Photo of a rendering of the new Murray Park, Long Island City – Photo

Long Island City’s Community Board 2 is meeting with the mayor’s office about the extensive filming that’s happening in the district, especially around Vernon Blvd, and the negative impact it’s having on the local community. If you recall, liQcity also tackled this issue, and hopefully there will be some progress in the matter, though it’s not clear what that looks like.

…members of the community have been complaining about the plethora of crews that set up in the neighborhood, saying they take up residential parking spaces with large trucks… many film permits have been requested for the community, especially on Vernon Boulevard… when film crews work, they usually remain isolated from the community and do not shop at local businesses.

CB2 is not done after speaking to the Mayor. No. They’re also writing a letter to the Parks department, recommending they move forward on Phase 4 of the continuing renovations of Murray Park, which if you haven’t ventured deeper into the island, is on 45th Ave between 11th & 21st St in Long Island City »

The proposed Olympic Village site – now Hunters Point South, Long Island City

Crains NY has released an interesting article about the impact of losing the 2012 bid for the summer Olympics on NYC, and how it’s especially benefited the western Queens & Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods, including our hamlet Long Island City »

Long Island City’s 48th Ave getting a makeover. -Hunters Point, LIC

The DOT is gettin’ busy in Long Island City. Say hello to the latest proposal for Hunters Point, which involves a makeover for the central corridor of 48th Ave between Vernon Blvd & 5th Street. It looks like the pedestrian walkways are being enlarged and improved, but the real gem here is…

Existing and proposed parking designations on 48th Ave, Long Island City

…an increase of a whopping 40 parking spaces. Woohoo! CB2 is holding a public hearing on Tuesday, Oct 25th, at 7pm in the basement of the St. Mary’s Church at 10-08 49th Ave @ Vernon Blvd, to take opinions on DOT’s proposal for the improvement of 48th St. Check out the full pdf.

But wait, there’s more! There’ve been a bunch of applications for liquor licenses in Hunters Point (hmmm, interesting) and CB2 will also address the applications at the Tuesday public hearing, listening to public opinion as well. So here are the apps up for review, MINUS the application by M.Wells that is listed below.

Current liQuor license applications for Hunters Point »

Oh Facebook, how you’ve changed our lives. When we started this blog back in late 2007, Facebook was still just for college kids, and Twitter didn’t exist yet. Imagine! Yes, we still had cell phones though… we’re not harkening back to the days of the VCR. The what?

Nowadays, Facebook is more than just a household name, and more than a procrastination tool, and way more than an effective way to cyberstalk – it’s a way to enact social change and make our lives better. Right?

Long Island City residents must think so, because you guys are all over Facebook. Including your favorite neighborhood blog. That’s us. We’re on it too. So friend us on Facebook, for the bonus of having liQcity’s posts delivered right to your morning news feed. If that’s not enough, you can also follow liQcity on Twitter.

Ok enough with the gratuitous promoting, and let’s get back on track: LIC resident and comedian Steve Hofstetter, and one of our favorite and funniest contributors, has a few ideas for Long Island City Facebook groups that seem to have been missed… »

The current dog run on Vernon Blvd @ 48th St, Long Island City.

Great news for Long Island City dog owners in Hunters Point: There was a press conference this afternoon at the Vernon Blvd dog run at the corner of 48th St, announcing the brand spankin’ new dog park that’s going to replace the current pile of dirt »

Shooting a new CBS series ‘The Gifted Man’ on Vernon Blvd, LIC

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we try to shoot a TV show in LIC? Yes, NYC’s tax credit to film & tv productions shot in the city are back, which means Long Island City is yet again the backdrop to lots of what we’re going to see on the screen this fall. There are a record number of 23 series shooting at once in the city right now, and this summer Long Island City has been hit hard with TV & film crews blocking off parking and the sidewalks. It’s nice to turn on the TV and see our neighborhood, but it is actually good for the hood? »

Car smashed this week at the LIC waterfront – photo via NBC

From NBC:

Cleanup crews armed with vacuums went to work in Long Island City Wednesday afternoon, sucking up destruction strewn along Fifth Street and 48th Avenue.

“It’s like a sea of glass,” remarked one passerby.

The glass was the shattered remains of a car window, just one hit in dozens of similar car vandalisms in the area.

“It happened in broad daylight, on an open street, in front of an activity center,” said the man whose shattered car window was at the center of Wednesday’s operation.

“I parked my car at 4,” continued the man, who asked only to be identified as Brian. “My wife found it shattered at 5:30. The inside was totally ransacked.”

