The move was completed back in January when…
By Chris Fuchs
Transitional Services for New York Inc., a non-profit group that helps integrate the mentally disabled into mainstream society, was expected to officially open its administrative offices in Whitestone Friday.
The move was completed back in January when the group relocated from Flushing to a $1.2 million building in Whitestone.
The 24-year-old non-profit group, which provides hundreds of clients with housing in either dormlike facilities or individual apartments in Queens and the Bronx, announced it planned to move into a two-story building at 10-16 162nd St. in Whitestone in 1999. The ceremony, including a ribbon-cutting, was to begin at 12:30 p.m.
“The office is strictly administrative operations, no client services,” said Stephanie L. Stewart, a spokeswoman for the group. “The building was designed to take all of the administrative services.”
Before January, the building had been completed for a “couple of months,” Stewart said. Because the city misplaced the group’s request for a certificate of occupancy, which was not issued until November, the move could not be made immediately.
Rumors had circulated among Whitestone residents back in 1999 about the building’s housing a drug-treatment facility. But Stewart, emphasized that Transitional Services does not provide such treatment. Most of the patients whom the group serves suffer from schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The group’s administrative officers were in Flushing for six years at 28-08 Bayside Lane, but because of a lack of space and because the landlord had put the building on the market in 1999, the administrators were forced to look for another facility.
Stewart said the group’s Bayside Lane location was only 4,000 square feet, while the Whitestone facility was 7,200. The facility will house the group’s accounting, finance, intake, public relations, purchasing and quality control department as well as its executive offices.
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
