The future of Queens Plaza, Long Island City

The last in our series of posts on the neighborhood development plans by the NYCDEC is a new vision for Queens Plaza. This park project, which also has been threatening to break ground for a while now, has new wind in its sails starting this summer.

Here’s the plan »

Some more news from the NYC Economic Development Corporation(NYCEDC): the planned Jackson Ave beautification project, which has threatened to begin for a couple years now, is threatening yet again to break ground next month. The project plans to divide Jackson Ave with a landscaped median, incorporating outdoor furniture and sculpture.

From the NYCEDC »

LIC Neighborhood Map by NYCEDC, liQcity additions in red.

Check out this map of Long Island City, put out by the NYC Economic Development Corporation. What’s interesting is how they designated the many sub-neighborhoods of LIC. For instance, I was always under the impression that Hunters Point (no apostrophe) was the whole region of LIC located south of the Queensboro Bridge (outlined in red).

Right at the bridge is the hub of Queens Plaza (also called Queensboro Plaza it seems), which slightly overlaps Dutch Kills, which continues on northward bleeding into a very fuzzy boundary with Astoria. Then west of 21St st and still north of the bridge is the Queensbridge Houses, which also is considered Ravenwood until it also merges with Astoria.

In Hunters Point »

Development in Dutch Kills, LIC

Aah, the rezoning of Dutch Kills. A quieter saga, but of epic proportions nonetheless. It seems that finally when the rezoning is set for May, to help curb the hotelification of DK, a group of commercial property owners called The Purple People are standing up against it, claiming that it will destroy the growth of business in the community.

“Inhabiting the purple and blue shaded area of the rezoning map, the group says rezoning, as is, will cause a loss of 826,000 square feet of industrial space, 2,066 jobs and millions of dollars in annual tax revenues to the city.

The Dutch Kills rezoning has been on the drawing board for years. When the Department of City Planning (DCP) introduced a final plan in May 2006, it looked like a reality. Joy Chen, DCP liaison to Community Board 1, said the plan should be certified and ready for review by the board in late May. It would rezone a 40-block area that is now mostly zoned manufacturing into more mixed-use residential zones.”

• The down-zoning of Dutch Kills [Queens Gazette]

The houses alongside the Casa Vizcaya development site, 10-40 46th Rd, LIC

The new development Casa Vizcaya is feeling some heat right now, thanks to alleged damage caused to the adjacent property, a townhouse owned by Kenny Greenberg and Diane Hendry. The Daily News reports:

“The Buildings Department recently slapped the project with a stop-work order “for failure to protect adjacent property” according to the agency’s Web site.”

“We’re defending our house,” said Greenberg, who has lived in the two-story house for nearly 20 years and owns a nearby neon company. “This has emotionally beaten us down for two years.”

“The couple’s complaints against the development include bulging walls, broken windows, water damage and cracks. They now have to replace the east wall of their home, which will force them to relocate temporarily.”

Living in Long Island City these days, it’s not an uncommon story. I’m sure many of us can relate to the headache of living near a building in construction - myself I am surrounded by almost ten within a 1 block radius, and about 4 within a baseball’s throw of my house. LIC certainly has it’s charms, and as has been noted before, Sunday is one of them. The day the construction stops. Unless of course, they have a permit, or are pretending like they do.

Anyway, lots of these old townhouses can’t take the repeated impact of the construction vibration. It really should be incumbent upon developers to take care when sandwiching a new condo building between semi-fragile townhouses where longtime LIC community residents live. Hopefully, they will. (Don’t worry, no one’s holding their breath over here.)

Incidentally, the couple who owns the townhouse was featured in this video short about the LIC community.

• Couple claims condo construction caused damage to their home [Daily News]

This week’s discussion about the potential CUNY dorm site caused a little stir, and it was requested of liQcity to post information about LIC’s Community Board 2, which “serves the communities of Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, and Maspeth”. There is a website (click on CB2) but it doesn’t really provide much information.

There is a Community Board 2 meeting TONIGHT, Thursday, March 6 at 7pm. The location is the Sunnyside Senior Center, 43-31 39th St (2nd floor), Sunnyside, NY 11104. The next Board meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 3rd, in the same location at 7pm. Essentially CB2 meetings are held the first Thursday of every month.

If you would like to contact the CB2, they’re located at 43-22 50th St, 2nd floor, Woodside, NY 11377. The phone number is 718.533.8773, and email addresses listed are: qn02@cb.nyc.gov and commboard2@nyc.rr.com.

Ruins in LIC - the Schwartz Chemical Factory demolished

I was walking around the Gantry Park and Queenswest this afternoon during the tail end of the snow, and I discovered the ruins of the building next to the Powerhouse on the corner of 50th Ave & 2nd St. It was the Schwartz Chemical Factory. There were tennis courts in the last incarnation of this building, and from word on the street, it seems this site is going to be part of the Powerhouse empire. So far it’s called Powerhouse 2.

There’s been some interesting conversation lately about what’s going on with the real estate and development in the hood. Well it’s been going on for a while, but in the last couple of weeks on liQcity there’s been a lot of negative commentary towards new construction and the ‘yuppification’ of LIC.

