Too Little to Late for Cord Meyer? Maybe Not

By Steve Tiszenkel

It’s old news by now, but after years of panic by old-school locals, the charming Cord Meyer section of Forest Hills may have caught a major break. The story is familiar to any regular reader of Queens media. For decades Cord Meyer, a sizable chunk of the neighborhood starting north of Queens Boulevard and chopped off unceremoniously by the Grand Central Parkway, has been a bastion of middle-class serenity in a part of the borough often dominated by six-story brick apartment blocks, attached houses on tiny concrete lots and exhaust-choked thoroughfares.

It doesn’t look like Queens, and yet it looks exactly like Queens, a testament to the impressive variety of urban and suburban landscapes easily encountered in New York’s most diverse borough. Cord Meyer doesn’t look poor, but it doesn’t look rich, either. In the shadow of posh Forest Hills Gardens, which has the air of an exclusive Westchester or Connecticut town, it feels a little like a Nassau County suburb—one of the old inner-ring ones, maybe founded by Brooklyn émigrés in 1921 and home to generations of kids who left to become commodities traders and punk rockers. That’s sort of what Cord Meyer is, only with the subway at its feet and the feverish immigrant energy of a place like Corona just a couple of miles down the road.

When the mid-century woodframe houses — gorgeous in their simplicity and situated at the back of lawns that would make Daniel Stern as an adult Kevin Arnold wax nostalgic—started to come down, it was understandable that the people who had grown up in Cord Meyer panicked. The culprits were mostly Bukharians, immigrant Jews from Uzbekistan who had targeted Forest Hills and adjoining Rego Park as their refuge in a country, a state, a city, a borough, a neighborhood where countless of their coreligionists had come before. When they got there, like tens of millions of starry-eyed immigrants before them, they found that maybe the children and grandchildren of their forerunners weren’t quite as hospitable as they’d hoped. The sticking point was a cultural propensity that perhaps they hadn’t even realized they had back in their impoverished post-Soviet homeland: the desire to build huge, gaudy houses on modest lots, all gleaming metal gates and vulgar stonework, those Wonder Years lawns paved over in favor of gargantuan brick-and-cement driveways.

The Bukharians had the momentum, but the old-timers still had the power. Somehow, some way, they had to stop the teardowns. Some made noise of a historic district, but let’s be honest—it was a stretch to call Cord Meyer “historic,” no matter how many people made it a repository for their hopes and dreams. Finally the politicians came up with an idea so simple, it must have taken years to conjure up: They rezoned the area to favor homes smaller in footprint and height, with an actual yard, grass and all, required by law. It was a big, bold step that no Cord Meyer lifer could fail to admire. But was it too late?

Conventional wisdom said yes — the area was too far gone, the towering McMansions, now grandfathered into a city-mandated low-key neighborhood, forever scarring what was once a valuable slice of Americana, Queens-style. “Cord Meyer Area is a Lost Cause,” blared one representative subject line on my Queens Central forum. And when those zoning regulations got passed, I found it hard to get excited. Too little, too late, I thought — the city might as well have left the neighborhood to the bulldozers and paint-by-numbers architects, with their budgets so large and ideas so small.

But I took a long walk around Cord Meyer recently. You know what? It’s still beautiful. It’s still charming. And maybe, just maybe, now that their era is past, the big, ugly palaces add a layer to the neighborhood that make it more interesting and unique. Now that the McMansions are no longer Cord Meyer’s future, they’ve become more a part of its past and present. They remind us of the neighborhood’s history and the heated battles they inspired. What I found on my walk was that I love the area as much as ever—and if I don’t love the new construction, at least I don’t hate it anymore. Somehow, it fits.

Cord Meyer, the old Cord Meyer, was never going to be a historic district. Neither was the Cord Meyer of the newcomers’ dreams, the Cord Meyer that never was. But what we accidentally got, this fascinating blend of old and new, the awkward collision of two generations aspiring to find their American dream? One day, we might see that as history.

The writer is the host of the Website Queens Central. Log on to queenscentral.com to read more about Forest Hills and Central Queens.

Cord Meyer Rezone Clears First Hurdle

Attorney Objects on Behalf of Bukharian Jews

By Conor Greene

The rezoning of Forest Hills’ Cord Meyer neighborhood – intended to prevent out-of-character McMansions - cleared its first hurdle last week when the local community board overwhelmingly voted in favor of the plan.