According to residents, the smashing spree first began on Sunday and continued through Tuesday. Some residents estimated as many as 70 cars were targeted »

Rendering of the impending Queens West Library, LIC – courtesy of Steve Holl

Well it’s about time we saw some photos of the new library heading to the Long Island City waterfront. The Queens West Library, or the Hunters Point Community Library – not exactly sure which is the official name so we’ll use both – is designed, and officially in progress. In fact, the designs for the state-of-the-art building won first place last week at the 29th-annual Awards for Excellence in Design. In a nutshell, it’s fancy »

The aftermath of a huge nail salon opening party fight on Vernon Blvd, LIC

Normally we don’t make news out of unseemly incidents in Long Island City – wait, is that true? – but last night there was a huge brawl on Vernon Blvd after the opening party of a new nail salon called SNOB. Sounds innocuous right? The opening party of a nail salon? But no, SNOB’s opening party resulted in a violent fight on Vernon Blvd, a huge police response, and multiple arrests. Our quiet little town… say it isn’t so. What could you possibly have to fight over at a nail salon? Polish color? »

The former HP Greenmarket, LIC – photo by Ciprian Toma

Woah. It seems the folks who run the NYC Greenmarket have given up on the Hunters Point location, which had been struggling since it’s inception around 2006. Originally operating on Saturdays, the Greenmarket moved to Wed the last two years, and apparently not with any greater success. It’s been officially cancelled and moved way down Vernon Blvd to Socrates Park in LIC/Astoria.

A call placed to GrowNYC »

The Wild Wild West of LIC’s Gantry Park circa 1973 – photo by Mike Richetti

It’s the ghosts of Long Island City past! Ok well, just the photos at least. Thank you to former resident Mike Richetti who graciously shared some of his LIC photos from 1973. How wild the waterfront once was… it’s hard to think of LIC as farmland and tumbleweed, but of course all of NYC started out that way. This timeframe isn’t even close to that, but it’s amazing to see what’s happened just to the LIC waterfront in less than 40 years.

Enjoy »

Rendering of the future K-8 school for Queens West, Long Island City

Long Island City – the new Park Slope? For those of us who were living in Hunters Point pre-2005, aka the start of the condo boom, we know that LIC’s kiddo population has grown probably about 100 fold. Prior to the condo development, yes of course there were children in the neighborhood, but since the space-laden primo luxury apartments have nestled in, young families and pre-families have dominated the newly arrived demographic.

And why not? The exodus from Manhattan across the East River was originally owned by Brooklyn, but the rezoning of Long Island City opened up Queens to the flood of Manhattanites seeking more space for their future progeny. Ok that’s slight oversimplification, because Long Island City’s new ‘immigrants’ hail from not only Manhattan, but also further out in Queens and Long Island. REGARDLESS – a quick walk around the neighborhood including the mondo and skyline-adjacent Gantry Park playground, very prominently displays LIC’s growing contingency of munchkins.

But where will they go to school? According to the latest NYDN article, Long Island City’s only K-8 school is already beyond maxed out »

Today, our local politicians and CB2 are protesting The Green Asphalt Company in Long Island City/Sunnyside, asking the NYC Dept of Environmental Conservation to rescind their license until a proper Environmental Impact statement can be produced.

From the CB2 press release:

The Green Asphalt Co., LLC will be producing a hot mix of asphalt for local paving projects. The plant will produce from 75,000 to 150,000 tons of asphalt per year and will create additional truck traffic through the community causing congestion and pollution while entering and exited the facility compounding an already expanding Waste Transfer Station. The Plan will be operating large diesel engines which may release harmful particle into the air »

From Crains:

Plans for a 20,000-square-foot library in Long Island City, Queens, along the East River, are moving ahead in a timely fashion, despite a possible lawsuit involving who should pay for the clean-up of the site.

The state’s Queens West Development Corp. said it plans to sue Honeywell International to pay for the $5 million to $10 million clean-up of toxic waste on the three-quarter acre plot at Center Boulevard between 48th Avenue and 47th Drive. The state claims that a Honeywell predecessor firm used the site to make and store roofing materials, and says it will sue because yearlong negotiations with the company have broken down »

Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm, Long Island City –photo:Jesse Winter

Standard Motors has a farm, EE-I-EE-I-O… Long Island City celebrated the success of its first rooftop farm this week, with a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by local press & politicians. The farmers, Brooklyn Grange, jumped through many hoops to sow their rooftop farm and are starting to see the fruits of their labor. Luckily, so are we.

The one-acre farm on the roof of the Standard Motors building on Northern Blvd is impressive to say the least. Growing speciality vegetables, the farm is already selling to prominent restaurants in the city, as well as their own market in the SM lobby, and can barely keep up with their abundant bounty. So far they’re growing: kale, spinach, rainbow swiss chard, basil, thai basil, mint, cilantro, mustard mix, green salad mix, mizuna, merlot lettuce heads, crispino lettuce heads, bok choy, komatsuna, Italian dandelion and coming soon, cucumbers and puntarelle.

By popular demand »

Filming is hard work. Vernon Blvd & 47th Rd, Long Island City. –Jesse Winter

If you’ve ever driven, biked, skateboarded, or walked down Vernon Blvd in LIC, chances are you’ve run into a few potholes… well no more! At least not on the blocks between 47th & 48th Aves. Hallejulah and praise a non-denominational deity: Vernon Blvd has been REPAVED.

Apparently we’re not the only ones excited, because NY1 has created a rather lengthy editorial video documenting the entire process, complete with community and politico commentary. Not to mention highly detailed information about how many tons of asphalt used and the number of DOT workers etc… seems they really want to be clear that they’re working hard for Long Island City.