Coming across another piece of history being wiped out is definitely a sad moment for me, but after watching it day after day for 4ish years, I’m almost getting used to it. Center Blvd is a whole new world, and it’s not necessarily pretty, but for some reason LIC hasn’t yet lost it’s magic. It’s still surprisingly quiet and peaceful despite all the construction going on.

Aah, but that’s not what it’s really about though, is it? »

Hey there liQcity readers. We're back from a brief hiatus in posting. Thanks for bearing with us... and to those of you who sent us emails wondering where we are... we're right here and not going anywhere. Sometimes, you know - things come up.

Here's a video about Long Island City that's circulated before, but it's from an interesting NYC real estate video blogger IntoTheBox so we're throwing it back out there. It's nice to see video of LIC in general, and it'd be even better to see more of it. If you have any good footage of LIC, feel free to send it our way.

Anyone remember this condo sale at the Arris Lofts last year? At $2.995M, it’s the most expensive condo sale in LIC (probably also Queens). So who bought it?

Well earlier this week, we loudly delivered the rumor that Clay Aiken is in contract at Arris, and downplayed the purchases by a couple other celebrities. The Residence 800, as it’s known, was bought by DJ Danny Tenaglia. We’re imagining the sick parties he’ll throw on that terrace.

In curbed’s coverage of the Clay Aiken rumor, there was an interesting line:

…this could be some weird defining moment in the recent history of Long Island City as an emerging development hotspot.

Well, LIC’s been an emerging developing hotspot for a long time now, but for most of the last few years (or 10) the progress lagged far behind the hype. And still does. Amenities are barely catching up, though they’re definitely moving along. For those of us who live here and are witnessing firsthand the insane transformation of LIC, I don’t think it comes as a huge surprise that celebrities would consider this quiet, tourist-free neighborhood full of luxury development. Though, if they keep moving here, it might not be tourist-free for very long.

Hunters Point Wines and Spirits, 47-07 Vernon Blvd, 718.472.WINE

Vern-Jax’ers may not have a grocery store, but we certainly have an abundance of places to pick up booze. But booze is hardly what Hunters Point Wines & Spirits is selling in their remarkably beautiful storefront on Vernon Blvd between the 47th’s. Owner Paul Huston has been in the wine business for 30 years and not only does he know wine, but he’s also an LIC lifer. I think I’ve seen a lot of change in 4 years… imagine what LIC must have been like 30 years ago. It certainly wouldn’t have hosted a store like this.

HP Wines specializes in hard-to-find handcrafted bottles, as opposed to what Huston refers to as ‘mass-produced commercial horseshit’. And from the looks of things, he’s telling the truth. I spent this morning chatting with Mr. Huston, who like all good wine connoisseurs, is passionate about his product and showed me an artisan crafted sake produced and hand delivered to the emperor of Japan. It’s probably not hand delivered to Vernon, but it’s definitely a great example of the rare treats stocked on those gorgeous shelves. Which includes a great selection of spirits, as well as organic and biodynamic wines.

Like all good wine shops »

Hello metermaids of LIC - are you guys working on some kind of commission structure these days? I’ve noticed an unusual amount of parking ticketing going on lately, especially on 48th Ave. Apparently I’m not the only one.

A liQcity reader writes:

Was walking down 48th ave this afternoon - I swear more than 20% of the cars had towing chalk or remnants of tickets from the last few days (paper on the windshield marks) - is LIC and our bad parking signs / information about where it is legal to park nothing but a cash cow for the city?

A while ago I parked in front of a construction site on a side street just off of Vernon. There was no indication that parking was prohibited, and the curb was a lovely shade of steel grey (read: not yellow). Of course, they towed me anyway, and upon dealing with the police, it took them 5 days to even acknowledge they towed my car. Sigh. Watch out. Those construction sites are not allowed to prohibit parking unless they have a permit to do so. Most of them don’t. So technically it’s legal to park there… but that means your local police department has to have a clue and understand the law.

As a side note - though I’ve seen a lot of tickets, some of the paper remnants stuck to windshields is the postcard spamming being done by You Know Who. Between the police and YKW, our cars don’t stand a chance of being left alone in peace.

Next Level Floral Design is taking it to the next level… and somewhere else. Vernon/Jackson’s only florist is vacating their space on Vernon Blvd on Feb 15th. The building’s up for sale, and as it stands that retail spot is now open. Bad news for flower-seekers, good news for who knows who. Hopefully for Next Level Floral. If you never went in there, too bad. It’s a great shop. They provide flowers for the UN building everyday. I guess the diplomats need a little brightening while they’re solving all of the world’s problems. Don’t we all?

Um… yeah. Explosive Detection Services has a bit of an attitude. Ok. That’s understandable. Keeping the Mid-town Tunnel from exploding is fine with us.