Under the city’s proposal, the 32-block area’s zoning would be changed to R1-2A, a new zoning classification that restricts the height of single-family detached houses. The current zoning has been in place since 1961 and lacks a maximum building height, which has led many property owners, including some Bukharian Jews, to replace modest Cape Cod and Tudor style homes with huge houses.

Queens City Planning Director John Young said at last Wednesday’s Community Board 6 meeting that the new zone will provide “predictability” as to what can be built. The area has been under intense development pressure for the past decade, leading to “some concern in the community about scale,” said Young. The new zone will “keep what is good [while] creating a little more predictability.”

The Cord Meyer rezoning area is bounded by 66th Avenue to the north, the Grand Central Parkway to the east, 72nd Road to the south and 108th Street to the west. The majority of the homes were built on large lots between 1910 and 1940, giving the area a low-rise character that is in distinct contract with nearby blocks lined with mid-rise apartment buildings to the south and west, especially near Queens Boulevard.

Under the plan, the R1-2A zone would be implemented, which is similar to an effort underway in North Flushing. The zone would establish a 25-foot maximum perimeter wall height and a 35-foot maximum roof height. Under the existing zoning, building height is based on what is known as the sky exposure plane, which has resulted in houses as tall as 37 feet, according to DCP.

Attorney Albert Dayan spoke on behalf of the Bukharian Jewish community in Forest Hills, some of whom have spent a lot of money to buy large lots with the intention of building a home for several generations of family members.

“It’s not that we’re doing it to show off and display our wealth,” he later said in an interview. “We’re doing it because it is necessary for us to house families that on average have four children and then we have our parents live with us. We happen to be by tradition very humble people taught never to arouse envy, so we don’t do it for those reasons; we do it out of necessity.” Dayan said that the only aspect of the city’s plan his clients object to is the 25 foot maximum perimeter wall height.

“I think it is a fair compromise to say we can limit the building height at 35 feet, that’s fine, but don’t limit the wall to 25,” he said. “Everybody wins, they get their height restrictions and we can get more living space on the third floor.”

Several residents spoke in favor of the proposal at the hearing and said the current construction practices are destroying the neighborhood.

Enid Brownstone wondered why the large families with several generations don’t simply buy several modest houses within the neighborhood instead of paying as much as one million dollars to buy a large lot and tear down the existing house. “There might be some money around to buy some [smaller] homes and not disturb the conformity of our neighborhood,” she said to loud applause. “The zoning is adequate – the problem is, it’s been violated.”

Steve Goodman of the Association of Old Forest Hills stressed that the new regulations are not about keeping any particular group out of the area. “Personally, we welcome people moving in – they are certainly allowed to do that,” he said. “We just ask that they maintain the overall look of the neighborhood.”

However, Dayan said many of his clients only bought land in Cord Meyer because of the existing zoning’s flexibility, and accused the board of moving forward with the rezoning due to negative feelings towards the Bukharian community. “We want to build homes that reflect our tradition… We believe the source of this is negativity,” he said at the meeting.

In the subsequent interview, Dayan said the new zoning “takes away living space from us… without lawful justification.” He said he will discuss the proposal with Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, who reviews the plan now that the community board approved it. “This change is not for the benefit of the community. We are part of the community, but nobody wants to take our concerns into consideration,” he said.

If the City Council eventually adopts the proposal, Dayan said it is likely he will challenge it in court based on the argument that the government can’t take private property without due process. “Like I said, I think they are taking the property away from us without justification.”

Once Marshall reviews the plan, it moves on to the City Planning Commission and the City Council as part of the city’s land use procedure.

This marks the fourth rezoning effort in Forest Hills and Rego Park since 2002. In October, the community board threw its support behind the creation of a special district limiting building heights within ten blocks of Austin Street bounded by Queens Boulevard, the Long Island Railroad tracks, Ascan Avenue and Yellowstone Boulevard. The plan would also allow for residential uses along the popular shopping strip.

Under that plan, which will likely be voted on by the City Council later this month, building heights on the south side of Austin Street would be limited to about 40 feet, while buildings on the north side would be limited to 70 feet. Currently, there is no height restriction along Austin Street, and since the area is primarily zoned for automotive uses, some developers have sought variances that could allow them to build 20-story towers.

As a result of public input, one change has been made to the proposal since it was presented to the board: buildings along eight blocks on the south side of Queens Boulevard would be limited to 125 feet, instead of 150 feet as originally proposed, according to Young. “There were concerns at 150 feet because people felt they would get a lot of buildings that are too tall,” he said.

