6 Comments

1. Disgusted Boricua on 26 de March de 2012 at 11:31 am

   Dear Editor-in-Chief, Javier Castano:

   The behavior of many of the Occupy Queens members was DISGRACEFUL. I attended their first meeting in Jackson Heights, where everything was translated into Spanish and all were welcome, regardless of their immigrant status. However during their demonstration at the public plaza on March 24th, they had the nerve to question the citizenship status of the business merchants on 37th Road. Why the double standard? Why are they not supporting these suffering small businesses who make up the 99%? Racism comes in all shapes, sizes and colors.

   Sincerely,

   Disgusted Boricua

2. Rashid on 27 de March de 2012 at 7:41 am

   All,

   On Saturday, March 24, 2012, an unpleasant and unwelcoming incident took place for about three to four hours early afternoon at the 37th Rd unnamed afterthought award wining plaza as following:

   1. Occupy Queens people in a group came with music, drum, foods (snacks, tea, coffee) under the leadership of David Andersson at early afternoon took possession at all tables and chairs and started to play drum and music at a very loud voices (unacceptable manner) and started to distribute leaflet and celebrate.

   2. The leaflet from Occupy Queens stated the following:

   Building the culture of the People from Occupy Queens along with the Commons Coalition and Organization from Jackson Heights, Woodside and Corona and getting togeher to share their ideas and knowledge on ho the different ways in which a politics of the commons can be developed. In particular …………… and corporate capitalism

   SATURDAY, MARCH 24TH Time 12: noon PARTY & PLAY TIME
   come out and enjoy meeting your neighbors and playing hopscotch, free play, live music and potluck picnic.

   Time 1 :00 pm – MEET – TALK – THINK
   …………..

   37TH ROAD PLAZA. JACKSON HEIGHTS, BTW 73RD & 74TH STS. 1 BLK, NORTH OF ROOSEVELT AVE (ROOSEVELT AVE / 74TH ST: E, F, M, R, & 7 TRAINS)

   OCCUPY AND RESIDENTS ARE INCREASINGLY USING THE PLAZA AS A COMMUNITY COMMONS

   Time 2 Pm to 4 Pm – SOCIAL ASSEMBLY
   Immigrant Movement : 108-59 Roosevelt Avenue, Subway Train 7 Flushing, Local or Express, exit at the 111th.

   3. The music was so loud that Dhasti called the police and the tutoring center stopped tutoring students due to noise of drum, music and the party. It was all party.

   4. A heated and unpleasant exchange of conversation developed between the organizers of Occupy Queens and the shopowners/businessmen/merchants. Residents of 73rd and 75th supported the shopowners businessmen/merchants. All of them requested Occupy Queens to stopped the music but no one paid attention to that request.

   5. People from Occupy Queens used some very unacceptable sentences such as :

   5.1. Where you had been for the last three years when studied had been done to close the street and to make it plaza? Were you all sleeping?

   5.2. Show us the green cards, show us the passport – go back to your country because you are not citizen of this country

   5.3. This is a plaza, a public place and we would play music and do whatever we want.

   5.4. We talk to businessmen/shopowners/businessmen of 37th rd and none of the businesses have been affected

   …….. etc. ………etc.

   6. It as all very ugly. Dhasti, Ruhul, Rashid, Didi (Rita), Nepali shopowner (at 74th subway), Javed (37th rd businessman to loudly said his business and other businesses at 37th road had been affected badly) and others were involved in arguing and talking and trying to convince the Occupy Queens not to create difficult situation for customers, shopowners by celebrating and playing loud music in front of the entry/doors of their respective shops. It was noticed that no customers were seen entering to shops to purchase because of the whole situation of festival and music. It was like “mela” – no way people can walk and enter into the shop because they cannot hear each other due to loud music and number of people gathered to celebrate the festival of Occupy Queens. Sylvia from 75th street resident and Barbara from 73rd street resident came to support shopowners, businessmen, merchants and tried their best to explain Occupy Queens that what they have written in their leaflet “……. Occupy and residents are increasingly using the Plaza as a community commons …….” was unfair. Syliva displayed a placard showing “Danny Dromm Plaza” One person in Occupy Queens group (who was intoxicated) was shouting to Ruhul and others and telling to businessmen “close down your shop and leave this area.” When we asked Occupy Queens why they had bring such people in their group who is intoxicated, the answer was “He is not from our group”.

   7. Editor in chief of QueensLatino.com (Spanish Newspaper) was present and took photographs. Nividita Gowda (a journalist) was also there.

