14 AUGUST 29, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Six years and counting: Inside the
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
RPOZARYCKI@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
@ROBBPOZ
Regardless of where one stands
on the proposed opening of a
Glendale homeless shelter, no
one involved in the debate can accuse
Mayor Bill de Blasio of not keeping
his word.
In March 2017, de Blasio repeatedly
stated that the Community Board 5
area in Queens (which encompasses
Ridgewood, Glendale, Maspeth and
Middle Village) would get a homeless
shelter in the near future. The shelter
would be constructed as part of his
“Turning the Tide on Homelessness”
plan, an initiative aimed at reversing
the troubling increase in the city’s
homeless population.
His remarks came after years
of turmoil between City Hall and
residents in Glendale and Maspeth,
who took to the streets and
picketed the placement of homeless
individuals in both makeshift and
permanent shelters.
“We are going to go back in to that
community board, find the best
possible location and create a new
shelter,” de Blasio said during a
March 2017 radio interview. “We are
happy to work with elected officials
and community leaders to determine
the best location if people want to
work productively with us. Either
way that community board needs to
have shelter capacity. Two hundred
and fifty people from that community
board are in our shelter system. Is it
fair to all other communities that
those folks would be elsewhere? No.”
As it turns out, the Board 5 area
is getting two shelters, as the
Department of Homeless Services
(DHS) confirmed to QNS on Friday.
They plan on opening a family shelter
on Summerfield Street in Ridgewood
— and a facility for men at 78-16
Cooper Ave. in Glendale, something
which the agency has planned for
years to great opposition from
The former factory at 78-16 Cooper Ave. in Glendale, where the city plans to open a homeless shelter, is shown
undergoing renovation in this April 2019 photo. Photo: Robert Pozarycki/QNS
the community.
For those who’ve observed
this on-and-off, seesaw battle in
Glendale, it seems obvious as to why
so many people are angry about this
latest development.
Not in their backyard
Glendale’s war on the proposed
homeless shelter began six years
ago this month — as the Bloomberg
administration was coming to
a close and de Blasio was on the
road to victory in that year’s
mayoral election.
In August 2013, the DHS announced
its intent to take the Cooper Avenue
site, a long-vacant factory, and
transform it into a homeless shelter
for up to 200 men.
The original agreement was
reached between the DHS, property
owner Michael Wilner and Samaritan
Village, a nonprofit shelter operator.
(A Westchester County firm named
Westhab has been selected to operate
the Cooper Avenue shelter under the
new plan announced Friday.)
Almost immediately, the community
sprung into action, hell-bent on
stopping the plan in its tracks. Along
with holding protests outside the site,
civic-minded residents formed the
Glendale Middle Village Coalition,
a group aimed at launching legal
action to thwart the proposal. Robert
Holden, then-president of the Juniper
Park Civic Association and now the
area’s City Council representative,
was among the members of the ad
hoc group.
The coalition argued that the
Cooper Avenue site was unfit for a
homeless shelter, as the factory itself
required extensive renovations and
potentially sat upon contaminated
land. (The area had, at one point in
time, been a hub for industry.) It also
abutted a chemical company on 79th
Place that further propagated doubts
about the site’s overall safety.
In 2014, the coalition filed an
Article 78 proceeding against the
city contesting a rather favorable
environmental review for the Cooper
Avenue site. A judge threw out the
case a year later, indicating that the
agency “seemed to procedurally
satisfy the considerations of
environmental impact into
planning and review,” according to a
QNS report.
But within a year, talk of a Glendale
shelter began to slow, and the project
itself experienced setbacks. In July
2015, the Department of Buildings
rejected floor plans for the building’s
reconstruction. Work would later
proceed once more acceptable plans
were approved.
Even so, the DHS began looking
elsewhere in the Board 5 area to house
homeless men in the community.
The second battlefront
Almost three years after the
Glendale plan was announced, in
August 2016, news broke that the
DHS had plans to convert the Holiday
Inn Express hotel on 55th Road in
Maspeth into a homeless shelter for
men. That sparked a new round of
protests in the community which
lasted several months.
It also led to a rumor spread
through social media and a blog that
then-City Councilwoman Elizabeth
Crowley had struck a secret deal with
the DHS to scrap the Glendale shelter
plan in favor of the Maspeth proposal.
The city and Crowley vehemently
denied that rumor; Crowley publicly
opposed both shelter plans.
Meanwhile, Holden and the JPCA
were on the front lines of the Maspeth
shelter war in the summer and fall of
Homeless shelter opponents protested outside 78-16 Cooper Ave. in Glendale in November 2013.
Photo : Robert Pozarycki/Ridgewood Times
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