2 times • JUNE 30, 2016 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com La Playa NYC, the pop-up beach beer garden planned for Ridgewood, will not open BY ANTHONY GIUDICE agiudice@ridgewoodtimes.com @A_GiudiceReport It’s official. La Playa NYC will not be opening at 176 Woodward Ave. in Ridgewood this summer. After previous reports that a lack of the correct Certificate of Occupancy (CO) at the former auto body shop would not stop Long Island City-based Rockaway Brewing Company from trying to get the appropriate licensing to open, the Queens Chronicle learned that the pop-up urban beach beer garden will not happen. David Schwartz, principal at Slate Property Group — the group that will build the proposed 125- unit residential building at the site in September — was quoted in the Chronicle article saying, “We pulled the plug on the plan. It just became too much.” On Tuesday, June 21, the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) postponed voting on approving the beer makers’ request for a Farm Brewery Branch Office Permit until a proper CO was obtained. Now it seems that the vote will not be needed. The Ridgewood Times reached out to Schwartz as well as to Marcus Burnett, co-owner of Rockaway Brewing Company, which was behind the La Playa project. Burnett declined to provide comment to the Ridgewood Times; we are awaiting a response from Schwartz. The plan for the urban beach beer garden was met with disapproval from many of the Ridgewood residents who live in the vicinity of 176 Woodward Ave., as they were concerned over the potential for increased traffic, noise, littering and other problems. The building is also saddled with two open Department of Building (DOB) “work without a permit” violations, as well as a stop work order under the alternate address for the site, 1881 Starr St. “I’m not surprised that they withdrew their application. It’s June already, they wanted this to be a summer, warm weather project,” said Gary Giordano, district manager for Community Board 5 (CB 5). “Certainly I can relate to the concerns of the residents, when you have an open-air facility there and you have homes on two sides and you don’t have the buffer of four walls to keep in the noise and any music they would be playing. And there are some outstanding building violations there as well.” Massive police evidence storage facility could be coming to Maspeth BY ANTHONY GIUDICE agiudice@ridgewoodtimes.com @A_GiudiceReport Grand Avenue in Maspeth could soon be the home of a new, large-scale NYPD facility. The Police Department is looking to consolidate its property clerk warehouses, which are currently spread across the city in six different facilities, into one central location at 55-15 Grand Ave. The NYPD has reached out to community groups including Community Board 5’s (CB 5) Land Use Committee and Communities of Maspeth and Elmhurst Together (COMET) and others, alerting them of the proposed project. The six locations where the NYPD currently accepts, catalogs, safeguards and stores property from all NYPD commands, Port Authority Police Department and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner are as follows: Kingsland Avenue Warehouse; Pearson Place Warehouse; Abbott Street Warehouse; Pearson Place Annex, which is city-owned; Bartow Avenue Facility, which is city owned and a temporary location; and Erie Basin Auto Pound, which is a temporary location. The NYPD was informed by the Department of City-Wide Administrative Services that the leases on two of their warehouses — at Kingsland Avenue and Pearson Place — will not be renewed. The loss of these two facilities will immediately impact the NYPD’s ability to intake, store and produce evidence as required for court and will result in the loss of 145,000 square feet of space that cannot be taken in by the other facilities. On average, the NYPD takes in more than 500,000 invoices a year, and since 2011, has processed over 2.4 million invoices of property. By consolidating the warehouses to one central location on Grand Avenue, the NYPD would increase operational efficiency, increase accountability, reduce duplication of services and operation costs, increase security, productivity and satisfaction, provide a humidity- and climate-controlled DNA storage facility, and operate with fewer members of the service. The NYPD feels the space at 55-15 Grand Ave. would make a great consolidated evidence storage facility because it provides an operationally efficient facility layout, accommodates expansion at a single site through at least 2045, fulfills a single-site consolidation at the lowest expected capital cost, and other factors. Rendering courtesy NYPD The NYPD is looking at 55-15 Grand Ave. as the site for their consolidated property clerk warehouse.
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