Old World Charm: An Endangered Species

Yes, everybody’s miserable right now, but really, we can’t pout all the time, can we? There’s only so much foreclosure and bank-failure talk one can take. So as unemployment rates barrel toward a South America-like 10 percent, maybe it’s worth looking at one of the very few good things that’s coming out of The Biggest Economic Crisis Since the Great Depression, Unless You Count the One in the ‘70s, Which I’m Pretty Sure Was Worse, but Nobody’s Saying It For Some Reason.

Across the nation, construction projects have stopped cold. In Chicago, international capital of the skyscraper, work on the tallest building in America —starchitect Santiago Calatrava’s Chicago Spire, which promises to be the most stunning edifice ever constructed — has ground to a halt, ironically leaving the project possibly the shortest building in America: a very, very deep hole in the ground. Half-finished subdivisions across Florida and the rest of the Sun Belt have rendered large swaths of entire cities virtual ghost towns. Closer to home, the hulking, inelegant Bank of America Tower, plunked down at the cusp of Bryant Park, remains tantalizingly close to being finished, and yet not quite. This is bad, right?

For the locally focused, maybe not, because construction in Central Queens tends to be of the hideous, neighborhood-destroying variety. I haven’t seen any new controversies about greedy developers tearing down classic townhouses lately—not that there are any classic townhouses left to tear down, but still. And hey, how’s that controversial 21-story Kew Gardens hotel in the Pasta Lovers parking lot that was the starting point for many a childhood birthday dinner for yours truly? Local residents desperately wanted the project stopped, but activism aside, it’s the inhospitability of the current economic climate to risk that’s more likely to kill this and other projects like it.

Sure, NFL legend Roger Staubach backed out of the grand Austin Street shopping arcade that was to replace a couple of the most nondescript buildings in town, but even then, we got a new restaurant out of it that promises to be pretty good. (I won’t comment on the wisdom of opening a new restaurant in this age of diminishing disposable income.) Suddenly all the community watchdog groups and anti-development blogs seem as quaint and dated as a screenplay about the thrill-a-minute lives of venture capitalists and day traders.

The Great Recession may even end up saving an entire neighborhoodlet: Cord Meyer, the most endangered part of Forest Hills for years now, where utterly charming 1930s-60s ranch houses have been crumbling like the Wall of Jericho that probably decorates countless tapestries in the interior of their replacements: yardless McMansions so vulgar they’d make the location scouts for a VH1 reality show blush.

Unfortunately for Cord Meyer, we used to have a pretty great economy, and so the area was already largely gutted. There are still plenty of dormant construction sites dotting the landscape. And though they’re far from pretty, the fact that work never seems to be happening is a stirring reminder that for every old project that isn’t getting finished, 10 new ones aren’t getting started.

So here’s something fun to do while you’re not staring at a Web browser looking at endless job sites: Take a walk through Cord Meyer, quick, before things get better, and appreciate the beauty of old Forest Hills. By the time it all disappears, hopefully you’ll be too busy at your new job to care.

The writer, Steve Tiszenkel is the host of the Website, Queens Central. Log on to queenscentral.com to read more about Forest Hills and surrounding neighborhoods.

Hearing Set on Forest Hills Rezoning

Intended to Prevent McMansions in Cord Meyer Section

By Conor Greene

The city is moving forward with a plan to rezone the Cord Meyer section of Forest Hills, where many modest homes have been demolished and replaced with huge McMansions in recent years.

A public hearing on the proposal, which would limit the height of single family houses in a 32-block area, is scheduled for next Wednesday’s Community Board 6 meeting. Under the plan, restrictions would be put into place establishing a 25-foot maximum perimeter wall height and a 35-foot maximum roof height.

Under the area’s current R1-2 zoning, established in 1961, there are no firm limitations on building height, according to the Department of City Planning, which is pursuing a similar strategy in North Flushing. Some community residents and leaders have objected as many Cape Cod and Tudor-style homes have been torn down to make way for large, often ornate mansions – many of which featured paved-over front lawns.

Frank Gulluscio, district manager of CB 6, called the current zoning “outdated” and said that “over the past couple of years, what has existed there is changing… The prevailing scale and character has changed and doesn’t really reflect what the existing houses looked like,” he said. The formal public review process for the proposal began this week, giving the community board 60 days to review the plan.

According to Gulluscio, depending on the outcome of Wednesday’s hearing, a vote by the board is likely that evening. It will then go Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and the City Planning Commission for review before City Council considers granting it final approval.

