8 DECEMBER 1, 2016 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM Another lawsuit is latest chapter in Maspeth shelter war BY ROBERT POZARYCKI [email protected] @ROBBPOZ This landlord-tenant dispute could nix a proposed homeless shelter in Maspeth for good. The holding company that owns the land occupied by the Holiday Inn Express located at 59-40 55th Rd. has sued the hotel’s operator, Harshad Patel, and his company, New Ram Realty, for allegedly violating the terms of its lease, Crain’s New York reported on Tuesday. Patel and New Ram Realty constructed the hotel in 2009 on land owned by the Brooklyn-based Kimcomatt Realty Corporation. Kimcomatt alleges in the lawsuit it fi led in New York State Supreme Court that Patel and New Ram violated the terms of the lease — which allowed for the hotel’s use strictly for paid guests — when they allowed the city in October to rent hotel rooms in order to house 30 homeless men. Kimcomatt is seeking to terminate its lease with Patel and New Ram, and if they are successful, the future of both the hotel and any plans to convert it into a homeless shelter — fi rst proposed by the Department of Social Services in August — would be in doubt. According to the lawsuit, the lease mandates that the property only be used as a hotel or for retail purposes. As early as Aug. 25, Kimcomatt informed Patel and New Ram Realty that using all or part of the hotel as a homeless shelter violated the terms of the agreement. Soon aft er the shelter proposal was announced, the city received tremendous opposition to it from Maspeth residents and lawmakers including Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley and state Senator Joseph Addabbo. The elected offi cials sued the city over the proposal, claiming that the hotel lacks the required amenities for a homeless shelter. Since August, Maspeth residents worked hard to secure the proposal’s defeat. Nightly protests have been held outside the hotel’s main entrance; thousands of irate residents blasted public officials at local meetings on the matter; and protesters even picketed outside the Brooklyn home of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks. All of these actions were aimed at convincing the de Blasio administration to abandon the Maspeth proposal and future efforts to house homeless individuals in large numbers at underused hotels. Though Patel made public statements indicating he was withdrawing support of the shelter proposal due to the vehement opposition, the lawsuit alleges, the ability to obtain This lawsuit could shut down the proposed Maspeth homeless shelter. rent revenue from the city may have proved too lucrative to pass up. “In light of KCM’s refusal to approve the unauthorized use of the premises and the significant community backlash, New Ram indicated that it was abandoning the plan to convert the hotel to a homeless shelter,” according to the lawsuit. “However, the potential Photo: Anthony Giudice/RIDGEWOOD TIMES profit to New Ram must have been too great to turn down because in blatant disregard of the terms of its lease and in contradiction to its representations to the community, New Ram has begun the conversion of the hotel to a homeless shelter, surreptitiously renting over a quarter of the hotel’s rooms to the DHS to house homeless adults.” This Glendale student gets her doctorate in bugs from Natural History museum BY ANTHONY GIUDICE [email protected] @A_GIUDICEREPORT In October, Stephanie Loria, a native of Glendale, earned a Ph.D. in comparative biology during a graduation ceremony at the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) — the only American museum with the authority to grant a Ph.D. in comparative biology. During her time studying at the AMNH, Loria focused on the diversity and evolution of scorpions in numerous Southeast Asian countries, gaining novel insights into the vision system of the insects. In order to study these creatures, Loria needed to collect new scorpion specimens for her research and organized, fundraised and participated in fi eld trips to seven countries across Southeast Asia. “It’s great to have been able to go to school at a natural history museum. I started coming to the AMNH in high school taking classes aft er school and participating in the Science Research Mentoring Program,” Loria said. “While I was in college, I heard the museum had opened a graduate school and I was immediately interested and applied. Working at a museum is great if you are interested in biodiversity as the AMNH has such large collections allowing researchers to look at specimens that were collected from all over the world.” Loria remembers spending time looking for insects to study in her backyard in Glendale. She also credits a teacher from her time at Sacred Heart School (now known as Sacred Heart Catholic Academy) as a pivotal motivator in helping her pick her career path. “I’ve been interested in studying arthropods since I was 10 years old. I used to collect millipedes, spiders and insects from my small backyard in Glendale. Growing up in the city, my backyard was my window to nature,” Loria said. “My interest in arthropods grew because no one I knew seemed to have any interest in them, yet there was a whole other world around us that is so important for our lives … additionally, I became particularly interested in arthropod diversity because of my fi ft h-grade teacher at Sacred Heart, Diane Schmidt — she passed away several years ago — who taught Glendale resident Stephanie Loria with Dean John Flynn after the graduation ceremony at the AMNH. us about diversity across all life on Earth and the Linnean classifi cation system. While in school, I also started collecting the exoskeletons of cicadas and sometimes would bring them to class to the dismay of my school mates.” Currently, Loria is fi nishing up projects at the AMNH before leaving for San Francisco early next year to start a postdoctoral at the California Photo courtesy of AMNH/D. Finnin Academy of Sciences where she will continue her research on scorpions. Aside from her work with insects, Loria is also interested in teaching science, and is the co-founder and president of the nonprofi t organization The Metropolitan Society of Natural Historians. The group holds monthly events which helps teach the general public about natural history.
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