   8. Police asked the Occupy Queens whether the permit of the loud music was obtained. When the police officers found out that there had been no permit they asked Occupy Queens to stop the music. The Occupy Queens stopped the music.

   9. After that the Occupy Queens left the area and then Michael Mallon, the Director of Scheduling (appointment) of honorable councilman Danny Dromm office came to 37th Rd plaza and started to argue with the businessmen (Ruhul, Dashti, Mohammad Saleh Agha) and resident (Sylvia and Rashid). Michael said, “show us your books”. The businessmen said “if you give us in writing that you make-up our losses we will show you our books”. Michael backed down and then left the plaza hurriedly stating that he had other engagements.

   Well, it is my feeling that in days and weeks to come the whole situation would be becoming more ugly and more complicated and more unwelcoming and I am afraid it is always too tiring and too disturbing to talk to people who are gathering at the 37th rd plaza in the name of using it as public space – playing balls, skate-boarding, jumping over the table and chair with skate, consuming alcohol and drugs and then playing loud music.

   If the merchants, shopowners and businessmen do not get together and protest loudly then the incidents like Saturday Mar 24, 2012, will reoccur with more ugly and damaging results – it is just like a disaster is waiting to happen for all of us.

   Please, please, please take action. Queenslatino.com have already published photographs and news on its March 25, 2012 issue.

   With kindest regards,
   Rashid

3. Rashid on 27 de March de 2012 at 7:47 am

   Dear Javier,

   This is Rashid. Monday March 19, 2012 the NY Times and at 10:00 pm news, Fox 5 News had covered the story of 37th Rd Plaza at 74th Street Jackson Heights. And there have been almost many in media including Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News and others have covered this story with great interest.

   The below news have appeared in the media (below) in order to understand why in Jackson Heights with Asian American businessmen, merchants, workers and consumers are worried about their future, livelihood and jobs because

   – the sales tax is becoming low and low every day
   – the revenue is disappearing day by day
   – the shops are going out of businesses
   – the businessmen are moving their businesses from Jackson Heights to New Jersey (slowley and gradually because of hostile attitude of the DOT-Department of Transportation)
   – the jobs are being lost and may are going to be burden to states

   Once the most prospering communities in Jackson Heights Queens are going towards poverty and hardships. Now this is my duty being the resident, servant, worker and volunteer to these communities to bring this information without any delay into your kind knowledge and attention.

   1. Video News No. 1.
   Please see the below first of the two video news on 37th Road closure to turn it into Plaza:

   http://queens.ny1.com/content/top_stories/151230/jackson-heights-plaza-a-hard-sell-for-some-business-owners

   Jackson Heights Plaza A Hard Sell For Some Business Owners
   By: CeFaan Kim
   NY1 VIDEO: A pedestrian plaza that recently popped up in Jackson Heights has some business owners up in arms, despite it having the support of local elected officials and the community board.

   2. Video News No. 2

   the second news video as following on 37th Road closure (turned it into Plaza):
   Please visit the below link

   A Street Closing in Jackson Heights Unites A Community
   by Daniel Medina

   3. Video News No. 3

   Please watch at the below link on 37th Rd at between 73rd and 74th streets in Jackson Heights.

   http://queens.ny1.com/content/top_stories/155121/jackson-heights-merchants-say-pedestrian-plaza-harms-their-business

   5:36 PM
   Jackson Heights Merchants Say Pedestrian Plaza Harms Their Business
   3. Media News 1

   http://nycitylens.com/?p=4699

   A Street Closing in Jackson Heights Unites A
   Community

   4. Media News 2

   Attached is an article under titled “Plaza Area Biz Drops Since Change” published in Queens Tribune (vol.41, No. 44, Nov.3-9, 2011) at page 15 about 37th Rd and in between 73rd street and 74th street.

   5. Media News 3

   Attached is another article published in the media

   6. Media News 4

   Please click the below site and read about 37th Road in Huffington Post on Saturday Dec. 3, 2011:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-medina/a-street-closing-in-queen_b_1104649.html

   December 3, 2011
   new-york
   The Huffington Post

   A Street Closing in Queens Hurts Business but Unites a Community
   Posted: 11/30/11 11:27 AM ET

