Tourism, Travel, Film Fest Heard At Sunnyside Chamber
...the mayor's office is expending $15 million annually for the next three years to promote tourism in boroughs other than Manhattan. Luke Adams, chamber executive director, said, "For years I complained that nobody paid attention to Queens." This is no longer the case.
BY THOMAS COGAN

At the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce June luncheon, the chamber's last before the summer break, attendees heard from three women named Theresa (give or take an h). One spoke of tourism in Queens, another of a film festival in Sunnyside and the third offered the latest news about repairs to the Sunnnyside Arch on Queens Boulevard at 46th Street. Persons with other names also spoke of events recent and to come at the chamber's usual luncheon site, Dazies Restaurant on Queens Boulevard.

One of the women whose first name is Theresa was the featured speaker at the luncheon: Terri Osborne, director of culture and tourism at Queens Borough President Helen Marshall's office. Osborne came bearing a Guidebook to Queens, written and compiled by Ellen Freudenheim and published by St. Martin's Press, copies of which she passed out for inspection by those present. She said the mayor's office worked with Freudenheim, giving her guidance toward producing a good guidebook to the borough. She also passed out color give-aways highlighting points of interest in Queens and displayed advertisements promoting Queens, which bus and subway riders have become familiar with by now. She mentioned the Discover Queens booth in the Queens Center Mall and the tie-in with the Mets by which, during ballgames, the baseball club will celebrate borough neighborhoods with text and photo highlights on the Jumbotron, the big screen beyond the outfield fence. She said the mayor's office is expending $15 million annually for the next three years to promote tourism in boroughs other than Manhattan. Luke Adams, chamber executive director, said, "For years I complained that nobody paid attention to Queens." This is no longer the case, he finds, and he praised Osborne for the work she has been doing to rescue the borough from popular neglect.

Osborne also spoke of the 350th anniversary of the Flushing Remonstrance, a moment in the struggle for religious freedom that is being honored for the rest of the year, ending with a climactic celebration on December 27, the 350th anniversary of the document's issuance. On December 27, 1657, "A Remonstrance of the Inhabitants of the Towne of Flushing to Governor Peter Stuyvesant" was written by Edward Hart, Flushing town clerk, and signed by 28 men of the town, to protest the governor's "command that we should not receive or entertain any of those people called Quakers because they are supposed to be by some, seducers of the people". They said instead that if Quakers, or people of other religious persuasions, "come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egress and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences". As a result, they suffered Governor Stuyvesant's considerable wrath, but still established a precursor of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The actual document, kept permanently in Albany, will be displayed at the Flushing branch of the Queens Borough Public Library on Main Street.

Second in the namesake stakes was Sunnyside resident Terry Ward, present to promote the Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival, which is to take place Saturday, September 15 at Sunnyside Gardens Park on 39th Avenue between 48th and 50th Streets. Ward said that filmmakers from the local area and foreign countries would be exhibiting short films. At the moment, the festival is in need of sponsors and money, and that is what she is actively seeking.

Finally, Chamber Member Terry Facciuto had fond remembrances of her May trip to Turkey, which was sponsored by the locally based Turkish-American Multicultural Educational Foundation (TAMEF), before turning to the news at hand as she announced that repair work on the Sunnyside Arch, at 46th Street on the south side of Queens Boulevard, would at last be undertaken in August, with a completion date estimated to be some time in October. The plan to make a pedestrian mall of 46th Street between the boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue has yet to be decided, but a well-lighted arch spanning the street should be a reality well before Christmas.

Repair of the arch has been a longstanding issue, and so has the bid for the BID; but that too may be nearing a conclusion. A hearing about establishing a business improvement district, or BID, in Sunnyside (mainly on parts of Greenpoint Avenue, Queens Boulevard and 39th Street) is scheduled for Tuesday, June 26 at the City Council. Hopes are high for success there, after which the matter would go on to the state legislature in Albany. The Sunnyside BID could be in operation by early 2008.

Sophia Ganosis of the Queens Chamber of Commerce also attended the luncheon, and announced that the QCC building awards dinner would be held this year at Terrace on the Park in Flushing Meadows -Corona Park. It will occur in December, but a definite date has yet to be determined.