E & I Deli, Vernon Blvd @ 50th Ave, Hunters Point

If you’ve been reading this blog for five minutes, you know that there’s a grocery store issue… as in we don’t have one. And I’m tired of hearing that C-town counts as a grocery store. Fine, technically C-town is in Hunters Point, but if you live in Queenswest or Vernon/Jackson, two of the other sub-neighborhoods of HP (which is a sub-nabe in and of itself), that C-town is as far away, if not further than The Garden in Greenpoint. Or really, let’s just leave it at that it’s far away. And my question is: is it a good grocery store? It’s too far for me - I just go to The Garden, lug my groceries from the city, or I go to the E&I Deli, aka the Korean deli on Vernon.

Surprisingly, E&I has a really savvy buyer. The deli is definitely stocked with some ‘yuppie’ vittles. You know, overpriced and organic. It also has a great selection of Asian foods as well… which is very much in line with the theme of our burgeoning restaurant scene.

Thank you E&I deli. If it weren’t for you, we’d have to walk the 5000 miles to C-town (aka 15 minutes).

Development in Dutch Kills

Back in 2003, Dutch Kills residents feared the neighborhood was being overdeveloped and requested rezoning to encourage residential growth and downsize commercial development. Some forward thinking there. Flash to 2008 when there are so many hotels and new condo buildings in progress it’s impossible to count them all.

Amongst the community complaints: growing lack of parking, inappropriate commercial development, carelessness in handing out business permits, and overly high density in general. The city responded in agreement with Dutch Kills civic leaders, but have been slow to implement the rezoning, and commercial developers have still been snapping up development sites faster than you can say ‘Environmental Impact Study”, which is what is supposedly holding up the rezoning.

Of course »

This is not the usual rat one sees at a construction site, or is it?

Yesterday, liQity photographer Jenni Snead stumbled across a union protest against One Hunters Point for employing non-union workers:

“The first thing I saw when I came out of the subway was the giant, blow-up strike rat on the corner of Vernon & Borden. I snapped a few shots and spoke briefly with the strikers, who claimed they had been on this site for months now, just not with the inflatable rat. I got a photo of one of the guy’s embroidered jacket - Dockbuilders Local Union 1456”. I wandered away when one of the construction workers walked down to the picket line and started getting upset, saying not to take his picture, etc.”

Hmmm, a union striker not wanting publicity? Interesting. Anyway, we hope the giant rat scares away the real ones.

Giant rat to scale »

We seem to have accidentally tripped a nerve yesterday with Arris Lofts dwellers who are concerned that our citing a rumor about hookers at Arris Lofts will give a bad impression of the neighborhood.

Let’s get a few things right on the table. liQcity is a blog. Curbed is a blog. Blogs deal in rumors and hearsay. None of the information on this or any other blog is pure fact. In fact (ha), most of it is just opinion. So treat it as such.

More relevantly, LIC is a transitioning industrial neighborhood in New York City. That much I’m sure we all can agree on. While Hunters Point is definitely safer than one might expect, there are still plenty of shady spots, and illicit activity absolutely transpires. To what degree? Well that’s the grey area. I’ve seen used condoms strewn about at Gantry Park - where they hookers or an overexcited couple who just put down 20% at the 5th St Lofts? Who knows.

And yes, I’ve seen hookers in LIC »

Arris Lofts at 27-28 Thomson Ave, Courthouse Square, LIC

I visited Arris Lofts a long time ago, back in the day when they were still cool. IE before all the Arris bashing began on curbed.com. I can’t really say I blame the bashers, since the building had some ‘curiosities’ even before we heard about the hookers.

For those not in the know, Arris Lofts hit the market last year, and wins the prize for being the most controversial development project in LIC. What they did right: they didn’t knock the building down, but renovated that gorgeous, odd-shaped industrial building; they emphasized large windows and the high ceilings (both already there, but Arris needs points so let’s give them another one), they used Costas Kondylis. Well that last one remains to be seen, because even on my visit I was very confused by 1BR’s with 2.5 bathrooms, and the kitchen being just a console on the living room wall.

Anyway, after all the hoopla, turns out Arris Lofts is still buzzing through the wire, and word’s not so good. Except for this word.

• Reader Rant: ‘Revolt Brewing’ at LIC’s Arris Lofts [Curbed]

• Arris Lofts Website

A while back, I dug up some photos I took while spending my days biking around LIC. (fun times) Here’s a look at what’s transpired right at the famous triangular corner of Vernon/Jackson. There used to be a beautiful red brick building, that’s been knocked down for quite a while now. But nothing’s been happening in that spot. This is sort of a Name That Dev as well. What’s going on there?

Vernon Jackson in April 2006

The site today, sans the red brick building »

Well, it’s really no surprise that LIC would win the Curbed Cup, Neighborhood of the Year Award for 2007, beating out the West Village…though it’s not clear what it really means. The comment section is a must read, full of hysterical jabs at LIC. (What else is new?)

Is LIC a better neighborhood than the West Village? Well I’m not one to answer that question, if even an answer exists. All I know is 2007 was definitely the year of LIC, because it reached new heights both in terms of real estate and as a neighborhood. There was more growth and development last year than probably in the last 10 years collectively. And consequently, the amount of hype and conversation online was staggering.

Well duh. »