50 The QUENS Courier • REAL ESTATE • april 9, 2015 for breaking news visit www.queenscourier.com Whitestone community group wants park on vacant sites BY LIAM LA GUERE [email protected] @LiamLaGuerre What Whitestone wants is more green. We Love Whitestone, a new civic organization ▶ real estate that has been gaining popularity, is going on the offensive against possible overdevelopment of two massive vacant Whitestone sites, and hopes to convince city politicians of a plan to buy one and turn it into a park with ball fields. The group recently voted to oppose any plans of development on the sites that don’t suit the area’s current zoning for smaller residential houses. It also began a petition on Change.org, which will be sent to elected officials, to have the city purchase a six-acre site near 150th Street and Fifth Avenue and transform it into a park. The petition is quickly approaching its goal of 500 signatures. “It wasn’t dumped on or anything,” said Alfredo Centola, a founder of We Love Whitestone. “So have the city buy it back and turn it into something like Padavan-Preller Fields with on-site parking, a soccer field and an actual full-size baseball diamond.” We Love Whitestone, which came to the resolution against overdevelopment during its March monthly meeting, has been quickly gaining support as a civic organization since its inception about five months ago. Despite the group’s short history, it has already attracted approximately 500 residents on Facebook, has an email list of more than 1,000 people, and has about 150 paying members. An average of nearly 100 Whitestone residents have been attending regular monthly meetings as well. The six-acre site that We Love Whitestone wants to see transformed was once owned by the Catholic Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn, which used the site for various Catholic Youth Organization activities, according to the community group. Whitestone Jewels LLC purchased the site in question in 2006 for $23.3 million, but the firm couldn’t keep up with the mortgage and it has been in foreclosure The site near the intersection of 150th since 2007. The site is up for auction on April 10. State Sen. Tony Avella already expressed his opposition against overdevelopment or rezoning of the site by potential buyers as well. Street and Fifth Avenue. Photo courtesy of Christopher Bride/PropertyShark What cemeteries are most popular for Queens homebuyers BY LIAM LA GUERE [email protected] @LiamLaGuerre Not just the deceased are dying to be around All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village. Although it may not be as attractive a view as the New York City skyline, All Faiths was the Queens cemetery with the most nearby home sales over a two-year period, with 103 residences sold, according to an analysis from real estate website PropertyShark. That number is double that of the runner-up, Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Glendale, which had just 48. While Queens is well known for having an abundance of cemeteries throughout the borough, about a quarter of homebuyers who chose to purchase near the dead bought homes close to All Faiths. There were approximately 377 sales of one- and two-family homes within 300 feet of a cemetery in the top ten list recorded since January 2013 to March 2015, according to the data. Completing the top ten is Linden Hill Cemetery in Ridgewood, where only 13 homes sold over the two-year span. Also interesting to note, Flushing Cemetery recorded the most expensive sales with average prices at nearly $630,000. Not surprisingly, the Springfield Cemetery in Springfield Gardens had the least expensive home sales with an average of about $329,000. The spirits probably aren’t behind the low prices for those homes, because in 2014 Springfield Gardens as a whole had median asking prices at around $343,500 and had the lowest absorption rate, a metric showing rate of sales by calculating what share of home listings either went into contract or were removed. All Faiths Cemetery File photo
QC04092015
To see the actual publication please follow the link above