Queens Gazette

QCH Breaks Ground On Renovation In Forest Hills


(L. to r.): Victoria Majchrzak, Empire State Development; Assemblymember Catalina Cruz; Councilmember Daniel Dromm; QCH Executive Director Ben Thomases; Councilmember Karen Koslowitz; Queens Borough President Donovan Richards; Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal; and QCH Board President Michael Stellman participate in a ceremonial smashing of a piece of dry wall from QCH’s Forest Hills Community Center.

Queens Community House (QCH), one of the borough’s largest social service organizations, held a groundbreaking ceremony on July 29 to celebrate the renovation of the Forest Hills Community Center, its original and largest program site.

Elected officials in attendance included NYC Councilmembers Karen Koslowitz and Daniel Dromm, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, and NYS Assemblymembers Daniel Rosenthal and Catalina Cruz. QCH Executive Director Ben Thomases thanked those officials present, as well as Assemblymembers Andrew Hevesi and Jeffrion Aubry, for collectively helping QCH secure more than $9 million of public funding for the project to date.

“For decades, QCH has served the people of Queens with hundreds of unique programs for all ages and communities,” tweeted Assemblymember Rosenthal after the event. “So proud to support this organization and join in the groundbreaking ceremony for their new community center.”

Rendering: Exterior front facade rendering of the renovated Forest Hills Community Center, by Matiz Architecture & Design.

The Forest Hills Community Center will be modernized with state-of-the-art technology; an elevator and other accessories to make the building fully accessible; new community spaces that create opportunities for great cross-cultural and cross-generational interaction; an expanded pantry area to accommodate the expansion of QCH’s food programs; reimagined activity rooms for classes and meetings; and an outdoor green space open to the neighborhood. In addition, QCH will be opening a new 8,000-square-foot annex down the block, further increasing its ability to serve the more than 500 children, teens, adults and older adults who use the Center on a daily basis.

“I always feel confident that with any type of funding that we give them, (QCH) uses it for the best purposes possible for the community,” said Councilmember Dromm. “As an elected official, that to me is very comforting and it’s great to know that we have QCH here, not only in Forest Hills, but in many neighborhoods across the borough of Queens.”

Several of the speakers noted the poignancy of the renovation, coming at a time when many of the central Queens families served by the Center are still reeling from the pandemic and its aftermath.

“COVID exacerbated many of the issues that impact our communities” said Queens Borough President Richards, “around healthcare, around safety, around education — we saw all of these disparities. But coming out of this pandemic we are not going back to ‘normal’, but to a ‘new normal’ where every facility in Queens is first-class, where everybody has access to the same things, where quality is something that is not foreign to us.”

The renovation of the Forest Hills Community Center is scheduled to begin this month, with a grand reopening in summer 2022. “The improvement of and addition to these program spaces is critical to meet the growing needs of the communities QCH serves throughout the borough of Queens,” said Thomases, “and QCH eagerly looks forward to welcoming our neighbors back to a transformed and truly dignified space.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.