Chamber Honors Queens Business

Dr. Gene Caiafa Jr., Dr. Gene Caiafa Sr. QCC Hall of Fame awardee and Marc Caiafa, producer for major league baseball productions. On Thursday, September 24 the Queens Chamber of Commerce's dinner highlighted the chamber's 17th Annual Business Persons of the Year awards. The event also marked the occasion of the group's 98th anniversary. QCC Executive Director Jack Friedman promised a spectacular centennial celebration, giving his audience at the Terrace on the Park ceremony a full two years to anticipate it. As usual, the award categories were for small, medium-sized and large businesses, added to which was the chamber's inductee into the QCC Hall of Fame. The winners were Linda S. Plummer in small, Dr. Gene Caiafa Sr. in medium-sized and Mayra DiRico in large business. The Hall of Fame inductee was Consolidated Edison.

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall was present as the meeting began. She stayed long enough to praise Friedman for promoting a Shop in Queens theme before she had to go to two other events. Seth Pinsky, of the city's Economic Development Corporation, followed her to the rostrum to proclaim that small and mid-sized companies are the backbone of New York business. In Queens alone there are 42,000 small businesses, he said. With unemployment in the city currently high, Queens is, of course, negatively affected but, he noted, it is below the city average (as of August) of 10.3 percent. He said small business could take credit for that. There is also a citywide decline in wages earned in the year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers brought the economic crisis to its most critical moment. A year ago, the wages- earned figure was $295 billion; now it is about $260 billion, he said. Investment continues, however, certainly in Queens: he cited the building going on in Long Island City at Jackson Avenue and Queens Plaza South, where the municipal parking garage used to be; Hunters Point South, also in Long Island City; and Willets Point. He was particularly enthusiastic about Hunters Point South, the residential complex due to be built on 30 acres at the point where Newtown Creek and the East River meet. He said it would be 60 percent middle income and thus would be the largest residential project of its kind since Starrett City was built in Brooklyn in the 1970s. "Downturns don't last forever," he said, adding that when this one is over, recovery should not be credited to politicians but to the people who worked to get us out.

The small business award winner, Linda S. Plummer, has been owner/broker of Peninsula Properties Realty in the Rockaways for the past three years. Though her business is small, having five agents at present, she is determined to enlarge it, and now covers parts of Brooklyn and Nassau County in addition to home territory. Her business-related activities include the presidency of the board of directors for Rockaway Development and Revitalization Corporation (RDRC), board secretary for the Chamber of Commerce of the Rockaways, membership on the steering committee of the 116th Street Business Improvement District (BID) and on the community advisory board of Peninsula Hospital. Speaking to the dinner guests of real estate in general, Plummer said: "It's a down market, but I don't care. I love what I do."

Gene Caiafa, D.D.S., head of Park Dental Care on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria and winner of the medium-sized business award, was greeted with great enthusiasm at the dinner, though he also had to endure a moment of booing when QCC President Al Pennisi, in his introductory remarks, mentioned that a youthful Caiafa played three years of minor league baseball in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. He went to dental school in Washington at Georgetown and has been practicing in Queens since 1969. In addition to the Ditmars Boulevard office, he has an office in Richmond Hill and works with two associates, his son Dr. Gene Caiafa Jr. and Dr. Wayne Seid, specializing in advanced cosmetic and implant dentistry. His community work includes board membership with the Long Island City YMCA since 2006.

The large business winner, Mayra DiRico, is executive vice president and regional president of HSBC Bank USA. She started out modestly in 1987 as a parttime customer services representative and has worked her way up steadily. She is now in charge of what HSBC calls its northeast expansion and Florida region. This covers 72 branches located in the tri-state area and, in a far reach, Florida. She's fluent in Spanish (and Italian, for that matter), which doubtless counts valuably. Earlier awards she has gained include a citation for business excellence from the National Puerto Rican Day Parade committee and a profile in a Crain's New York's 40 Under 40. Additionally, she was recipient of a Queens Woman in Business award in 2007 and the Bronx Boys & Girls Club community award in 2008. She is a member of QCC's executive board and serves on the board of the Flushing Town Hall. Her current standing, she acknowledged, was largely dependent on others. "Behind every successful person is a great staff, giving support," she said.

Con Edison is a factor so large in local life that no one has to be made aware of it. Chief Executive Officer Kevin Burke was on hand to accept the company's induction into the QCC Hall of Fame and to proclaim, as somebody raised in Glendale, "My roots go deep in Queens." He harked back to the company's beginnings as the New York Gas Light Company in 1823 and brought matters forward to the first "smart", greater efficiency grid in Queens, to be initiated soon in Long Island City. He called the award "A testament to the 14,000 women and men of Con Ed."