Despite Opposition, Board 3 Votes For Annex To I.S. 230
BY THOMAS COGAN

Community Board 3 has lately been holding monthly meetings away from its usual arena, I.S. 227, the Louis Armstrong School, on Junction Boulevard. The March meeting was held at I.S. 230, 73-10 34th Ave. The main business of the evening, which finally overwhelmed any other topic, was the matter officially described as a "proposal for the development of a 390-seat intermediate school facility…and associated schoolyard at the northeast and northwest corners of 34th Avenue and 74th Street"- an annex and playground for I.S. 230, to be built across the street. As the meeting began, attendees on the right side of the school auditorium, identifying themselves as local residents, were already making their protests plain. And though it was almost lost in the tumult that followed, an application to allow the conversion of a two-family house on Ditmars Boulevard to a professional office was also debated and put to a vote.

The applicant asking for a variance to convert a two-family house into a professional office was Matthew Fogarty, who is in the mortgage business. Fogarty's attorney, Richard Lobel, said the residence at 110-11 Ditmars Blvd. in East Elmhurst is set on a narrow triangle of land. Though classified as a two-family house, it has only 1,600 square feet of space. Lobel said that efforts to rent out either part have not succeeded, prospective tenants disdaining the structure for lack of sufficient room. Lobel said it was Fogarty's intention to use the whole house as an office. A woman who identified herself as a local resident opposed him, believing that he intended to set up a real estate office. Another woman, claiming acquaintance with Fogarty, who was present but chose to say little, replied that if he said it would be only a mortgage business he would be true to his word. Fogarty did actually answer one inquirer, saying there would not be any commercial sign on or in front of the house. It transpired, however, that he wanted to lay out a six-car parking lot. Among those present, more seemed to be in favor of the application than against, but Hamlett Wallace, head of the board's land use committee, announced that the committee had turned it down. The subsequent board vote showed 24 in favor of the committee's decision, 13 opposed; so Fogarty's application was recommended to be rejected.

A representative quartet from the School Construction Authority presented the plan for the annex and playground. One of them said a search for a lot in the vicinity of the school on which to build an annex was being conducted a few months earlier when a large old residence on the northwest corner of 34th Avenue and 74th Street was torn down, leaving a vacant lot that the SCA found ideal for its purposes. The plan is to build a fourstory building for a student population numbering between 300 and 400; the official number was 390, but other figures were also declared during the evening. As for the playground, it could be built on the northeast corner, directly across from the annex site- but first another old residence, which, though empty, still stands, would have to be cleared from the site. The principal of I.S. 230, Sharon Kelly, followed the SCA group and made an emotional plea for the welfare of schoolchildren currently struggling to learn in overcrowded classrooms. The section full of residents opposed to the annex made a few comments about the misbehavior of same schoolchildren on the local streets, to the point where Board 3 Chairman Vasantri Gandhi had to warn them they were being disruptive and such behavior wouldn't be tolerated. Unperturbed, and determined to make her appeal to them, Kelly looked directly at her detractors as she finished her presentation. Then it was time for the parade to the microphone.

The first speaker, a woman, said that a fourstory building occupying the lot where the old house and its grounds used to be would block a lot of light the neighborhood currently enjoys. As for schoolchildren, she said they are a menace and she's got property damage to prove it. A man followed, saying he feared a playground would be a place for loitering. A teacher from I.S. 230 pleaded for construction of the annex, saying that kids are currently being treated "like cattle". Another man said he valued his Queens education and would like his children to remember theirs with equal fondness; thus, he favored annex construction. A man who said he has resided in Jackson Heights since 1934 was against expansion of the school because, in addition to disruptive kids, teachers would continue encroaching on local parking spaces. A woman said her children had attended overcrowded schools and, perhaps as a result, she had campaigned for construction of I.S. 230 less than a decade ago. However, she thought adding to the school the way the SCA wanted to would lead to more crowding than the neighborhood could bear. She was followed by a preservationist, who bewailed the destruction of the house that stood where the vacant lot is. He insisted that the house still standing across the street, which he described as architecturally the finest in Jackson Heights, must be saved, not sacrificed to a playground. (The house, large, made of brick with a wing and twocar garage, but shabby and with plowed-up grounds, supposedly dates from the World War II era, though it looks older. There seem to be legal complications that could put off its teardown indefinitely.)

Maureen Allen, chief of staff for Assemblymember Ivan Lafayette, said that neighbors who have complaints about vandalism by I.S. 230 students should come to her about it, moving one of the neighbors to growl, "Lady, you don't know what you're in for." She favored building the annex, telling the audience, "With a school, you know what you'll get, but with a developer you could get a nine-story apartment house." Tom Lowenhaupt, a former board member, said that Lafayette had supplied several practical suggestions about where to build the annex, all of which the SCA ignored. Jeannie Tsavaris Basini, president of the Community Education Council, agreed, but said the annex must be built for the health of the entire school and retention of the kids. "Middle school is when they start to drop out," she said, bringing on the problem of high school-age youth who have abandoned their schooling.