Community Corner
🤑 $2 Billion Astoria Development Made 40% Affordable + Latino Center
The quickest way to get caught up on the most important things happening today in Queens.
Good morning, Queens! 🚕
Hear that? 🎶 Music to my ears. Just one more day until Friday. Good for me. Good for you. Good for us! Here are today's headlines:
- 🏘 Innovation QNS developers are planning to make 40% of the building affordable!
- 🏫 A new resource center for Latino students opened up this week at LaGuardia Community College.
- 😔 Chair of the Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities and Addictions and Councilwoman Linda Lee toured the Hollis Family Shelter where the young asylum seeker committed suicide.
⛅️ Partly sunny. High: 68 Low: 54.
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Here are the top stories in Queens today:
1. The developers behind the massive $2 billion Innovation QNS project in Astoria sent a letter to Councilwoman Julie Won on Sept. 27 presenting an updated proposal that they hope will win her approval. The Innovation QNS team improved the original plan by making 40% of the project's 2,800 apartments permanently affordable, versus the initially proposed 25%. They also made 500 of the apartments rental units at 30% of the area median income. Won has been critical of the Innovation QNS project, which has drawn some major backlash at a number of town hall meetings from housing advocates. The project's developers hope to gain her support through the revised proposal, as they need her to vote in favor of the project when it comes before City Council early next month. The Innovation QNS development will include 12 buildings on a five-block area of southwest Astoria centered on Steinway Street and 35th Avenue.
Queens Courier ; Queens Daily Eagle ; Patch
2. A new resource center opened up this week at LaGuardia Community College called Casa de las Americas, which means "the home of the Americas" — a place where Latino students can get mentorship, tutoring, learn about English classes and find connection to their Hispanic community. La Casa's directors are Dr. Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez and Dr. Ryan Mann-Hamilton, both professors at the college with their own stories of struggling to make it in America. LaGuardia Community College has more than 8,000 Latino students currently in attendance, many of whom are first-generation students, and coming from more than 31 different countries.
3. As chair of the Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities and Addictions, Councilwoman Linda Lee toured the Hollis Family Shelter to learn more about the livings conditions at the facility where a young asylum seeker committed suicide on Sept. 18. "My heart and prayers are with the family of the asylum seeker who tragically died by suicide at a shelter within the district," Lee said. "Asylum seekers come to our country's border seeking refuge and fleeing horrors and unimaginable conditions that they were experiencing back home, only to be bused thousands of miles to a completely different location." Leidy Paola Martinez Villalobos, 32, left behind two children who she was caring for on her own after they were separated from their father at the Arizona border in April.
4. At work as an experienced mental health counselor, Glendale, Queens native Jillian DeCoursey empowers people through therapy. And off the clock, as a mixed martial artist, DeCoursey empowers people by fighting them in the MMA ring. DeCoursey has been training martial arts for over a decade, and is a self-described "late bloomer" to the MMA sport, but believes her late start was the right path for her. "I don't think I could have done it younger," she says. "Life was too crazy. I don't think, mentally, I could have handled it. It happened at the time it needed to happen."
5. State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, who represents College Point and Whitestone, and is chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, needs to have a stern chat with whoever manages her Twitter account. The 83-year-old grandmother's account has been used recently to like a series of obscene tweets — including an X-rated video of hardcore smut. Stavisky's spokesman Pierce Brix, who controls the account, said, "I don't know what happened or who had access. It wasn't the senator. It wasn't me."
🗞 Hankering for more headlines? 👀Look no further:
- 10 people shot across NYC Tuesday, 4 in Queens (PIX11 News)
- Hispanic Heritage Month: From GED to beloved ESL teacher with help of HANAC (ABC7 New York)
- Sonia Handelman Meyer, Socially Conscious Photographer, and Queens College Grad, Dies at 102 (The New York Times)
- 'Broadway in the Boros' returns to Queens with live performances at Kaufman Astoria Studios (Queens Courier)
- New York City considering reintroducing academic screening for prestigious middle and high schools (PIX11 News)
🗓 To Do Today in Queens:
- Love & Hiking Date For Couples (Self-Guided) (7 a.m.)
- Queens Hospital Center Farmers' Market (8 a.m.)
- Farm Community Volunteer Days (9:30 a.m.)
- Compost Beautification Community Volunteer Day (1 p.m.)
- Little Flyers Birding (3:30 p.m.)
- Community Workshop: Greater Rockaway Coastal Plan (5 p.m.)
- Ardal O'Hanlon Live! (8 p.m.)
🗣 Queens Chatter:
- Last call small businesses 📣: "Last Call - NYS COVID-19 Pandemic Small Business Recovery Grant Program webinar - Application must be summited by September 30, 2022 to be considered for the NYS Recovery Grant" (Queens Chamber of Commerce via Facebook)
- Donovan Richards ❤️ affordable housing in Queens: "I've been clear that in order to get to a "yes" on Innovation QNS, we needed a steadfast commitment to true affordability. Excited by the work being done to get there: 40 percent of units (1,100+) permanently affordable. 500+ units at 30% AMI. Ensuring families in #Astoria and across the borough can afford to remain in their community is my top priority. With this compromise on Innovation QNS, I'm confident we're making real progress to bring true and deep affordable housing to #Queens. From Astoria to Rockaway and beyond, we are setting a new standard in Queens when it comes to ensuring private development provides significant public benefits to the communities they seek to call home. The push to build a fairer, more affordable borough continues." (Queens Borough President Donovan Richards via Facebook)
- Dance performance this weekend inspired by Asian immigrants' stories: "Special dance performances of "Here We Root" will take place this Saturday, 10/1 at 2:30 and 4pm. This dance is inspired by Asian immigrants' stories, focusing on the Chinese diaspora in Flushing, NY. Register at link in bio or https://qbghereweroot.eventbrite.com
Note: @jiemin.art is also running a Go Fund Me campaign to raise funds for the production. Please consider supporting the performers by going directly to @jiemin.art. Choreography: @jiemin.art in collaborations with performers @maya_lam @kathyychennn @mayu_y1129 @tsubasa_nishioka @eric.dans @shanychuang Costume @emmii.hs • Composer @james.acampora • Erhu music @chiiwings • Voice over @chohchun • Drama consultant: @weiyeh This project is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts @qnsarts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs @nyculture in partnership with the City Council @nyccouncil." (Queens Botanical Garden via Facebook) - Get ready for the upcoing Xaviera Simmons exhibtion : "Xaviera Simmons's formally-based practice spans photography, performance, video, sound, sculpture and installation to critically examine contemporary art practices and American life as shaped by the social histories of whiteness, structural and systemic maladies, and labor. "Crisis Makes a Book Club" includes works that tether form to sensuality, desire, language, and abstraction, and new monumental works that expand on several artistic modes including text based paintings, photographs, video, sculptural figures, chromatically coordinated interventions in the galleries, and billboard sized works for the Museum's exterior facade. Discover "Crisis Makes A Book Club" during our Fall Opening on October 2! : https://qnsmu.se/fallopening2022" (Queens Museum via Facebook)
More from our sponsors — thanks for supporting local news!
Events:
- Cow Goes to the Opera - an opera for kids of all ages! (October 2)
- 1ST OPEN HOUSE! Forest Hills Townhouse In A Prime Location! (October 2)
- 8th Annual ENY 5K (October 8)
- Celebrate Free Laundry Day at 4 Clean Rite Center locations (October 10)
- City Gate Productions Presents: Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire (October 14)
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Alrighty, you're all good for today! I'll see you back in your inbox tomorrow morning with a new update.
— Emma Radu Fighera
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