   The customers are gone. Empty red steel chairs line rows of computer desks where they once sat. A tall stack of bills lies on a cracking, worn-out wooden desk that cannot be repaired until business is good again, if that is anytime soon.
   For Rigta Khandar, a café and shop owner in Jackson Heights, this is her new economic reality.
   “Business has dropped 65 percent this month,” says Khandar, 47. “Somehow I paid my rent this month but if things continue like this, I’ll be closed down before Thanksgiving.”
   A decade ago, Khandar took the risk of her life using her savings to open up an Internet café and convenience store on 37th Road between 73rd and 74th streets in Jackson Heights, Queens. Business thrived for years, enough to provide for her and her family. Then her world turned upside down. Without warning, the New York City Department of Transportation made a decision in late September to close 37th Road to pedestrian traffic and re-route the Q-47 and Q-49 MTA bus lines that previously stopped there. Khandar and other business owners did not know what to expect.
   “All of my customers would come off the bus in the mornings and stop at my shop to ship packages out and buy phone cards,” said Khandar. “I’ve lost all those morning people. The most profitable part of my business was lost overnight.”
   2011-11-30-RigtaKhandar34235234.jpg
   The change came about as a major component of a 21-page list of proposed improvements from the transportation department, a result of a 2-year study funded by$600,000 in federal earmarks and $70,000 from the city transportation department. And it has brought about an outcry from concerned residents and suffering merchants alike and prompted many businessmen to form their own alliance–the Asian American Merchants Consumer and Neighborhood Coalition–to push the city to reopen the street.
   “I would say the impact of this traffic diversion has caused the reduction of consumers, customers and the incoming traffic which comes from the Tri-state area in four weeks of more than 60 percent,” said Muhammed Saleh, 50, founder of the new coalition and part owner of Café K-2 on 37thRoad. ” I don’t think the city has realized how drastic these changes could be and how negative an impact it will have to this neighborhood.”
   The Jackson Heights Neighborhood Transportation Study, as it was known, was launched in Spring 2009 to “address transportation issues that affected safety, mobility and quality of life in the neighborhood,” according to a written statement from the office of Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY), who administered the funds and allocated the resources for the report.
   Councilman Daniel Dromm, Jackson Height’s City Hall representative and a key ally of Crowley’s, was also a supporter of the study because of its apparent economic benefits and its attempt to fix a decades-long traffic issue along the Broadway-73rd Street corridor, according to community board members and store owners interviewed for this story.
   After several efforts to reach the councilman, his office refused to comment on the study or of his involvement in it.
   The size and scope of the issue reaches far into the social and economic fabric of this strongly knit Asian-American community. Every conceivable ethnicity from Pakistanis to Indians to Bengalis resides in an area not much larger than a few Manhattan city blocks. Most immigrated to the neighborhood in the 1980’s with little knowledge of the culture or the language and many opened businesses of their own ranging from halal stands to high-end sari shops.
   According to 2010 statistics released by the city labor’s department, the Jackson Heights business corridor is now one of the strongest commercial hubs in New York City, attracting a mostly Asian-American and socio-economically diverse clientele from all around the Tri-state area who come looking for the best Bengali spices to exclusive Indian saris some priced as high as $30,000.
   “This is the mecca for Indian business. You go to Sydney or to London and everybody knows Jackson Heights,” said Razi Ahmed, 50, a real-estate investor who plans to open a supermarket on 37th Road and one of the biggest proponents of the plan to re-open the street. “I am involved in the effort to re-open 37th Road because everybody is affected by it. This is the bread and butter for over 200 businesses.”
   The coalition has not had much success so far but its founder, Saleh, remains hopeful that the department will eventually comply with their demands, especially given the severe economic implications for City Hall if businesses were to have to close in the midst of the holiday shopping season.
   “We’re talking about hundreds of service jobs lost in a very compact area within a few months, that could leave this commercial hub severely depleted,” said Saleh. “That’s lost revenue for the city, for Jackson Heights and, worst of all, that puts many people out of work in a time where jobs haven’t ever been so hard to come by.”

   Follow Daniel Medina on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/@dmedin11

   7. Media News 5
   Please click the below link and read.

   http://www.qchron.com/news/western/businesses-hurt-by-city-s-improvement/article_dd141a81-384b-5967-b6fc-e3e71506e65d.html

   8. Media News in NY Daily News – Jan.19, 2011

   http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/jackson-heights-pedestrian-plaza-south-asian-merchants-uproar-article-1.1008188

   Jackson Heights pedestrian plaza has South Asian merchants in uproar
   Business owners to rally for its removal, claiming plaza hurting sales

   THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 2012, 6:00 AMBY CLARE TRAPASSO

   / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
   Shoppers look for wares on 74th St. in Jackson Heights, Queens. Jackson Heights has one of the most vibrant Little India’s in New York City but merchants say a new pedestrian plaza on 37th Rd., between 73rd and 74th Sts., is hurting business.
   CRAIG WARGA/ NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
   Shoppers look for wares on 74th St. in Jackson Heights , Queens . Jackson Heights has one of the most vibrant Little India’s in New York City but merchants say a new pedestrian plaza on 37th Rd. , between 73rd and 74th Sts. , is hurting business.
   South Asian merchants in Jackson Heights are riled up over an award-winning pedestrian plaza that they claim is undermining their struggling businesses.

