Reviews

Is Jamaica, Queens, the Next Boom Real Estate Market?

12/21/2015

Valencia theater in boom days, under the Jamaica El, left. Now it is a glittering tabernacle, the El long gone.

That’s what streeteasy.com suggests in a recent posting.

I’m all for it, since I still have allegiance to the area. But I also have my concerns.

I wrote my proposal for how New York City could make Jamaica more attractive to people who might be drawn to the area.

Yes, it involves one of the worst mistakes of the Bloomberg era – the killing of the great beacon on the hill, Jamaica High.

Please read my essay on streeteasy.com:
http://streeteasy.com/blog/how-nyc-could-really-revitalize-jamaica-queens/

Comments are welcome on that site. GV

Martha Gottlieb Taylor

12/21/2015 11:18:41 am

George, thinking of you this morning, I checked into your website an found this wonderful article. As one of those who still lives happily in the house my parents bought when I was three and raised my four children (all five of us are Jamaica High alums), I share your sentiments. Great read!
Martha

George Vecsey

12/21/2015 11:41:43 am

Martha, thanks. I admire you and a few others who are where you grew up. Don't go nowhere. GV

George Vecsey

12/21/2015 11:46:14 am

Very impressive: three of the first emails I received were from Artie Benoit, Rich Rodin and Stan Einbender, three players from those great mid-50's basketball teams. The three of them could go to PS 26 and challenge anybody, right now, right?

bruce

12/21/2015 01:13:59 pm

George

enjoyed the essay.

a tie in kindergarten and full head of hair.....

that must be around 1946-47. my first thought was look at the ties. second was i'm sure the ethnic makeup is different now and third was that class probably looked a look better than European kids did in most countries at that time.

bruce

times change.

think you're mistaken tho. Hamilton is now the hottest real estate market in the country--or was two months ago. ahead of Vancouver and Toronto.

or maybe I missed something in your piece, EH!

bruce

George Vecsey

12/21/2015 01:48:15 pm

Bruce -- you Canadahooskies and your sly sense of humor.
Hamilton is not even the fastest growing place in the Toronto region, dude. My cousin just moved back to St, Catharines after a sojourn south of the border, so that is a boomlet of its own. Happy Holidays. GV

bruce

12/21/2015 04:35:56 pm

george,

you'd be absolutely correct if we were part of the toronto region--it's called the GTA--but we ain't.

as a matter of fact, i wasn't one of those polite canuckistanis--ask big al--those would be fightin' words.

hamilton, st kitts and niagara falls--the nice one--are all part of the golden horseshoe.

i occasionally have fun with youse amerikans with that. if we get to chatting in some socialist haven such as france i might ask where he/she is from.

'the bay area' or 'dc' or 'georgia' or 'allantown' might be the response. they'll ask me and i'll say, 'the golden horseshoe'....fun watching the puzzlement which increases when i say, 'the bay area? burlington??'

bruce

i'll occasionally say, 'the country'? when they say georgia.

Brian Savin

12/21/2015 10:24:02 pm

I'm not sure about this, George. JHS was graduating less than 50% of its students when Bloomberg took notice, as you may have mentioned in a prior post. When does a school warrant change, if not then? What the Mayor did was make a determination that things were so bad that he had to rebuild from scratch. So, the BoE created four smaller specialty schools, all sharing facilities and athletic programs, focused on math and science, college board exams, arts and letters, and community service. Changing the discussion can often help in solving problems. I remember when the schools in my old town were being crowded by a mini baby boom and the town needed to reopen a closed school. Parents rebelled because it meant bussing from neighborhoods. My own neighborhood school Principal was asked to take over the new school and deal with the uproar. What he did was organize the curriculum of the new grammar school and announce that it would prepare students for the International Baccalaureate certificate and would admit on an application basis. The complaints abruptly ended and the school was over subscribed. Given the upward mobility goals of Jamaica, I would think the Bloomberg plan may be assisting and fostering that potential, while also refocusing on how to help the struggling student population. Time will tell.

George Vecsey

12/22/2015 08:31:46 am

Brian, I know that small units work. I see them work up close via relatives teaching and being taught in NYC and Long Island. No argument. In Jamaica's case, they cooked the books -- put dropouts and even young people at Rikers Island and other places into Jamaica's stats. Hangin' jury, as they say in the westerns.
The physical and historical presence of this campus on the hill was a visceral beacon for generations. This was Pol Pot behavior, not education. "Look what I can do." However, specialized units within a big school? I know somebody thriving from that....Thanks for your always thoughtful comments, best to you both, G

Andy Tansey

12/25/2015 08:58:50 am

I don't know enough about the JHS change to comment.

