I’m Sure That’s Exactly The Solution The World Monuments Fund Folks Envisioned

Where most Manhattanites disdain The Donald, some in Queens would seem to welcome the developer’s gentle touch:

Calling it a framework for the future of Flushing Meadows Park, a city consultant offered a sneak peak on Monday at what the park could look like in the future.

Nicholas Quennell, an architect and landscape architect, along with Laurie Hawkinson, an architect, updated the Queens Borough Cabinet at Queens Borough Hall during its monthly meeting. The cabinet is made up of representatives from local community boards.

. . .

Hawkinson discussed the deteriorating New York State Pavilion from 1964, which last week was called one of 100 of the world’s most endangered sites by the World Monuments Fund. “As an architect, I love that structure,” she said. “It’s very iconic and you can see it from everywhere.”

The Parks Department plans to do another structural study for a phased stabilization, but has warned major work there will be very expensive.

“It should serve as a gateway to welcome you,” Hawkinson said. “It’s paid for. It just has to be fixed.”

Vincent Arcuri, chairman of Community Board 5, in the Glendale-Ridgewood area, suggested that a commercial developer could fix the pavilion “and it probably wouldn’t cost him anything.” He pointed to someone like Donald Trump, who went in and repaired the Wollman ice skating rink in Central Park years ago when the city was unable to fix it.

Location Scout: Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

The Bitch Barked Softly

The last feral dog in Red Hook has been rounded up and relocated:

Two weeks ago, Mama Dulce took her last run around the vacant lot next to the massive steel frame of the soon-to-be superstore before stepping into a humane animal trap. It was the first time the muscular, straw-colored dog — matriarch of a pack of mutts that had lived for years on the site of the old Revere Sugar Refinery — had ever been enclosed.

The bitch barked softly all the way to the city’s Animal Care and Control center. Last week, she was resettled in a Pennsylvania home, reuniting with another refinery rescue, Big Mama.

“She had to go,” said Harriet Zucker, a set designer and dog trainer who led the rescue, her 60th over the last 12 years.

“The dogs had lived there for many years and they were relatively safe. When construction began, the [danger began]. It was an accident waiting to happen.”

. . .

The guards who watched generations of dogs settle on the rubble-strewn Revere property had let Zucker feed the brood for months, until she found people to adopt them.

After the puppy daddy, a Airedale named Scrappy, was adopted by a truck driver, the two mamas and a third feral companion were left alone at the old sugar plant, where they lived without a bark of trouble until 2005, when developer Thor Equities bought the rusting hulk for $40 million.

As construction crews began to demolish the plant, the dogs made a new home in the vacant, graffiti-covered lot nearby on the corner of Halleck and Ostego streets. Zucker delivered them hamburgers from the Fairway supermarket a few streets away.

“When I starting coming, their tails were curled up close to their bodies because they were scared,” said Zucker. “[Eventually they began to] wag their tails. They are wild dogs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a domestic instinct.”

The Putsch To Gentrify The East Village

Zum Schneider is a nice place and all but I get just a little bit uneasy when I read about Germans “kicking ass” and race-baiting people of color:

A recent settlement reached between Sylvester Schneider, owner of the East Village bar and restaurant Zum Schneider, and his landlord has left Schneider with mixed feelings about the case and the plaintiffs who were trying to force him out of his space.

The case concluded in State Supreme Court on Thurs., March 15.

Under the terms of the agreement, Schneider’s lease will be extended until 2021, he will not have to reduce his sidewalk cafe by half — which would have been a significant loss of business for him — and he will get free rent for the next three months.

Schneider, however, will have to pay all legal fees, which will amount to more than $100,000, and starting in July, pay an additional $500 per month, raising his rent to $5,000.

Despite the hefty attorneys’ fees, the German native described his reaction as “complete delight.”

“We stuck it out, we did it! We kicked their ass!” he said from the basement of the Bavarian-style beer garden, as customers above feasted on platters of bratwurst and quaffed pints of Bitburger pilsner.

“They tried to kick our ass, but we turned it around 100 percent,” he said.

Adam Leitman Bailey, an attorney representing Schneider, called Judge Rolanda Acosta’s decision a “victory for America’s core values.”

. . .

Schneider came to the United States 19 years ago and opened the restaurant in 2000, when this neck of the East Village was still what he describes as “notorious.” He contends that co-op board members — many of them Puerto Ricans — were displeased by having more whites right under their noses.

“You should know that this whole thing was not just a money thing; it was also a racial thing. We are white; they are Puerto Ricans,” Schneider charged.

“They didn’t like us from the beginning,” he continued. “They claimed that the only white person living in the building was a friend of a mine when the first lease was signed, which is complete nonsense.”

Schneider conceded than no one from the co-op board had ever uttered a racial slur at him. Yet, he said, he believes old-timers are uncomfortable with the changing demographics and the prospect of more pale faces on every corner.

“In the past seven to 10 years, the neighborhood has changed significantly,” Schneider said. “When I got in here it was still a very rough neighborhood and I am not saying that all Puerto Ricans are rough and bad, but it was a rough neighborhood.”

He credits his bar as being influential in changing the neighborhood, but doubts whether the Puerto Rican members of the co-op board appreciate the change as much as him.

“We helped to turn the neighborhood around, to which the people who live in the building, I think, don’t really like the change,” he said.

“I think they would like it to be back where it was, which was a drug and weapons heaven.”

You Can’t Just Market Your Way Into Being Sixth Borough . . . It’s Neither Brand Nor Viral Campaign

Philadelphians certainly can’t complain now about all the New Yorkers driving up prices in Northern Liberties:

With an eye on disgruntled New York artists pinched by rising rents, Philadelphia is using a new advertising campaign in an effort to lure the so-called creative class crowd to help the city rebound.

The tactic is a common one for cities seeking revitalization, as 20-something artists tend to spur investment in industrial, dormant, or tawdry neighborhoods. In New York, this has been the story of SoHo, followed by Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and now Astoria and Bushwick, where neighborhood vitality follows the hipsters, as do the higher rents that eventually push them out.

The city of brotherly love is seemingly bidding to add its name to that list, showboating its proximity to New York and relatively inexpensive cost of living.

The ads take the form of posters and inserts in an alternative weekly newspaper that direct people to uwishunu.com, a Web log run by the city ‘s tourism agency that focuses on nightlife and Philadelphia’s artistic scene.

Have some fuckin’ self-respect, why don’t you?

Give Them The Tories Of Queens County While You’re At It — After All, JFK Is There

On account of a single tea shop and one lousy chipper Community Board 2 is being pressured into giving the British their own Little:

In an effort to join the city’s pantheon of ethnic neighbourhoods such as Chinatown and Little Brazil, the Campaign for Little Britain — a coalition of Virgin Airways and local businesses such as Tea and Sympathy and A Salt and Battery — announced its plans yesterday to officially rename the area between West 13th Street and Greenwich Avenue “Little Britain” to honour one of America’s closest and politest allies.

“Officially recognising cultural communities throughout the borough has been a constant throughout the decades,” said Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett, who with his wife Nicky Perry, owner of Tea and Sympathy, created the campaign more than a year ago. “But despite the number of British residents in New York City, and the large number of travellers between here and the U.K., there is no Little Britain.

. . .

With slogans such as “Sir Michael Bloomberg. Know What We Mean, Bloomie?” and “What’s One More Queen in the Village?” the campaign will rely on a very British sense of humour to make its argument heard.

The initial stages of the plan include an online petition and viral advertising campaign. Then, it’s off to Community Board 2 and, if approved, City Hall.