, the third-generation entrepreneur has lost 50 to 75 percent of his once-thriving business.

Approximately 90 businesses in Downtown Jamaica are struggling with the same issue.

Queens is submerging: Rockaway still dogged by flooding issues

CBS New York 

The Blaz's vaccine mandate is going to leave garbagebergs on the streets

Winter is coming

Revel repulsion

Queens Chronicle 

 The image is a stark one.

Four of the sky-blue Revel scooters that have become ubiquitous on street corners in some sections of Forest Hills were photographed last week, not in the street waiting to be rented by a new rider, but on the other side of the curb, laying on their sides in the grass on a side street just off Union Turnpike.

At least one appeared to be damaged, with its mirror laying a short distance away on the sidewalk. The photo doesn’t indicate whether, the damage was incidental to the vehicles being moved by someone looking for parking or done with extreme prejudice.

The scooters began appearing in Forest Hills back in the spring. Unlike Citi Bike vehicles that are taken from and returned to specific docking bays, the scooters, under a city-approved program, can be left on the street for the next renter to pick up and drop off when finished.

While they must adhere to all city parking and traffic rules, they have not always sat well with some Forest Hills residents, who have complained about abuses on both fronts.

The apparently damaged scooters even came to the attention and social media accounts of Tom Verni, a retired NYPD detective who now works as a crime and law enforcement consultant for media outlets. He also is a former resident of Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. Verni, too, said the photo appears to show that at least one of the scooters was damaged.

“They’ve been springing up like dandelions all over the place,” Verni said. “With Citi Bikes, you have stations that take up a quarter-block, half a block. The Revels people leave them just anywhere. It’s becoming a nuisance.”

Verni said he has seen the scooters parked illegally; parked in front of driveways; and parked between cars, often leaving them inadequate space to pull out without physically moving the scooters. He has also seen them parked at curbs on alternate-side-of-the-street parking days when street sweepers must detour around them.

“All true. Those are the calls we’ve been getting,” said Frank Gulluscio, district manager of Community Board 6. Gulluscio said Revel officials did speak before CB 6 before the program kicked off, but that was it.

“It’s not like we had a say,” he said. “The city had already approved it.”

The Van Wyck Garbageway

 

Impunity City

... like the cherry blossoms at the Bronx Botanical Garden, every week detritus is in full bloom in the dirty Southside Queens…

 

 

 

The Van Sicklen Horror

 

NY Post

A human skull was found outside a Queens home Monday morning, police said.

The remains were located in front of 108-16 Pine Grove St. in Jamaica around 9:30 a.m., police said.

The city’s medical examiner responded and determined that the remains were human and had no sign of trauma, police sources said.

There were no further details immediately available.

  Impunity City

 It’s not everyday the NYPD reports a skull lying on the sidewalk in a residential area. But in the obviously click bait generating article (which is not even truncated here and the Post used a google map crop for the lede photo), the home the NY Post is referring is an abandoned zombie house that was cited for a full vacate order by the D.O.B. following a fire and from the looks of it, it might have been abandoned even longer before that incident.

So might as well provide some further details the NYPD couldn’t provide (or wouldn’t).

Let’s enhance…

 

 

Perusing the D.O.B. files, not much is known about the prior or even current owner of this blighted property, but this home is steeped in Queens history. It was built and owned nearly a century ago by Abraham Van Sicklen, whose father was a New York supreme court justice who also owned a famous mansion in Jamaica and grandson of a renowned farmer in Brooklyn.

 

Communties are sick of the restaurant shanties

 

 

 CBS New York

 The city’s plan to make outdoor dining permanent is meeting a lot of resistance from local residents.

They say noise, rats and lack of space are just some of the problems, CBS2’s Aundrea Cline-Thomas reported Monday.

Residents in the West Village sounded off to the community board that is tasked with providing input on what will be the regulations for the new law. They said they want to support their local businesses, but when the pandemic is over the outdoor dining structures should be gone, too.

The structures have been a lifesaver for restaurants. They are so popular, the city is making the pandemic additions permanent.

But some residents say they have become a nuisance.

“These sheds are creating a vermin habitat like we’ve never seen before,” Lee Arntzen said.

“Noise comes with this and it shouldn’t be on this street, certainly not on a narrow residential street,” Stu Waldman said.

“It’s like a bandshell pointing at your bedroom. That’s the kind of noise,” Leslie Clark added.

Cellphone video shows how the neighborhood transforms, especially on the weekends — music blasting as large crowds dance outside, structures leaving little room to walk on the sidewalk, and the mounds of trash left behind that residents say attract rats.

