Thomas Cogan, Queens Gazette, July 2, 2010

Speakers at the fifth annual breakfast meeting of the Long Island City Business Improvement District, held at Silvercup Studios at the end of June, discussed improvements on Queens Plaza and Jackson Avenue and the rise of Gotham Center and the Tishman-Speyer building at the corner of Jackson and Queens Plaza South. The new developments were in marked contrast to the way things had looked a year earlier, when the municipal garage had just been torn down to make way for the new building’s foundation and before greenway islands were built on Jackson Avenue and small parks laid out at its edge.

The building, which has become an imposing glass presence on the Long Island City scene, is to be the new home of the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is expected to move in some time next year. Linda Gibbs, deputy mayor for health and human services since the beginning of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s second term in 2006, estimated the move-in date to be next April; LICBID Chairman David Brause said it might be as early as March.

In her keynote address to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Gibbs said that Health Department offices are currently in a block-large, 11-story building at 125 Worth St. in Manhattan built in 1933 for the Department of Health, Hospitals and Sanitation. Gibbs said it was a “tough decision” to leave, but the DOH had simply outgrown its old home. Significant parts of the department are currently housed in other buildings, and unification of the department is a possibility only in a building that can take it all in. She was glad to note that the new building would allow stair climbing between floors instead of complete reliance on elevators and would be accommodating to bicyclists. She added lightly that since the days of former DOH Commissioner Thomas Frieden the department has been so intent on educating the public about health and its hazards (such as smoking and obesity) that its presence and health consciousness could affect what local restaurants in Long Island City serve.

Gibbs’ chief concern as deputy mayor is the welfare of the community, particularly the elderly, adolescents and the homeless, she said. Years ago, she continued, a chart of city population would have been bulky in the middle, with the young and the old as smaller population parts at bottom and top—a beehive look. Such a chart these days would find the middle part so much lessened and the top and bottom so much expanded it would resemble an hourglass. Concern for the old has been acute for several years but, she said, youth and the homeless should be looked at also. She said there is in the city a large and unsettling cohort of “disconnected youth”, persons between 16 and 24 years of age who are neither in school nor working. She hoped they could be drawn into the workforce, where even entry-level jobs at minimum wage could get them started toward better things. As for the homeless, she said their population had been reduced by 40 percent under Bloomberg. She described the annual winter homeless count and the constant attempt to bring people living outdoors into city shelters. (Though the count is conducted in February, Gibbs warned that summer days and the danger of heat prostration could be as hazardous as winter nights and freezing.) She lamented the fact that many homeless have become “quite habituated” to their situation and are unwilling to accept help. She also lamented the aid by concerned citizens, in the form of money, food and blankets given directly to homeless persons. Such misplaced charity, she said, only enables their continued life on the streets. She said the generous people would call 311 to report their conditions, so DOH could send out teams to engage them and try to get them into shelters.

Gibbs was followed by Tracy Sayegh Gabriel, VP at the NYC Economic Development Corporation. Gabriel promised that all the construction lineaments currently visible on Queens Plaza would one day fall away to reveal a transformed area. Additionally, a maintenance plan for the plaza and Jackson Avenue should leave both as impressive a decade from now as they are likely to be the day their projects are completed, she said. Among the things to be maintained are 500 trees currently being planted, along with subsurface wetlands. She saw substantial completion of work on Queens Plaza and Jackson Avenue by late 2011 and topping off in 2012.

LICBID’s community partner award for 2010 went to Sheila Lewandowski, executive director of The Chocolate Factory Theater at 5-49 49th Ave.; the friend of the BID award to Melva Miller, director of economic development in the Queens borough president’s office. Josh Mazess, who has been an assistant to such city officials as William Thompson, former comptroller, received the BID leadership award, and Vivian Meyers of Gotham Realty in Manhattan took home the property owner of the year award.

Gayle Baron, executive director of LICBID, and David Brause, its chairman, praised Penny Lee of the Department of City Planning for her perseverance over a decade’s time in the cause of Queens Plaza improvement. As Baron said, when Lee showed her plans for the plaza in 2000, she found it hard to imagine coming true, “Yet here we are, on the verge of seeing it completed.”