The rezoning will be confined to the Cord Meyer neighborhood, bounded by 66th Avenue to the north, Grand Central Parkway to the east, 72nd Road to the south and 108th Street to the west. The area consists primarily of one-family detached homes, mostly built between 1910 and1940 on relatively large lots, according to city planning, which notes that the area’s low density and low-rise character is a distinct contrast with the character of nearby blocks lined with mid-rise apartment buildings to the west and south, especially near Queens Boulevard.

The rezoning comes “in response to community concern,” according to city planning, and was pushed by Councilwoman Melinda Katz (D-Forest Hills), who is chair of the City Council Land Use Committee. Katz did not return a phone message seeking comment on the proposal left at her office.

Many of the large new homes have been constructed by members of the area’s large Bukharian Jewish community, a trend that has been criticized by some in the community as being out of character with existing homes. City officials have reached out to the Bukharian community to discuss the rezoning plan, and Gulluscio said he thinks the proposal is a fair compromise. “Is there some opposition on both ends? Yes, but at the end of the day the city has proposed a decent compromise,” he said. “I think it’s a step to ensure the future is more predictable.”

Meanwhile, a separate project to rezone parts of Austin Street from Yellowstone Boulevard to Ascan Avenue is also moving through the land use review process. That plan would allow residential development along parts of the popular shopping district while placing height restrictions on new construction for the first time. The proposal has already been approved by the City Planning Commission and is scheduled for a hearing before the City Council zoning subcommittee in coming weeks.

A Restaurant Row Rebound in Forest Hills?

Oh, what four lowercase letters and a period can do. On Forest Hills' newly rejuvenated Restaurant Row—aka 70th Road—the vacant, boarded-up former location of Rouge sprouted an enticing promotional sign recently. It advertises a new bar and grill that will be opening up in that prime location. It will be known as aged. No, my shift key is not broken, and that full stop acts as both the end of the sentence and the final character in the four-character name of the restaurant. There are no capital letters in the name of this restaurant. There is, on the other hand, punctuation. The name is one syllable, as if to indicate that the owners are too busy and important to add another. And it is — oh, could this possibly be happening? — an adjective.

You can imagine my excitement. Forest Hills, after all, is filled with the kind of Italian restaurants that proudly read “Ristorante Italiano” on their awnings, and one imagines the owners pronounce those words with short, nasal vowels, as Bugs Bunny might—”Riss-ta-RANN-tay Ih-TAIL-i-ANN-o.” You will note that Italian superchef Mario Batali does not open Ristorante Italianos—or is it Ristorantes Italiano? Ristorantes Italianos? Forest Hills alumna Lidia Bastianich would never dream of it, either. Just “Ristorante,” maybe, for a touch of the old country, but the Italiano seems a bit desperate, perhaps indicating that the restaurateur lacks confidence in his or her Italianness.

But I digress. The point is that aged. is a great name for a restaurant. Why? Just because it's the kind of thing that people who know what they're doing name their restaurants, that's why.

I have no evidence whatsoever that aged., which, it must be noted, does not yet exist, will not be terrible. For all I know, Sizzler will grill up a better steak—I presume from the name that steak will be a significant part of the menu. Judging by its location, it will almost assuredly be overpriced, as is its neighbor, fancy new MoCA, a place that offers nearly identical cuisine to a number of local restaurants approaching double digits, its main innovations being a more sparkly exterior and significantly higher prices. But I do know one solitary thing about aged., and that's its name. So far, it's batting 1.000.

Somehow, in this astoundingly nightmarish economy, Forest Hills is classing up a bit. Exhibit B: öko, a new yogurt-coffee-and-dessert place on Austin Street, whose name, while nonsense, is one letter shorter than aged. and also contains an umlaut. Listen to how awesome öko is: It peddles sour yogurt and fair-trade coffee, bakes homemade cookies and pies throughout the day, and its two other locations are in the East Village and Park Slope. Its website boasts that it “is a proud member of Businesses donating 1% of Sales to the Natural Environment,” whatever that means.

I paid a visit to öko last weekend, on exactly the kind of unseasonably frigid day that calls for a cup of fair-trade coffee, and business was booming. The people working behind the counter were chatty and concerned, and my chocolate-walnut blondie was delicious. Is this really the same one-square-block area where Twin Donut (motto: “When Dunkin Donuts has too much dignity to move in”) is set to open?

