Courtesy of outerB

The Department of Transportation (DOT) is holding their second round of workshops to address Queens parking issues, especially fallout on ‘commuter’ neighborhoods in lieu of the pending congestion pricing plan.

If you care about parking in the hood, here’s the deets:

Tuesday, 1/29, 6:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:00. Citicorp Building, 1 Court Square Long Island City

The weekends are usually a chill time in LIC. The area is still pretty commercial, especially if you count the buildings in progress as sites of commercial activity, which I do. So from 7am to about 4pm on weekdays the neighborhood is packed to the gills with people, and then at night and on the weekends it thins out and quiets down.

Not anymore.

This weekend the hood was PACKED with people filing into the sales offices for the Foundry LIC, Powerhouse, 5SL… everything! Usually on nights and weekends, one can park with ease - FORGET about trying to park in LIC during business hours. All spots are usually taken by 6am. It’s worse than the Upper West Side. On nights and weekends, the commercial people aren’t around so much, so it’s much easier. But this Sunday, I thought twice about taking my car out for a spin after eyeing several Long Island-y types driving around stalker style.

At least all the new developments come with parking spots. That should help a bit. But in the meantime, we’re losing our weekend parking. It’ll be a nice day when those little blocks off of Vernon get resident parking. Who knows if that will happen, but those of us who don’t live in the high-rises with parking need to be protected. Right?

Don’t worry. I’m not holding my breath.

A piece that no longer exists at 5pointz studios - photo by Barrybar

Queenswest has a $20M library in the works? The price tag seems a bit steep.

• Queens West May Soon Be Hitting the Books [Curbed]

• Residential parking permits in LIC? Well that’s one option. [Queens Chronicle]

• If you’re moving in to the Rockrose buildings, bring your goggles. [Queens Courier]

• Music events in LIC this weekend [licpop]

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.

It’s still V-day in Hunters Point.

Welcome back from President’s Day. At least this year it feels very well deserved.

• NYC Ferry Commuting Funded by the City?

• Um… a Senator got towed during a congestion plan meeting. [Streetsblog]

• Some good NYC real estate articles this morning. [A Fine Blog]

Looking South from Hunters Point, Long Island City

Nice chunk of LIC news today. Looks like those parking workshops actually listened to the people that showed up. In conjunction with the famous Congestion Charge Plan, the DOT (Dept of Transportation) is proposing a Residential Parking Permit plan for a few specific neighborhoods that could be adversely effected by parkers trying to avoid the charge. LIC is one of them of course. Though, if anyone has tried to park in Hunters Point between the hours of 6am and about 4/5pm, you know it’s impossible anyway, so those new drivers coming to park here are SOL. It will be nice though to have residential parking. All hoods in the RPP plan will be treated on a case-by-case basis involving determination by community boards etc.

It seems the allocation for the new library suddenly jumped from $20M: “…$40 million for the build-out of a new Library Services Center in Long Island City in Queens.”

Water Taxi Beach is feeling the heat before the summer begins. Urban retreat or community nuisance? Seems the board meeting controversy had more to do with the Waterfront Crabhouse upset about WTBeachers rowdily trying to use their bathrooms, but for those of us who live in the pathway from WTB to the subway… I’d say there’s definitely a community issue. Some solutions offered by WTB were to shorten hours on Sunday night and provide additional portable bathroom facilities.

• Residential parking permits for Long Island City? [Streetsblog]

• NY Public Library $1B plan includes Long Island City [Library Journal]

• Water Taxi Beach draws ire at local community board meeting [Queens Gazette]

• LICBDC gets update on Queenswest project [Queens Gazette]

• Review of Lucky Mojo’s [Daily News]

• Behind the scenes of Bjork’s ‘Wonderland’ screening [NY Sun]

• Third-generation magician’s factory makes wonders before your eyes [Daily News]

10-50 Jackson Ave getting shiny, Long Island City

So LIC’s approved for the Residential Parking Plan. One can only assume that this along with other key decisions about the logistical infrastructure of LIC lay in the hands of the Community Board.

Speaking of the somewhat elusive CB2, the CUNY building appeal will be addressed at the board meeting on Thursday, April 3rd at 7pm. An older post offers some information about the board.

While the Queenswest Library clean up continues, the Queens Library system is renovating its branch in LIC as well. So we’re getting a double dose of information, brainiacs be alerted.

An interesting statistic: ” In Long Island City, average apartment sales prices increased 44 percent compared to the same period last year [Jan 07-08]; Woodside saw a 32 percent rise and Elmhurst prices went up 15 percent.” -Queens Chronicle

• Long Island City approved for Residential Permit Parking plan [Times Ledger]

• Cleanup continues at Queenswest library site [Queens Chronicle]

• Queens Library in LIC system funded $400K for renovations [Queens Courier]

• Irish Center going strong in LIC [Queens Courier]

• Community service from Fresh Direct? [Earth Times]

• New York City Food Film festival at Water Taxi Beach this summer [NY Sun]

Ivy covered building on Vernon Blvd, Long Island City

It’s been a while since we’ve hooked up some LIC linkage… this morning we have a little petroleum smell with your coffee. Aah, but that’s old news. What’s new news is the pile driving that started somewhere around Vernon/Jackson yesterday morning. We’ve been getting reports that Arris Lofters are losing lots of sleep thanks to Rockrose’s pile driving on the infamous site of the Building That Should Have Been Landmarked. Well, there are lots of those sites in LIC, and Queens in general. But we digress.

You can thank the End of Tax Abatement »