Ganosis At Sunnyside Chamber

The November meeting of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce was marked by an address from an executive of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. Sophia Ganosis, the Queens Chamber chief of operations, was a late stand-in for Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, who was detained in Albany by Governor David Paterson’s call for an emergency legislative session. A relieved Luke Adams, Sunnyside Chamber’s executive director, praised Ganosis for being available and willing to speak. She told the luncheon audience at Dazies Restaurant that the Sunnyside Chamber is a longtime innovator that has an excellent relationship with both the Queens Chamber and other chambers of commerce within the borough. The meeting also featured brief comments by other attendees, including one who held up the latest Zagat’s Restaurant Guide and deplored the lack of local restaurants, Dazies included, featured in it.

Ganosis said that when she has broached the subject of affiliation with chambers of commerce in Queens she has sometimes encountered skepticism from groups who believe she is offering, or planning, to take them over. But the Queens Chamber, now 98 years old, believes in cooperative partnerships as a way to assist growth for everyone. There was, for instance, an event three days after the meeting in which the Queens Chamber and those representing the four other boroughs were to gather with several affiliated chambers at City Hall to protest a proposal that would mandate employers to pay their employees on sick days, believing it would put too much of a burden on small businesses.

Turning to Queens, Ganosis said that affiliating with area chambers to promote development in Willets Point has gone a long way toward taking that area from a grim industrial neighborhood to one that should be attractive to people from near and far when residential and commercial projects are completed there. Her final comment was to advertise the Queens Chamber annual building awards and reception on Thursday, December 3 at Terrace on the Park. Among the buildings being voted into the chamber’s hall of fame are the new Frank Sinatra School of the Arts on 35th Avenue in Astoria and the Jet Blue Airways Terminal 5 at Kennedy Airport.

David Bromley of Queens Council on the Arts was present to get in an early promotion for Queens Art Express 2010, running from Thursday, June 10, 2010 to Sunday, June 13. Like the event that ran this past summer, Queens Art Express 2010 aims to celebrate the arts, culture and commerce found above or beneath the No. 7 train line in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Jackson Heights, Corona and Flushing. Bromley also spoke of Artful Business, a program to benefit retailers and artists in Queens. QCA is joining with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund to help merchants and artists alert commuters, consumers and visitors to the artistic and cultural life of Queens. Participating merchants will be listed in “Take One” brochures that explain Queens Art Express and which are distributed throughout the city and at all 21 stops on the No. 7 line.

Becky Barker of the Sunnyside Chamber said that Sunnyside residents should promote their restaurants better if they want them included in the Zagat guide. The latest Zagat lists only Quaint on Skillman Avenue, and Turkish Grill on Queens Boulevard. Once Dazies was included, as were other local places, but patrons let their expressions of enthusiasm lapse and they were dropped from the listing.

Angus Grieve-Smith, a chamber member who also has a street safety movement called Safer Skillman, commented that the bike lanes on Skillman Avenue and other Sunnyside streets are a good thing for narrowing the motor vehicle lanes, because “if you narrow the lanes, people drive slower.”

Judith Sloan, writer with her husband, Warren Lehrer, author of Crossing the BLVD, recounting the travails of immigrants to the city, announced to the luncheon crowd that on Friday, December 4 there would be a performance at Newtown H. S. that celebrates tolerance and diversity as a reply to bigotry. It recounts a 2007 incident in Elmhurst where a Sikh was attacked and had his hair cut off, and the aftermath when a teacher started a movement for tolerance. Further information on the event is available at info@earsay.org.

Rita Manton of Sunnyside Community Services also wanted to make people aware of diversity also by promoting Creating an Inclusive Society: Revisiting the American Dream, an event to be held Friday, November 20 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the LaGuardia Community College Little Theater, 31-10 Thomson Ave. There is no cost but online registration is necessary at:

www.CommunityUplink.net/AmericanDream.htm

Judy Zangwill, Sunnyside Community Services’ executive director, announced that SCS would be able to accommodate 200 persons at its Thanksgiving dinner, to be held Thursday afternoon, November 26 at SCS headquarters, 43-31 39th St. For more information, call SCS at 718-784- 6173.

There is no December luncheon meeting of the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce, but the chamber will hold its annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Sabba Triangle, Queens Boulevard near 51st Street, on Tuesday, December 1 at 6:00 p.m. Pam Winter of the Little Friends School on 47th Street near Queens Boulevard said several of her students would be decorating the tree, though the upper branches would have to be left to taller people.