“I have to walk on the subway grates and with my cane it makes me fearful,” Dorothy Green said.

In a statement, the mayor’s office said in part, “Outdoor dining saved 100,000 jobs. A stance against outdoor dining is a stance against this city’s recovery. It’s here to stay.”

That’s a sentiment city leaders tried to reinforce during Monday’s presentation to Community Board 2.

“The program has been a massive success and in April the City Council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill to make it permanent,” the Department of Transportation’s Judy Chang said to boos from the crowd.

Queens tenants living in hell sue landlord

Have a tenant horror story for you. Tenants at 84-53 Dana Court in Queens have been living in disgusting squalor for months thanks to their negligent landlord who has let garbage pile up inside and outside the building and refuses to address the rats, cockroaches, mice infestations as well as water damage and mold. Mgmt company has also been harassing tenants, sending them fake bills for rent. One tenant’s daughter is actually afraid to go in the hallway because a rat once bit her. Tenants believe landlord just wants them out.

 

 

The landlord, Highpoint Associates run by Donald Ammons, who has been on the Worst Landlord List multiple times, fired the super back in September 2020 and now garbage continues to pile up inside and outside the apartment, causing a rat infestation among other issues. The landlord has racked up more than $800,000 in fines and fees, according to our calculations, and over 400 building violations. The tenants have sued the landlord for repairs and have a court date on Friday, May 20. 6sqft covered this landlord before here. Tenants are willing to talk to you and show you the building this week ahead of the court date. Thanks.

Best,
Seth Hoy, Director of Communications
Legal Services NYC
40 Worth Street, Suite 606
New York, NY 10013

Garbage barges and abandoned boats in the Rockaways overlooked in city's climate change resiliency plan

 

CBS New York

   Queens residents say they’ve asked the state and city to clean up a graveyard of sunken boats and barges for years.

Now, it’s even preventing a business from opening up.

It’s a disgusting sight that residents in the Arverne section of Far Rockaway are fed up with — rusted barges filled with garbage, slowly sinking year after year.

One is way under with the crane sticking out.

“For 15 years, I’ve seen these cranes in the water, and me and my wife used to joke that they’re probably landmarked,” said Edwin Williams, president of the Heart of Rockaway Civic Association. “There’s a huge East Coast Resiliency Project, but it’s mainly focused on Manhattan. We’re like the forgotten part of New York City.”

Lifelong resident Johann Smiley and his son bought land that sits on the bay on Amstel Boulevard a year ago. They wanted to revitalize the area with a dock and restaurant, but the barges are in the way.

He says it’s been a bunch of finger-pointing and broken promises from different state and city agencies.

“They absolutely don’t care what’s going on here,” Johann Smiley told CBS2’s Lisa Rozner.

He says the barges belong to Anthony Rivara Jr. of Anthony Rivara Contracting, formerly also known as the Pile Foundation, which allegedly owns the neighboring property.

The Smileys say he is a contractor for the Macombs Dam Bridge.

“That garbage that’s on this barge came off of the barges that he took up to the Macombs Dam Bridge,” Smiley said.

Sources confirm they do belong to Anthony Rivara and it’s not the first time he’s had this problem.

Rivara has previously been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars by the state for “unseaworthy barges” in other parts of the city.

He did not return CBS2’s calls.

Mayor de Blasio restores (partial) sanitation funding for city streets

 

NY Post

New York City is finally cleaning up its act.  

Beginning Wednesday, the Big Apple is “restoring significant funding” for litter basket collection — after pickup for public trash baskets was reduced by 60 percent last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday.

“It’s time for spring cleaning here in New York City,” de Blasio during a City Hill press briefing.

“This has been an issue we’ve heard about from community members all over the city. Everyone understood we went through a tough, tough time during the [coronavirus] pandemic and resources were tight.”

Last year, City Hall slashed waste basket collection from 736 trash pickup routes run on the average week to just 272 — as officials cut nearly $300 million from the department’s budget.

The latest spending boost will help bring that number back up to about 440.

Open streets and restaurants has led to blowback blight

This is going to be a real change for anyone living on Cornelia Street, especially if these dining sheds permanent after the pandemic. There are 10 of them on this one tiny narrow block. Only a few are open right now, but the other ones are getting ready. ⁦⁦@ebottcher⁩ pic.twitter.com/NdIfVplBp8

— CentralVillageBA (@CVBA10014) March 12, 2021

 

Medium

Remake New York is the new buzzword for pundits and politicians. It envisions the post-pandemic city as a blank slate on which to try out cool new ideas. There’s nothing wrong with cool ideas but actual policy requires more than slogans and press releases. It requires planning. It requires expertise. It requires debate and public input.

