Changes Are In Store For LaGuardia Community College
BY THOMAS COGAN

LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow.

LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow spoke briefly at the May meeting of Community Board 2, as did a woman informing the members about respite care for adults with mental illness. Long Island City news was concerned with building projects and the rats that are their byproduct, so to speak. Committee reports included news that Board 2 is close to getting a Beacon program in one of its schools.

Mellow said that after about 35 years of existence, LaGuardia would be getting some alterations. For one thing, the entrance on Thomson Avenue will get a touch-up because it should be "a little more friendly" to the public, she said; and the small Barnes & Noble bookstore in the basement will be relocated upstairs and made larger. She referred to Difficult Dialogues, the program of interfaith meetings sponsored by the Ford Foundation and LaGuardia, taking place in various houses of worship, beginning Saturday, May 12, and concluding at the college on Wednesday, May 30. She cited some statistics, saying first, that 40 percent of students at LaGuardia are over 40, and next, that in families where a member has been a LaGuardia student, income rises an average of 17 percent. She also had an anecdote about the largest single building in the City University of New York system, the old Sunshine Biscuit bakery, also on Thomson Avenue, once the International Design Center of New York and now part of the LaGuardia campus. When the college took over the former cookie factory, it found a deep layer of sugar adhering to the ceiling that had to be steamed out before further work could proceed.

Board 2 Chairman Joseph Conley spoke first of John Murray Park, bounded by 45th Road, 21st Street, 45th Avenue and 11th Street in Long Island City, where construction of a comfort station has become a protracted project. The latest difficulty there is rats, and refugee rats at that. It is said that the construction boom in Hunters Point has disrupted their peaceful nests and some of those in flight have come into the park to take shelter in the comfort station, giving new meaning to the term. The garden at the corner of 21st Street and 45th Avenue has also become overrun with rodents, so the city Department of Parks and Recreation has ripped up the garden, upsetting the locals, who have in the past derided the department for procedural clumsiness in the park. Conley also talked about the tennis club that has been built on the roof of the old Swingline factory on Skillman Avenue. The builders evidently decided not to let anybody local know what they were up to, and Conley believes the board is owed an explanation. He said he would like to have gone into the building with the Department of Buildings on the half-day the DOB makes itself available each month, but this month's meeting has been cancelled.

The first of the committee reports was from Lisa Ann Deller of the land use committee, who reported that the Jackson Avenue rehabilitation plan calls for a median to be built the length of that two-way thoroughfare, running from Queensborough Plaza nearly to the Queens- Midtown Tunnel. She said the effect would be to turn Jackson Avenue into a boulevard, adding that a presentation on the project is to be shown at the June meeting. She also mentioned Queens West South, the Hunters Point project near the East River that is to include 5,000 units of affordable housing and is to be managed by the Real Estate Board of New York, a for-profit group that Deller believes should be scrutinized carefully. The project is subject to a uniform land use review procedure (ULURP) involving the Department of City Planning. Heather Strafer of the youth services planning committee, said that a Beacon program would at last be coming to a school in Board 2, that portion of the local school district being the only one lacking a Beacon school until now. The program would be limited to the elementary school level, Strafer said, lamenting that there would be nothing aimed toward helping the critical 12-to-18-year- old segment. Its location, yet to be determined, is influenced by where the elected official who secures it would like it to be, Conley added; the official in this case being City Councilmember Eric Gioia. It is also dependent on the willingness of the principal of the chosen school to accommodate it. Conley said that a former school principal in the district was long resistant to a Beacon program, but that official having departed, a new principal might demonstrate a new attitude. Patrick O'Brien, city services committee head, reported that Blagio, the capacious nightclub on Queens Boulevard and 72nd Street, whose history has been troubled, is now closed; that Las Gatitas, the nightspot at Roosevelt Avenue near 53rd Street, might encounter unfavorable reviewers when its liquor license comes up for renewal at the end of July, and that the proposal for a nightclub in a space at Barnett Avenue near 48th Street appears to be stillborn.

During the public comment segment, Simone Edwards, a representative of Professional Service Care for the Handicapped, or PSCH, which says it provides support for caregivers of persons with mental illness, took her allotted three minutes to describe the group's respite residence on the grounds of Creedmoor State Hospital, 80-45 Winchester Blvd. in Queens Village, and surveyed other services available. These latter include an outpatient program that focuses on personal goals relating to housing, education, work and socialization for the mentally handicapped, with a further emphasis on relieving the stress borne by the relatives and guardians who are responsible for them. The PSCH Queens office is at 22-44 119th St. in College Point; the number is 718-445-4700, ext. 2601.