While they’re at it »

New ball-field at Murray Park, 11th St & 45th Rd/Ave, Long Island City

With all the hoopla surrounding the opening of LIC’s new fancy waterfront playground, we forgot all about the City’s renovation of Murray Park, which we noticed a long time ago. It’s a city project, so for a long time there wasn’t really any work going on, and consequently we stopped paying attention.

Lo and behold, imagine our surprise when walking by and seeing a giant patch of shiny green in the LIC upland landscape, in the form of a new ball-field. There’s not that much green around in Long Island City save for the Gantry, so it really catches your attention. Attached to the ‘field’, is a less-fancy playground than our skylined, waterfront version, but indeed nothing to scoff at »

Long Island City gets another playground, Gantry State Park

It may be controversial, but it’s open. This Memorial Day weekend, the Queens West Development Corp opened a new 8,000sf children’s playground this morning in LIC’s new section of Gantry State Park »

Rendering of the (upcoming?) Long Island City Farming Park, LIC

Well we seem to have stumbled upon yet another rooftop farm planned for Long Island City. It makes sense if you consider all the heavy-duty industrial rooftops sitting vacant and soaking unobstructedly in the sun all day, and it’s a smart vision to employ it as farmland. Adaptive reuse in action, folks.

The Urban Farming movement is definitely getting tons of PR these days in general. Here’s a great overview of the technologies urban farms are experimenting with in many cities, including the Long Island City Farming Park, which from the rendering appears to be located somewhere in the LIC/Sunnyside overlap.

The description »

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, 44 Eagle St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

We are huge fans of the urban farming initiative, and consequently have been really excited by the gigantic rooftop farm coming to Long Island City, on Northern Blvd at the Standard Motors building. But it looks like the organizers, Brooklyn Grange, are experiencing a few… growing pains »

Hunters Point Library site getting detoxed.

Here’s a full reprint of the Queens Chronicle article about the status of the Queens Library at Hunters Point, on Long Island City’s Queenswest waterfront:

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will be accepting public comment regarding a planned July 7 cleanup of a vacant piece of land in Hunters Point, the agency announced. The land has been empty for about 10 years and is currently owned by the Queens West Development Corp. According to Thomas Panzone of the NYSDEC, when cleaned, the land will be for residential use. A public library and a park ranger station are also planned for the site, Panzone said.

The contaminated area, referred to by the department as “Parcel 8” is bordered by 47th Road to the north, Center Boulevard to the east, 48th Avenue to the south and Peninsula Park and the East River to the west. It is being decontaminated as part of the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program, aimed at addressing environmental, legal and financial barriers that often occur when attempting to redevelop and use contaminated properties.

According to the NYSDEC, the area contains creosote and coal tar-related compounds, left over from the days when the land was home to a roofing manufacturing operation. Creosote can be harmful if ingested, inhaled or touched. It was stored in tanks and drums contained in stills on the land, while fuel oil tanks were used for heating and product processing also polluted the property »

Hunters Point firehouse #115, LIC

More budget cuts to hit Long Island City, only this time it’s not the MTA. It’s the FDNY and Dutch Kills is in danger of losing a very important firehouse (aren’t they all?) No. 116, which also serves Roosevelt Island. Needless to say, no one is very happy about this, and there’s already been the obligatory political/press protest of the firehouse closing on Friday.

Officially FDNY has not announced exactly which firehouses they’re shutting down in the city, but No 116 appears to be on the potential chopping block. For those wondering about Hunters Point’s equally vital firehouse #115, so far there aren’t any rumors or politicians chaining themselves to the station, so we’ll take that as a good sign. Though this is hardly good news in general »

New E/G/V subway entrance on Jackson Ave, Long Island City

Around this time last year we started keeping track of the Court Square subway transfer construction and the Jackson Ave beautification project, which are both still currently ripping Jax to shreds. It’s not exactly beautiful yet, but there is quite a bit of progress »

Construction begins on FDR Park on Roosevelt Island – shot from LIC

Us Hunters Pointers tend to ignore our little friend to the west, Roosevelt Island, but these days it’s a little hard to, considering the bulldozers and huge piles of dirt sitting around on the southern tip of the island. Turns out it’s the construction for the LONG stalled memorial park dedicated to Franklin D. Roosevelt which has been dubbed Four Freedoms Park, after FDR’s famous speech.

The park was conceived in the early 70s around the time when the island (known as Welfare Island) was renamed for Roosevelt. The architect, Louis I. Kahn, who had completed his designs, died unexpectedly in ’74 and the project was put on hold in ’75 due to the fiscal crisis. Now, in 2010, the proverbial shovels are hitting the ground after 36 years to make the memorial into a reality. But not without a need for donations for its expected $50M pricetag (!) – and.. some divisive local opinions »

New playground construction in Gantry Plaza State Park, Long Island City

Hold your horses, LIC kiddies. Even as the warmer weather creeps closer, the shiny new playgrounds of Long Island City’s parks are still not quite ready for playtime. Almost, though.

On the waterfront »