14 JANUARY C R Y D E R P O I N T Vallone’s big ideas for his district ACTION!studio to get makeover BY MELISSA CHAN 14 cryder point courier | january 2014 | WWW.QUEENSCOURIER.COM THE COURIER/Photo by Melissa Chan BY MELISSA CHAN Councilmember Paul Vallone wants sparks to fly during his time in office. The freshman legislator launched idea after idea — including shooting fireworks on Bell Boulevard and hosting movie and game nights — during a two-hour interview with The Courier. “I want to bring back that old-time feel,” he said, gazing at the boulevard out of his fifth floor Bell Plaza windows, while Sarah McLachlan faintly played in the background. “You look at things from a different perspective,” he said. “As a father, I think, ‘What would my kids want to do?” His long list of plans for the district also include having quarterly roundtables with the district’s community groups and starting up a new Student Ambassadors program in February with three local high schools. The initiative allows about 10 juniors from Holy Cross High School, Bayside High School and World Journalism Preparatory to serve for a year as community representatives. The teens would organize food collections and cleanups, take trips to City Hall and even draft a bill to be introduced in the City Council. “It’s the next generation’s input,” Vallone said. “I’m not going to touch it, whatever they draft.” As for his own bill, Vallone filed his first piece of legislation January 9, calling for the city to recognize Lunar New Year as a major holiday. It supports a law already introduced in the State Senate and Assembly that has not moved for years. The lawmaker also plans to continue participatory budgeting, which begins in 2015 at its earliest. The city initiative gives residents the chance to develop and vote on physical infrastructure projects they want to see in their neighborhoods. “It’s a ‘get-to-know-you’ process. You have to weigh the Christmas list of what everyone wants versus what we’re actually able to distribute,” Vallone said. “It all depends on funding. I look at it as we can’t do any worse.” At the top of his growing list of priorities is still making sure a school is not built in the former Whitestone Jewels site. “This is nonstop,” he said. “We’re still watching.” Councilmember Paul Vallone discussed his first few weeks in office during a two-hour interview with The Courier. Queens College TV Queens College is planning to give its outdated TV studio a $1.5 million facelift, officials said. It will be the studio’s first major renovation in more than 50 years, when the campus’s King Hall building was first constructed. “Everything in there is going to be new. Everything that you see or touch in there is going to be replaced. That’s our goal,” said Dave Gosine, the college’s director of facilities, design, construction and management. About 260 media study students currently use the space to get handson training in directing and producing television shows and creating plays and productions. But the oldest pieces of equipment date back to the 1980s, according to Gosine and Youwei Sun, the studio’s chief engineer. The school has even donated three outdated pieces to the Museum of Moving Image, Sun said. The project will make the 3,200-square-foot studio a handicapped-accessible, state-ofthe art facility, with updated digital technology and a new lighting system, comparable to “just about any TV studio out there,” Gosine said. “This is a teaching facility. We’re making it more functional, more useable,” he said, adding that there is currently a lot of unused space. “You could have bigger sets, do bigger scenes.” And it will all be managed by the hands of students. “The real purpose of this project is to position our students to walk out of here and be marketable from day one,” Gosine said. “At the end of the day, we want them to get employed and go on to have great careers.” The estimated $1.5 million project will be paid for by city and state funds. It is currently in its bidding phase and is expected to be completed in fall 2015. THE COURIER/Photo by Melissa Chan (From left to right) Dave Gosine, Youwei Sun and Jorge Yafar outlined plans for Queens College’s new TV studio.
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