The business that öko was doing validates what I've been saying about Forest Hills for years. Businesspeople are finally starting to notice the obvious reality: When a worthwhile, well-thought-out, reasonably with-it business opens around here, it succeeds, every single time. I don't know how aged. will do, but if it looks nice, the service could be worse, and the food is halfway decent, people will show up — I promise.

Twin Donut is still coming, dollar stores and chintzy discounters abound, and the high-end retailers the luxury Windsor condo clearly was holding out for never quite made it—developers Cord Meyer eventually gave up and submitted to a veterinary clinic and the inevitable tanning salon. But the next time you see a disappointing new business open up here in town—and there will be a next time, and it will be soon—just remember: It's not because we can't support better. It's just for lack of trying.

The writer, Steve Tiszenkel is the host of the Website, queenscentral.com. Log on to read more about Forest Hills and surrounding neighborhoods.

Is This the American Dream?

By Steve Tiszenkel

Sometimes it seems like nobody wants to talk about the hot potato of Forest Hills life. Your typical FoHi local will go on and on about restaurants, shopping, public works, crime, government, you name it. And sure enough, the Forest Hills residential construction boom is often a hot topic—who doesn't have an opinion on the monstrous, ornate houses with paved-over yards that have been sprouting in the neighborhood for years, towering over the modest ranches they're increasingly replacing?

But who's building those houses? Everybody knows the answer, but few can discuss it without raising their voices above a whisper. But this under-the-radar issue exploded into Forest Hills' collective consciousness last week. And in this day and age, when people who have never met can become the closest of friends by connecting through blogs and message boards and social-networking sites, it took the oldest of old media institutions—The New York Times—to do it.

“To the Bukharian Jews of Central Asia,” the Gray Lady announced in Saturday's local edition, “a big house is an essential tradition ... Nowhere has their love of big homes been on more opulent display than in a section of Forest Hills known as Cord Meyer, an upper middle class neighborhood long cherished by its residents for its tranquility and architectural charm.”

Consider the powder keg officially blown. The Times' take on the Bukharian McMansion situation, rightfully deemed a “must-read” by the comprehensive blog Splitting Hairs in Forest Hills, was chock full of great quotes that offered some rare, valuable insight into the thought process that goes into building the controversial houses. Forest Hills is a heterogeneous community, and I continue to firmly believe that relations between its divergent groups are some of the best you'll find in New York, possibly some of the best in any major American city.
But pan-ethnic harmony is a lofty goal, and the fact that we're doing better than others doesn't mean that we couldn't be doing a lot better. Truth be told, those old-line Queens types don't make many attempts at communication with the Bukharians whose enormous houses they deplore, and vice versa.

Fortunately, The Times has done the heavy lifting. For Bukharian community leaders, the age-old American dream narrative predictably comes into play: “We're dreaming of this freedom! We were dreaming to build big house,” the president of the Bukharian Jewish Congress of the U.S.A. and Canada told the paper. Certainly, many an immigrant group has wanted to stake a claim in its new home.

But others interviewed by The Times made comments suggesting a troubling, fundamental disconnect in values between themselves and their neighbors. One Bukharian rabbi, born in Uzbekistan and raised in Kew Gardens Hills, called front yards “useless” and a “waste of time,” seeming almost disgusted as he observed the very thing many in the neighborhood would fight to save.

I have no doubt there's a strong thread of xenophobia running through many protests against the Bukharian houses. Newcomers' arrival and old timers' visceral reaction against them and their traditions is the story of America, of New York in particular, and of Queens even more specifically. Nobody hates immigrants more than the children of immigrants. But when two sets of beliefs are so radically different, it's easy to see some validity, maybe even a whole lot of validity, in the incumbents' complaints.


So. What do I think about the McMansions when I force myself down from my moralizing pedestal? Well, you want the honest truth? I think they're a blight on the neighborhood and need to be stopped by any legal means possible. I think they're both ostentatious and generic.

I think that they're in horrible taste and that no serious architectural critic anywhere in the world would find any value in them whatsoever. I think that despite the protestations of their builders, they are, in fact, a deliberate display of wealth by people who don't understand that the most effective and tasteful way to convey success is to go the understated route.

I think the concept of stone lions standing guard at a private home is ridiculous, and I think that just because something is shiny, doesn't make it look good. But then, I grew up more than 6,000 miles from Uzbekistan, here on an island where a different generation of immigrants once aspired to get away from all the concrete and own a little green plot of their very own.

Steve Tiszenkel is also the author of queenscentral.com. Log on to read more about Forest Hills and the surrounding neighborhoods.