Permanent outdoor dining is warning for what can go wrong when you remake New York on the fly. Beginning as a temporary measure designed to help restaurants survive the lockdown, the public took to outdoor dining right away. After a grim spring, when moving vans were more common than taxis, people loved the sight of the funky shacks, festooned with fake flowers and painted in gaudy colors, that were bringing life back to the streets.

Elected officials love popular programs, especially if the official has worn out his welcome. Mayor de Blasio jumped all over outdoor dining, declaring that it must “be part of city life for years to come.” Just a few weeks later his wish became an actual law mandating “the establishment of a permanent outdoor dining program” by October 1, 2021. In the blink of an eye, and with no debate, the city tossed out long-established policy, ignored long-established zoning restrictions and gave away public land — sidewalks and roadways—to private businesses.

Local Law 114 is a textbook example of how not to make policy. At a single hastily convened hearing, members of the City Council tossed softballs to representatives of the restaurant industry and Business Improvement Districts. Representatives of the neighborhoods impacted by the new law were nowhere to be found. The official voice of these neighborhoods, Community Boards, didn’t learn what was in the bill until after it had passed.

The one saving grace of this whole misbegotten process was that the city had an entire year before the permanent program took effect. One would think that the Mayor and City Council would have used that time for due diligence on a program they’d cobbled together so quickly. Instead, elected officials took the three-monkeys approach: neither seeing, hearing and certainly not speaking of the problems that came with outdoor dining.

Everyday is Halloween at State Senator's and his sister's house

NY Post 

Neighbors say they’ve been creeped out for months by an apparent concrete and plaster “art installation” in the front yard of a Brooklyn row house owned by the sister of state Sen. Kevin Parker, who lives right across the street.

Since last December, the front yard to the two-story brick home on Avenue H in Flatlands has been an ever-evolving of construction of garbage, tree limbs and odd sculptures of painted plaster, cement and aluminum foil.

“It has nothing to do with Halloween,” one rattled neighbor told The Post. “For Halloween, it’s OK, but it’s been there much longer than that.”

“Maybe to them it’s art,” another neighbor guessed.

A half-dozen neighbors reached by The Post said they are wary of complaining, given the residents’ macabre decorating sense, which they variously described as “creepy,” “terrible,” “an eyesore” and “scary.”

“A lot of people are very, very afraid of that house — I mean, honestly, I walk on the other side of the street or I don’t go down there at all,” said one person who lives in the area — and who asked not to be named or even referred to by gender. (!!!)

NY Post 

The Brooklyn home with a garbage pile “art installation” on the front lawn that’s been creeping out neighbors for months is partially owned by state Sen. Kevin Parker, records show.

The two-story blight, found on Avenue H in Flatlands, is owned by Parker’s sister but it turns out the pol has a 50% stake in the property, his most recent financial disclosure records from 2019 show.

Lawmakers are required to submit the disclosures to the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which publishes the records on their website.

Buried on page 17 of the form is a section where lawmakers must disclose properties they own and it shows Parker listed the Avenue H monstrosity and wrote he had 50% ownership.

Some progress made by abandoned house dumping ground in Jamaica

 

Queens Chronicle

Within days of the Chronicle paying another visit to one of Jamaica’s more infamous eyesore properties, there was some limited action taken on behalf of neighbors who have been living with the abandoned house and frequent dumping ground for nearly nine years.

But just how long the corner property and its boarded-up house at 107-58 164 St. will remain clean or if the city will take any further action remains to be seen.

“There was cleanup,” neighborhood advocate Pamela Hazel said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “They cleaned the yard. A big red couch I saw last time I went by was gone. I hope it stays that way.”

The Chronicle on Oct. 1 took several photos of the property. Trash was strewn throughout the front yard, as per usual. The seemingly omnipresent pile of dumped trash and debris in the backyard also was there, though the red couch, tree limbs and brush were a different and larger pile than the Chronicle photographed back in June.

While the building is under a full vacate order following a fire last winter, clean, sharp holes have since been cut in some window boards and walls, cuts that from the sidewalk appeared to be sharp and precise enough to have been made by hand or power tools.

The paper last week forwarded the photos, along with others from June, from November 2016 and from 2013, to the city’s Departments of Buildings, Health and Mental Hygiene, Law and Environmental Protection seeking comment as to what possibly might be done to find a permanent solution.