In early September, I got a meeting request from a Vermonter in town for the Open, which I could not honor because I was assisting my mother with transportation to that same event - special pass required to get to the players' entrance to drop her off, as she doesn't get around as well as when she'd bring me home from The Mary Louis Academy*. She was thrilled to be within arm's length of Federer, but I digress. So I offered to meet the Vermonter for breakfast on the mid-tournament Saturday, and to pick him up at the Comfort Inn at 89-34 162nd Street. (I insist on using the dash, notwithstanding the eradication thereof by the Postal Service, perhaps not as offensive as the Bloomberg administration, but when you lived in Queens, the dashes are helpful.)

I raised my eyes when my contact told me where he'd be staying, but he couldn't see that over the phone, and I decided to reserve judgment. To get to him, I drove past JHS and was impressed by the early morning athletic activity - not students at that time on Labor Day weekend; lots of adults exercising and playing. I was even more impressed by the condition of the Central Jamaica area. Whoever has it as a project has made great progress. My contact - a lawyer in environmental conservation in New England - told me his impression. When he got to the hotel the night before, he felt a bit frightened. I guess it's what you're used to. When I attended current Gov. Cuomo's HS in (then) Jamaica 11435, we went to the Supreme Court on Sutphin Boulevard with our social studies class to visit Judge Giordanella's courtroom because his nephew, also now an attorney, was in the class. All these mostly white boys in ties and full heads of hair standing with our teachers outside the Courthouse in 1975, bottles raining at us from the local kids across Sutphin Boulevard. Were we too well behaved or too frightened to retaliate? Thus, my perspective: the dynamic of improvement in the area - versus one from the Green Mountains: coming to Jamaica for the first time.

By the way, Molloy hasn't moved, but it's no longer in Jamaica. It's been in Briarwood - still 11435 - for many years. It's also co-ed now, just like * The Mary Louis Academy's kindergarten was when my mother picked me up there. (I love telling people who know that I attended TMLA!)

I found my and my Vermont friend's different visceral reactions to the area remarkable, and so I gave him a tour and made sure to mention some recent history of JHS and its noted alums. We also went past my honeymoon apartment - first floor of perhaps the only old white wood colonial two-family (just across 188th Street in Holliswood) not converted into an Iranian palace, even though our landlady was - she said - "Persian." The place looks the same and looms in family lore because that's where our first cat adopted us on a stormy January 1988 night us so she could have her kittens in my wife's bedroom closet.

Then I too became guilty of abandoning the boro where you travel by buses with "Q" routes in favor of a bedroom where the LIRR is what you use to get to work - and what all three of my kids used to get to Molloy. They had to get out and catch the Q44 at Sutphin Boulevard from Jamaica station over to "Briarwood," and that was the only trepidation I had when we went down that route. They never had a problem - except perhaps with a crotchety older woman territorial with her space on the bus.

It is nice to see how well Jamaica is doing. You can't just ride past it on the LIRR.- even assuming you're not on the Port Washington branch.

George Vecsey

12/26/2015 10:32:41 am

Andy, thanks for your great visceral response to being back in Jamaica. It belongs on the streeteasy web site. You OK with that?
My two sisters went to Mary Louis Academy -- and I went to the nursery school for a year, before public kindergarten and on to Jamaica High.
You lived on or near 188th st? That's our family street from 1927-2003.
Buses. Lunatics. Occasional fender-bender.
Lots of central Jamaica looks fine. My JHS group visited the central library a year or so ago. Right next to the mosque DiBlasio visited a few weeks ago. Life goes on.
Best,

Andy Tansey

12/27/2015 06:05:12 am

George:

Thank you. You are welcome to use any of my post on Street Easy.

Our rental was on 85th Road, first house east of 188th Street, with the Parkway in our backyard, from 1984 to 1988.

Sister Mary Corinne, O.P. was my brother's and my kindergarten teacher. We lived in Hollis when my brother attended kindergarten at TMLA, and my parents stuck with what they knew even after we moved to Whitestone. Dad drove in the morning on his way to work and Mom took me home on the Q76 in the afternoon. (My sister had missed out and gone straight to 2nd grade at Incarnation when we moved to Hollis from Brooklyn, and so she had to go to TMLA for high school. My proudest moment is when my eldest Stanner scored the winner against TMLA and made Newsday (2 sentences). Now she's a Gooner while her father supports Spurs. Life goes on.

Thanks for indulging - Andy