Board 2: Rename Queens Blvd. Stretch For Manton
BY THOMAS COGAN A
Amotion to rename a 20-block segment of Queens Boulevard after the late

The late Thomas J. Manton

Congressmember Thomas J.

Manton was a prime order of business at the June meeting of Community Board 2, as was an application to renew a sidewalk café license at an Italian restaurant in Sunnyside. A current report on truck traffic by Department of Transportation officials, news about a greenmarket in Sunnyside and information about New York Hospital Queens were other features. In addition, there was a discussion of the pipeline that was a target of would-be saboteurs, since part of it runs through Long Island City and Sunnyside. A Woodside woman had a complaint about construction of multi-family dwellings in her neighborhood of two-family houses, and others longed for sound barriers to abate noise from the Long Island Rail Road. Such business brought the board's year to an end.

The motion for Manton had to do with an application to rename Queens Boulevard (both sides) from 38th to 58th Street after the Congressmember, who served in the House of Representatives from 1985 to 1999, and Queens Democratic Party leader, and who died last July at the age of 73. A flood of endorsements followed. That and the fact that there were Manton family members, most prominently his widow, in attendance, made the board's unanimous approval a certainty. Higher authorities, such as the City Council, must cast the deciding votes, but since Manton was also a City Councilmember from 1970 to 1984, the prospect for renaming those 20 blocks after him is excellent.

The DOT officials were Maura McCarthy and David Stein, who came bearing and handing out a few of the 35,000 copies of truck route maps recently printed by the department. These are accompaniment to the latest traffic study, available online at nyc.gov/trucks. Stein, who said that only one city street in 20 is a truck route, explained the current DOT effort to get truck traffic under control in the five boroughs. It entails mounting a lot of signs showing truck drivers the way on some streets or warning them away from others. Steve Cooper of the board suggested that instead of "blighting" neighborhoods with more road signs, DOT should instead paint signs that drivers could easily see on the roadways. Stein said that was not feasible. Jim Condes particularized the problem by saying that traffic flow on 58th Street running north to south would be improved with better timing on streetlights, especially during rush hour.

The recently foiled plot to detonate a fuel pipeline at Kennedy Airport and start a chain-reaction explosion brought up the fact that a part of the pipeline, which runs in its entirety from Linden, New Jersey to JFK, has a branch to La Guardia Airport that carries jet fuel through Long Island City and Sunnyside. A captain from the Fire Department was at the meeting to explain the meaning of that. He said that the pipeline is in two parts, one carrying gasoline, the other jet airplane fuel. He reemphasized what law authorities explained when the plot suspects were arrested: that the chain reaction they desired would be prevented by a system of safety checks that would shut down adjacent parts of the pipeline if one part of it were seen to be damaged or under attack. Still, the incident reminded local residents that the presence of the pipeline has been an irritant from the time it was installed, nearly 40 years ago. The fire captain said it is "a necessary evil" to run such a pipeline through populated neighborhoods.

John D. Enright, vice president, cardiovascular services for New York Hospital Queens, formerly Booth Memorial Hospital, told the meeting attendees that his hospital in Flushing offers a wider range of cardiovascular services than any other in Queens. This would be in contrast to the situation at Mount Sinai Queens, the hospital in Astoria whose people are currently conducting a postcard campaign, addressed to the state commissioner of health, petitioning for a cardiac catheterization laboratory. Enright wondered why persons in Queens needing cardiovascular services tend in great numbers to get them in Manhattan or Nassau County hospitals.

The greenmarket situation in Queens is spotty too, though a woman named Kathy Chambers was at the meeting to publicize the latest attempt to address that shortage. She said a greenmarket in Sunnyside, on Skillman Avenue just below 43rd Street, outside Lou Lodati Playground, would open Saturday, July 7 at 8 a.m., stay open until 5 p.m. and run during those hours on successive Saturdays until early November. Board Chairman Joseph Conley expressed skepticism, knowing that greenmarkets in Hunters Point and Astoria, and one that existed years ago in Sunnyside Park, have been less than successful trying, in a small-scale way, to replicate the big market in Union Square; but Chambers said there is both excellent residential population and willingness to support

vendors there each Saturday.

At public comment time, a Woodside woman asked if a building moratorium could be declared on the block where she lives, before the replacement of one- or two-family houses with multi-family structures could go any further. The woman, Eleni Traganas, resides on 67th Street between Roosevelt Avenue and 41st Avenue, but her complaint is centered on 68th Street between Roosevelt and 41st, particularly on number 40-44, the property she identified as Block 1299, Lot 52. On 68th Street, it is evident that construction of multi-family housing has been going on for some time, and the issue at hand is a partially razed, two-family residence that is to be the site of two multi-level, four-family apartment houses. The prospect of a fourfold increase in residential density on that site moved Traganas and several of her neighbors to petition Borough President Helen Marshall in mid-May to prevent construction there and reassess further building plans of this sort. She told the meeting that Marshall's office made nothing more than what she called a "perfunctory" reply to the petitioners. She asked the board if any sort of freeze or moratorium on building could be imposed. Conley could not offer encouragement. The neighborhood where Traganas lives lies outside the area considered in the Woodside-Maspeth rezoning plan of 2006. It is a triangular R6 zone bounded roughly by Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside Avenue and 72nd Street. According to classification, an R6 zone would allow for even larger, or higher, buildings than those that either have been built or are proposed for construction there.

Among the committee reports was one for land use. Seeking the committee's approval was Donato's, a restaurant at 39th Avenue and 51st Street in Sunnyside that wanted to establish a 28-seat outdoor dining area. There had been resistance to music being played through outdoor speakers at the establishment, but the restaurant's representative said that practice had been discontinued. The motion to approve was passed unanimously. The environment committee's Dorothy Morehead agreed with a Sunnyside woman who had earlier complained that noise from the Long Island Rail Road had grown unbearable as trains passed her home located near the tracks. Before, stands of trees had muffled the sound, but they had been cut down. The woman assumed they had been removed so the railroad could build more trackage as part of its plan to establish a route to the East Side of Manhattan. Morehead said the trees had been cut down because of the Asian longhorned beetle menace, but as one who also lives near the tracks, she deplored the noise the trains made and said that sound baffles should be set up between tracks and the streets of Sunnyside, especially since the railroad is indeed expanding its trackage. The expansion project is costing some $3 billion, Morehead said, so some of that money should be expended for noise abatement.