LICBDC Honors 3 At Annual Luncheon/Trade Show
BY THOMAS COGAN

For more than 30 years, Heiss, an honoree, and P.S. 1 have promoted emerging artists and movements, and provided room for works that sometimes need unusual space.

At the Long Island City Business Development Corporation Annual Luncheon & Trade Show for 2006, held once again at Terrace on the Park in Flushing, one attendee remarked to another, who was just arriving, that the trade show was jam-packed and LICBDC might have to find a larger space for it next year. Next year's plans aside, the mid-November event drew 450 for the luncheon and 2,000 for the trade show, according to LICBDC Board Chairman Gary Kesner. Several other attendees affirmed that the show, with some 150 exhibitors in six rooms of varying size on the ground floor, was indeed jam-packed, at times resembling a rush-hour subway train. The luncheon that followed the show honored three persons prominent in Long Island City life: Kenneth J. Buettner of York Scaffold Equipment Corp., Alanna Heiss of P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and Sandford H. Zuckerbrot of Sholom & Zuckerbrot Realty.

The luncheon crowd heard LICBDC President Gayle Barron describe Long Island City as "diverse, welcoming and prosperous". Queens Borough President Helen Marshall praised the day's honorees and hailed one of the meeting's prime sponsors, Citibank, for its Jackson Avenue skyscraper that started a trend in Long Island City more than 15 years ago; as well as its new building next door, about one-third as tall and being erected as she spoke. Marshall pointed to the $20 million in funds, secured mainly by Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, that would be spent on changing the face of Queensboro Plaza. She added that a new building would replace the parking garage on Queens Plaza South and, complete with a new garage of its own, would change the plaza even further. Her one regret was the MetLife plan to leave the building on Queens Plaza North that, within the brief course of the new century, the insurance company rebuilt, moved into and is now all but deserting. Introducing Buettner as an honoree was

Robert Walsh, the city Commissioner of Small Business Services. Buettner and his sister, Kathryn, are the third generation to command York Scaffold Equipment, which gets its name from its origin in 1928 in Yorkville, the section of Manhattan in the East 80s. The company was moved to Long Island City in the mid-1930s. Buettner joined it in 1975 and became president in 1983, when his father retired. His commitment to the business is demonstrated by his participation in trade associations and construction industry boards. He was, for example, president of the Scaffold Industry Association from 1992 to 1994 and is currently a member of its board of directors; is chairman of Construction Industry Safety Group No 469 of the State Insurance Fund of New York; and belongs to the Building Trades Employers' Association (BTEA). He has been a member of LICBDC since 1985, and last year was chairman of its Long Island City Industrial Business Zone Committee. He is also a member of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. Apart from business, he has served on the board of education, the Community Chest, a local historical society and his church in the North Shore town where he resides, Port Washington. He told the luncheon audience that in his time in Long Island City he has seen it in decline, but lately has seen it "come rocketing back".

From mid-2002 to late 2004, the Museum of Modern Art's Manhattan home on West 53rd Street underwent considerable expansion and renovation. For that interim period, MoMA stayed open by relocating to an old Swingline Stapler factory on Rawson Street, near Queens Boulevard. Glenn Lowry, MoMA curator, told the luncheon audience that Alanna Heiss, executive director of the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, petitioned so tirelessly to relocate MoMA in Long Island City that the relocation was plainly her triumph. She had over a quartercentury of experience in Long Island City at the time, having run a museum in an old public school at 46th Avenue and 21st Street since 1975. She had arrived in Long Island City after living amidst contemporary art scenes in New York and Europe and trying to find museum space that would allow room for what was known as site-specific art. Pursuing the suggestion that such space might best be found outside Manhattan, Heiss eventually encountered then Queens Borough President Donald Manes, who offered her the old school building. By the time she was urging MoMA to come to Queens, P.S. 1 had already become a MoMA affiliate. For more than 30 years, Heiss and P.S. 1 have promoted emerging artists and movements, and provided room for works that sometimes need unusual space. Her reputation and renown are international, as demonstrated by awards she has won. She is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France's Legion d'Honneur and a member of the Royal Swedish Order of the Polar Star. At home, she has received the Mayor's Award for Contributions to the Artistic Viability of New York City. Her LICBDC award cites "all you have done to spur economic growth in Long Island City".

Hank Auffarth-"Hank from the Bank"-introduced the third honoree, Sandford H. Zuckerbrot, citing him as a fellow founder of LICBDC. He said too that he respects Zuckerbrot so much, "I gave my first-born son to him": his son Jason now works at Sholom and Zuckerbrot Realty. Sandy Zuckerbrot founded the company bearing his name in 1962. Over the years, S&Z has specialized in converting barely used or empty old building space to new and dynamic uses. The Bulova Corporate Center, created out of underused facilities belonging to the wristwatch manufacturer, is an example; the Kaufman Astoria Motion Picture Studios, where a long-discontinued movie industry was revived, is another. S&Z maintains its offices in Kaufman Astoria Studios, having moved there in the early 1980s. It maintains departments dealing with offices, retail, investment sales, asset management and property management. Its scope extends to many parts of the New York metropolitan area, where it maintains centers that include such retail institutions as Home Depot, Marshall's, Old Navy and Toys 'r' Us. Zuckerbrot also has a longstanding relationship with the drug chain CVS, having brought the first of CVS' many stores to Queens. Apart from business, Zuckerbrot has served with the Gurwin Geriatric Center, the industrial division of United Jewish Appeal, the Lexington School for the Deaf, the Queens Child Guidance Center and P.S. 1. Although he has caused much change in his long career in Long Island City, at the luncheon he said that he is still amazed about much of what has happened-in his words, "things you wouldn't have believed" could happen years ago.