CB2 Meeting & Public Hearing; LIC residents get organized about HPS

It’s great to see the community getting organized around the HPS project. Hopefully our politicians listen!

This petition does not represent me.

I agree with points #1,4,5, and 6 and they should be considered.

The rest of it just sounds like more anti-development nonsense. Regarding #2, all of Hunters Point is in a floodplain. No need to waste money on a study. Regarding #3, enough with the parking garages. They are hideous and already underutlized. Face it the good old days where you could park in front of your house are gone. No amount of these ugly structure will reverse that. Instead wasting money building more of these ugly structures we should be improving the vast number of public transportation options availible to LIC. Improve bus service. Finish the signal work on the 7 train. Improve LIRR service, etc.

Now that I misspelled “pressure” in my second rendering of the word, I’d like to be serious for a second.

It seems like a mishmash of ideas just thrown out there for consumption and not a coherent argument to amend the proposal. I particularly am puzzled by the “HPS does not have the demographic with children of intermediate- and high-school age”. If this community wants to be taken seriously as a neighborhood akin to the best Manhattan neighborhoods, we should try to create life-long residents of the community. If this is a “starter home” community we all lose: newbies and oldtimers alike.

I have barely ever taken a bus in LIC and don’t plan on it in the future. I say improve #7 train service.

#8, stop making sweeping generalizations. Just because you rent doesn’t mean that you don’t give a crap about what goes on around you. In a city where over 70% of the popualtion lives in a rental I think such statements are irresponsible. All of the desirable well looked after neighborhoods in the city have a heavy population of renters. Many people live several years in the same apartment/neighborhood. I have a friend whoes been in the Avalon tower since it first opened years ago. There are some people who rent that are more engaged on neighborhood issues than those who own.

Which brings me to my second point. Why is it that everytime one of these petitions get circulated no one sees it? I frequent all of the local establishments and I’ve never heard a peep about this until now. Maybe I missed it, but I can’t help but wonder where these things emerge from. Shouldn’t there be an effort to be more inclusive of the entire neighborhood?

Adding more parking should not be a priority to this school. In fact there should be no parking. In my mind it is a simple issue of supply and demand. If you provide parking the teachers will all drive in and clog up the streets. If there is no parking they will do what everyone else does and take the subway and other forms of public transportation. This area has excellent links to multiple modes of public transportation. We don’t need to encourage more cars from outside to come in clogging up the streets. PS78 seems to work fine without teacher parking.

Most teachers have, and will always, live on Long Island of further out East, so they’ll drive no matter what. I know tons of teachers and none one takes public transportation, so enough with saying if we provide parking thye’ll drive in. They’ll drive in not matter what.

Pier pressure is hilarious. Parking will be a big issue here. In general, this plan doesn’t seem well thought out with regard to impact on the surrounding area. If CB2 didn’t spend so much time on minor things (like fighting with PS1) I would feel more reassured that they will protect us from a disastrous effect on the waterfront, but I’m not.

Regarding Long Island teachers, the LIRR stops a few blocks away from the school. Let them take the railroad. If they have to pay for parking, or can’t find parking they will get the message and leave the car at home. If you provide parking, they will come.

But does the LIRR’s train schedule for that particular stop coincide with the teacher’s/school’s schedule? That stop isn’t used often except to park trains there.

That LIRR stop is like a shuttle to and from Jamaica Queens. Comes in a few times in the morning, leaves a few times in the evening. You can’t force people to take the LIRR. Long Island is a totally car based placed. We don’t have enough teachers in NYC, because they can’t afford to live here. So unless Bloomie puts all the teachers and staff in their ‘middle income’ housing next to the school, expect a GIGANTIC surge of cars every morning. Not to mention all the parents who will drive their kids to school. District 30 is a very large swath of land. It includes Astoria, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights. Every single parent in those towns can send their kid to the HPS school, and the joke’s on us because it’ll be full of ‘outside’ kids by the time any of the HP kids come of age. And we’ll still have to go outside LIC to get our kids into high school.

Improving transit links #20? Now you’re just dreaming. The MTA is a catastrophe in motion. Everyday they cut trains and raises fares. There is no improvement planned for transit links. It’s so bad, now the borough of Queens is doing an audit on the MTA to investigate the so called 7 train ‘signal problems’ that union workers make thousands off of sitting doing half of nothing while the train is shut down. How do you think they cut four weekends off of this year’s work? If it was real work, they never would have canceled it. It’s probably 3 weekends of work they stretch to 10 just to make the money. THAT’s how it works. Don’t count on the MTA for anything except service cuts and fare hikes. One day it’ll be $5 and a handful of running trains. Useless.

When PS 78 opened the majority of kids were from outside the neighborhood. Now all the lower grades are seeing that all or most of their seats are being filled only by LIC kids. The same will happen with the HS, but we should at least make sure that we don’t just get the overflow from other areas. There should be a GPA requirement of 85% or 90% and above for the kids coming from outside the neighborhood. This will help the schools academic standings and benefit the neighborhood as a whole.

