At Forest Park, safety continues to be a joke

From Project Woodhaven:

There has been another attack on a female jogger, again in the Forest Hills section of Forest Park. This attack, similar to an attack in the same area in March, took place near the secluded horse trails which joggers frequently use. Is it the same perpetrator? Here are the 2 sketches of the suspect -- the April attack suspect is at left (wearing a stocking cap) and the suspect from last week is at the right:


Unresolved Dangerous Conditions

There are lights out all over the area -- and the amount of time it is taking to resolve is completely unacceptable.

1) Forest Park Drive - From Park Lane South to Myrtle, through Forest Park, across Woodhaven Boulevard. Reported to 311 and DOT inspected and, unbelievably, they closed the 311 after inspecting it.

2) Myrtle Avenue, from Woodhaven Boulevard to Park Lane South - a long dark stretch. We parked along there the other morning -- when we got back from the track, this had happened:


And yet, even though the lights have been out for a while (reported 8/16) they have not yet been repaired. The map below shows where we know there to be lighting issues in and around Forest Park.

These issues have been reported to 311. But in light of the recent attacks, DOT and Con Edison needs to escalate these problems and fix them immediately. As in, today.

There is no excuse for the city to put people who use the park in jeopardy.

And people wonder why the residents of Woodhaven aren't enthusiastic about the QueensWay? Check out how the city currently takes care of park security -- and this isn't a new problem and ask yourself if you want more of that brought directly into your neighborhood.

I'm sure Liz Crowley will get right on this. Just about every article about the rape mentions that she regularly jogs in Forest Park. I guess she's been jogging with a blindfold on.

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Queens' own artistical genius

From the NY Times:

Pei-Shen Qian’s neighbors on 95th Street in Woodhaven, Queens, knew he scratched out a living as an artist: he often dried his paintings in the sun, propping them up on the weathered white siding of his modest house.

They were less clear on why he kept his windows covered, or why every so often a man in an expensive car would come to the house carrying paintings to, not from, a painter.

“He would bring a painting in and show it to him, for him to work on or fix up something,” Edwin Gardiner, 68, who lives across the street, said before pausing and adding, “I don’t know what he did with it.”

Parts of the mystery became clearer on Friday as neighbors learned that Mr. Qian, a quiet 73-year-old immigrant from China in a paint-flecked smock, is suspected of having fooled the art world by creating dozens of works that were modeled after America’s Modernist masters and were later sold as their handiwork for more than $80 million.

Mr. Qian, who came here more than four decades ago and struggled to sell his own works in this country, earned just a few thousand dollars for each of his imitations. New York was a center of the art world, but Mr. Qian told friends that he had been disheartened by the difficulties he encountered finding a foothold as an artist.

“He was kind of frustrated because of the language problem, the connection problem,” said Zhang Hongtu, a friend and acclaimed Chinese artist who lives in New York. “He was not that happy.”

Mr. Qian’s low profile as a painter has evaporated; federal authorities have decided that he was the artist whose fakes are at the heart of one of the bolder art frauds in recent memory.

A revised federal indictment handed up this week charged Glafira Rosales, one of the dealers accused of having peddled his works, with money laundering and tax evasion in connection with the sales.

The indictment does not name Mr. Qian, who could not be reached for comment on Friday, but people with knowledge of the case confirmed that he was the man referred to only elliptically in the charges as the “Painter.” Neighbors say agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched his home this week.

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Everything you wanted to know about illegal front-yard driveways

Photo from Daily News

From the Times Newsweekly:

Is it really too much to expect fellow Woodhaven residents to follow the law, and for New York City agencies to enforce the law?

When it comes to illegal front-yard parking, it seems so.

Across the neighborhood, some residents and homeowners have paved over their front yards and started to park cars there, although it’s against the law.

The result is that concrete has often replaced grass, drivers have been steering their cars over sidewalks even when there are no curb cuts (or, worse still, have been illegally cutting the curbs themselves), and some of these law-breaking drivers have even tried to prevent others from parking in legal street spots that block their illegal parking pads.

Turning a front-yard lawn or garden into a concrete patch is unsightly and might lead to street flooding when rainwater can’t escape into soil. Driving a car up and over a curb where there’s no driveway is dangerous and contributes to a sense of disorder in the neighborhood. Disallowing others to park in legal spots is selfish and reduces the amount of legitimate parking in the neighborhood. Most importantly, all these actions violate the law.

I’m familiar with the objections from those who believe they should be able to do whatever they want with their homes. That, however, is not the way it works in New York City. With so many people living in proximity to each other, what one person does can have a big impact on neighbors or even the community as a whole.

When you pave over your yard, you contribute to the destruction of the character of your block. You hurt the values of nearby properties. And you worsen the problems I mentioned above. The United States might be the land of the free, but that doesn’t mean you’re free to do whatever you want without regard for your community or the law.

Unfortunately, the New York City Buildings Department—the agency with authority on this matter—has been slow to enforce the law and to take action against those who create illegal driveways, carports, or curb cuts in Woodhaven. For instance, I called in one violation and even provided photographic proof. Three months later, the Buildings Department hasn’t even gotten around to taking a look.

I know that these complaints aren’t their top priority. They should, rightly, be giving precedence to imminent public safety hazards, like the building collapse on 79th Street near Jamaica Avenue last month. That building had more than 30 outstanding construction violations.

But the fact remains that three months is an excessive wait for an initial investigation into an illegal driveway. It diminishes residents’ confidence in the authorities, it sends the message that those who violate the law will get away with it indefinitely, and it's unfair to the many residents who follow the law and take pride in maintaining their properties.

Moreover, these front-yard parking pads are often related to other, deeper problems requiring attention. For example, many homeowners create them because of a parking shortage stemming from another illicit behavior: illegal conversions that pack too many people into houses, thus straining city services as well as the stock of available parking spots. And some residents chop down street trees in front of their homes in order to make it easier to pull their cars into and out of illegal driveways, further adding to a less green, more concrete Woodhaven.

The streets of Woodhaven shouldn’t look like one big used car lot. Woodhaven residents should do the right thing, and if they don’t, the Buildings Department should step in and enforce the law.

Editor’s note: Blenkinsopp is member of Community Board 9 and director of communications for the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association. For additional information on the WRBA, visit www.woodhavennyc.org.

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Charity demolishing old Woodhaven house for group home

Photo from Project Woodhaven

Was headed south on Woodhaven Blvd this past Sunday when I noticed a nice big old house (that I believe recently contained doctors' offices) with a strange box-shaped hole on all sides of the roof - you could see right through it. I made a mental note to check the DOB online system when I got home.


88-38 Woodhaven Blvd has a full demo permit on file for both the house and garage. And not just a regular demo permit. No, this baby is going to be taken down with heavy equipment since they applied for a mechanical demo permit. What joy! And who is bringing this to us? Heartshare Human Services, a charity that services people with special needs.

There are no new building permits yet, but this article from the Queens Chronicle says that the home will house 10 adults and be slightly larger than the current house. Luckily, the zoning is R3-1 which limits the level of replacement crappiness, but they could always pull the "community facility" card out of the deck.

Judging from the way the house was being kept by this charity before the demo began and that Heartshare conveniently left out the fact that they were planning to demolish the existing structure when they went before CB9 last year for approval of their group home, the community needs to keep on top of them to make sure they stick to their publicly-made promises. It's not like they can expect elected officials to do it.

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