Emails also went out to the offices of Mayor de Blasio, Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan), Councilman Daneek Miller (D-St. Albans), Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and state Attorney General Letitia James.

The Department of Buildings, where records show complaints about the property were first filed in 2012, said in an email Tuesday that inspectors had visited he property since Friday.

“Our inspectors did find excessive debris in the yard of the property, and a short garden wall around the property that was in a state of disrepair,” the email said. “As a result we issued two violations to the property owner for failure to properly maintain the property.”

City tax records list the owner of the property as Resource Capital Group LLC with an address of 99 Wall St. in Manhattan.

Garbage in lawless democratic community

 Concerned citizens went to the 15-year old eyesore that has now become a pandemic; affecting residents who have to inhale the stench. On Wednesday Sep. 8th. members of our group "Clean Up Jamaica Too" were forced to make another visit; to the abandoned house at 107-58 164 th. Street Jamaica Queens. This visit was vital because our health is at risk and local leaders have neglected us. The corona virus thrives in this black community because it is filthy.

We have been calling on our democratic leaders for more than 15 years. Leaders have come and gone, but this eyesore remains a fixture. The current councilman who has jurisdiction over this area is Daneek Miller.

The garbage has now taken over the sidewalk: mattresses, bottles, boxes, chairs, about 90 full garbage bags, and scattered papers are just some of the items

~
















 Councilman Daneek Miller,

A vagrant is rummaging. Residents have been calling: 311, 103 precinct, councilman Miller and others. Thus far, no one has responded. Some years ago sanitation began removing the garbage. But that was in the height of NY1 Ruschell Boone  reporting on the issue. Ruschell now works in another area.

There are four churches near-by. Amity Baptist is the nearest, a few steps away from the mountain of garbage. Residents have been appealing to Pastor Thompson, but he has not done anything to help. He and some of the pastors live in Long Island. However, Pastor Thompson was very successful in getting "no parking signs" in front of the church.


Residents are just asking for a clean community, especially to curtail the spread of the corona virus.

P. Hazel: Social Media Journalist for Justice.

Trash still accumulates on Addabbo Bridge

Queens Chronicle

 Despite recent efforts of Howard Beach residents to draw the city’s attention to trash-strewn Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge, government officials have not followed up.

After a group of local women cleaned the bridge on July 16, they left around 60 garbage bags out for the Department of Sanitation to pick up, which had not come to pass as of Tuesday afternoon.

One of the organizers, Gina Barillaro, said that she had coordinated with state Sen. Joe Addabbo Jr. (D-Howard Beach) before the event, who assured her that he would get sanitation workers to clean up the bags. Addabbo instructed her to leave the bags along each opening in the chain link fence running along the walkway, she said.

“It was so bad. There was like a bag or two by each opening,” Barillaro said.

She was dismayed to find them there — many ripped open and scattered by vermin — several days later, and did not hear back from Addabbo’s office when she followed up. Another organizer, Vincenza Connors, went back Tuesday only to find the trash bags still there nearly a month later.

Addabbo said that the lack of response is a result of the city’s recent budget cuts to the Sanitation Department. He said that he called Garage 10, the sanitation unit in charge of the bridge, but that it could not follow through on his request due to a loss of manpower.

“What we’re finding out is that due to budget cuts, these local garages, Garage 10 being one of them, got deep cuts into their operation,” Addabbo said.

Queens Village abandoned house retrofitted as garbage landfill

 

Season's Greetings from crappy South Queens Village where disrespectful auto body shops do as they please, illegal dumping and litter runs rampant, junk cars and boats parked all over residential streets...Oh, dont get me started on the illegal truck/trailer parking up and down Springfield Blvd. Well, now we have this latest ghetto disaster to feast our eyes upon @ 214-15 Hollis Ave. Yup, a gutted foreclosed home with all it's crap left out in the driveway and front yard for 3 weeks now, and as usual, nothing is getting done about it (despite multiple complaints filed by yours truly).

 Well, as I was taking these pictures, 2 thugs driving a Mercedes with dark tinted windows pulled up and with attitude started asking why I'm taking pictures. I didn't take their crap and we verbally started going back and forth until his friend (the passenger) told him to calm down. The driver then gave me this BS story about how he cleans up properties and he's going to the city and to clean up this one. They took off. BS! They are drug dealers who set businesses in these foreclosed homes and got nervous seeing someone taking photos (another quality of life issue to add to the list). Fellow, Queens Crappers, I'm open to suggestions on how to handle this situation, because my local politicians are useless.