4. David Rosasco on 27 de March de 2012 at 12:35 pm

   Mr. Rashid is a truly remarkable individual I had had the pleasure of working with on numerous issues in our community. His assertions regarding the plaza are fully consistent with the facts. The closure of 37th Road to pedestrian and vehicular traffic has done serious and verifiable damage to the economic and social vitality of the heart of Jackson Heights, and I urge readers to consider the plight of the residents and suffering business owners, and, after you have walked this location, you will see the truth of what is being expressed in the article and comments.

   I hope that reasonable members of the proponents of the plaza will come to realize the abject failure of this expensive experimental project, and seek to remedy this by calling for its removal, in its entirety, to as it was before its establishment. Only then can a conversation and negotiation occur in earnest.

5. Ruhul Sarker, JH Resident and Business Owner on 27 de March de 2012 at 9:53 pm

   It is shocking and disappointing to see how taxpayers money being used so unwisely to hurt the taxpayers.Diverting traffic flow from 37th Road and closing 37th Road from 73rd to 74th Streets to make it an unnamed temporary plaza for six months has already had an immediate, persistent and devastating economic and quality-of-life impact on businesses, jobs and the environment of the area such as:

   (1)The number of customers has dropped drastically to the point where businesses are questioning their very survival. Customers are finding it extremely difficult to come here and get around. So, naturally, they have stopped coming. Therefore sales have been reported by the merchants to have fallen anywhere between 35% and 70%. Many of these business concerns have been operating their establishments for over 20 years and have never experienced this level of business drop off.

   (2)Many businesses have begun laying off employees as they simply cannot afford to pay them, and many others have fallen well behind on their rent. Bills are piling up unpaid due to a lack of sales. Their credit histories and their family’s future are at serious and immediate risk.

   (3)Some store owners are actively considering closing their businesses for good.

   (4)This financial disaster is adversely affecting the merchants, their employees and families and most importantly, their children.
   (5)This unfortunate and unwise decision to close 37th Road is also having an immediate severe negative effect on payroll taxes, income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes for the city and state, contributing to New York City’s unemployment rate.

   (6)This pedestrian plaza area (37th Road between 73rd and 74th St.) has become a safe haven for homeless and alcoholics. This of course has brought rapid increase in the street crime rate. There have been several reports of fights and police calls. These vagrants fight with each other, harassing and making lewd comments to passers-by, demanding money, cursing them, even hitting some of them, if their demands for cash are refused. Few cases including today (March 7, 2012), a drunken homeless man entered a store, took off all of his clothes and started attacking a woman (Attempt to Rape) who was the only employee in the store at that time. The police were called, and after a few hours, the finally arrived, exhausting precious hours to bring the situation under control. When the merchants are supposed to be busy selling their products, serving their customers and making money, they are forced to deal with this unnecessary trauma instead, all as a result of the pedestrian plaza.
   (7)No decent people want to come to an environment like this, let alone bring their families here. Our South Asian community is scared to even walk through that block so they have started avoiding coming and shopping here. As a result the businesses are suffering.

   (8)According to the 2010 statistics released by the city Labor Department, “the Jackson Heights business corridor is now one of the strongest commercial hubs in New York City, attracting a mostly Asian-American and socio-economically diverse clientele from all around the Tri-state area who come looking for the best Bengali spices to exclusive Indian saris some priced as high as $30,000.” This recognition of Jackson Heights is in jeopardy. The fear now is, the report of next year will be totally opposite due to this street closure.

   (9)While the exciting report comes form Mayor Michael Bloomberg that “New York City added private sector jobs at a rate almost 60 percent greater than the country as a whole in 2011”, the South Asian Merchants in Jackson Heights are uncertain about the survival of their business and future of their family.

   With dropped sale, down revenue, reduced income and affected families due to this closure, the merchants are going through nightmare everyday but looks like it means “NOTHING” to the responsible parties.The Merchant’s sufferings are simply being ignored which i think an Injustice and disgraceful.
   Hopefully that day is not far when the authority’s attitude towards the South Asian Business Community here in Jackson Heights will take a 180° turn and there would be a business as usual.

6. raz on 27 de March de 2012 at 11:05 pm

   It’s a shame on elected officials and DOT for closing 37 rd, killing the south Asian businesses. These parasites occupy wall people doesn’t understand how to work hard and move forward and be productive member of the society