To me it’s pretty clear that the city has not thought through all of the logistics in regards to the school and the entire HPS project, which is what this petition intends to point out and remedy.

We all know parking and 7 train service is terrible near Vernon/Jackson. To introduce a new school and HPS community without addressing either is completely irresponsible.

I have to agree with Kzee, and wonder whether the term “outsiders” is code for something else…

I disagree #30, it’s an influx of anyone coming in that’s going to cause a problem. You people who keep making this a class/race issue are misguided. It’s mostly just going to be a logistical nightmare for that hyperlocal community. REgardless of race. There are hundreds of locations in District 30 for a school. OR perhaps, this school can be built AFTER the buildings right next to it are finished. They’re building the school first, and then a condo building right next to it. So high school students will sit through pile driving all day long. Yeah, that makes sense. Point being, THIS PLAN IS NOT WELL THOUGHT OUT. That’s what the petition is trying to address.

Again, 32, the “potential influx” HAS BEEN ADDRESSED in an exhaustive, extremely lengthy impact statement on Hunters Point South. I suggest you read it and learn more about the results of the city’s traffic and parking assessment for the school and other uses on the site. You can download it from EDC’s website.

Queens County desperately needs new schools. Whether they are for “locals” or “outsiders” is unimportant. If there is a vacant piece of land that is zoned and ready for a school then we are, as a community, better off.

It is hard to believe that there are individuals that are opposed to the building of schools.

P.S. 78 has been open for 12-13 years. The first class should now be Juniors in highschool. They just don’t go in the neighborhood that’s why you don’t see them.

The school in LIC would be our zoned school but the h.s. process here – you can send your kids to any NYC public h.s. You may decide when your child is of age that the local school is not somewhere you want your child to attend.

#40 I have lived in LIC for over 20 years and QueensWest has been a big positive for the neighborhood. That area was a wasteland and the City/State turned it into a desirable place for people to live while creating parks for others in LIC to enjoy.

It seems to me that your schadenfreude is just based upon griping about “progress”. You would prefer to possess whatever is good about LIC only for yourself.

41, you deliberately distorted what I said. I’m pointing out that there are plenty of people grumbling about a school, as if that would be somehow calamitous to their way of life. How anyone could say this when we have already been put through the ringer — non-stop noise, toxic remediation, disruption, etc., or “progress” as you call it — for YEARS as the new buildings have sprung up is laughable.

Listen, bub, you may have thought LIC was a wasteland. I certainly didn’t. I have a wonderful spacious townhouse that would be the envy of many condo owners and have enjoyed my friends and neighbors for many years. Do I like the area now, of course. But as I and many others who have been here for the long haul have learned, you can’t expect the city to wipe your ass and solve every problem that comes along. With “progress” comes a lot of annoyances too.

#43 this is #40. I said that the QueensWest area was a wasteland not LIC. I wouldn’t want to live in a wasteland.

I responded to your comment about having schadenfreude. You should re-read your comments.

And next time, don’t call me “bub”. Call me “dude”.

46, interesting. Do you really think the complaints are coming from the Sunnyside/Woodside blue rinse brigade? I hadn’t considered that. Why would they care?

#47, I do think the letter is not from the newer residents, or if they are involved they are certainly a minority. Here’s my thought process:

- The petition emerges from thin air w/ 200 signatures. With thousands of residents in the new towers, no one I know of has seen or heard anything of it. This follows the typical patter of their organizing where they purposly exclude the new residents either out of spite,or because they think they will not be supportive.
- The petition is largerly subjugates the interests of the new residents to those of longer term one. (i.e. route traffic through borden there are no residents there meanwhile there are three large residential building on borden. Push traffic onto Center Blvd away from us., etc.)
- Calls for more studies and hand wringing including a silly request to study whether the school is in a floodplain. Of course it is! This call for all types of studies are the hallmark of all anti-development movements.
- Demands for more parking. They tend to be more car focused than the newer residents and having no garages are entirely dependant on street parking.
- References to outsiders. They tend to be a very insular group. Us vs. them mentality. anyone who wasn’t born here doesn’t belong here. General fear of massive influx of people, etc.

Go back and review the pattern of objection to previous projects, and the parallels jump off the page. This is just speculation on my part, but there seems to be a basis for it. There are some valid point buried in here, but I have to agree with others that this is just a smokescreen for their true intentions – kill the development.

I believe the petition comes from a resident in Citi Lights whose background is architecture and planning. And the signatures are within his orbit of of acquaintances.

There are many unrelated groups of folks who only ask that growth is done with input from the community, rather than having it rammed down their throats by government or developers.

#40, you have vindicated what I tried to point out 11 years ago. Any time I would mention responsible development, to all the brokers, developers, residents and community leaders I would be looked at crossed eyed because I wanted development with thought and responsibility. I was considered the anti Christ, and I always would tell them that my issues would become theirs! And they have!

This isn’t about anti development or development. It’s about making the community part of the evolution of this neighborhood.