By Chris Fuchs
Union Street is one of a few Korean enclaves left in a downtown Flushing that is now mostly populated by Chinese. The 120 or so businesses along the strip, ranging from restaurants to clothing stores, advertise like most any business would – by hanging signs prominently outside their stores.
But a closer look at Union Street between Northern Boulevard and 39th Avenue reveals a thriving commercial artery that Korean-American store owners say is suffocated by a jumble of signs arranged with little regard to overall appearance. The hodgepodge creates an image that some contend is unsightly and that city officials have done little to correct.
As a steady stream of Asian Americans has moved to Flushing in the last 20 years and set up businesses, the signs they display outside their stores have become a flash point in the northeast Queens debate about their appearance and whether they should be in English. Zoning laws, enforced by the city’s Department of Buildings, dictate the allowable size and shape of signs. But a state law passed decades ago requires such signs to be in English — a legal requirement that has been blatantly ignored by government agencies.
The issue on Union Street, however, does not seem to be so much whether signs are displayed in English – since many of them are – as the manner in which they are arranged. Korean-American merchants, store owners and members of the Flushing community at large describe the display as “messy” and “ugly.”
In a half dozen interviews Monday with Korean-American business owners along Union Street, all agreed that storefront signs should be displayed in English even though most, if not all, of their customer base is Korean American. Many stores have at least two signs, some of which jut out from the second or third floors of these three-story buildings, hanging perpendicular to Union Street.
In theory, the signs are supposed to grab the attention of passersby, but in reality as one Korean-American observer put it, the overall effect is nothing short of dizzying.
Kwangsik Kim, executive director of the Flushing Community Development Center, an outreach organization that was founded in April 2000, is exploring ways to address the signage problems.
Working with state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose), whose district encompasses northeast Queens, Kim said he wants to arrange a meeting between sign manufacturers and Korean-American business owners in hopes of fleshing out a cost-effective plan to convert signs that are only in Korean into English as well.
“Your customer is not just Korean,” he said. “Your whole community is your customer.”
Union Street is not the only block affected by signage concerns. The debate is one that also extends into the Chinese-American business community, which owns much of the property in downtown Flushing.
Interviews with several Chinese-American store owners revealed that they have concerns about signage similar to those of the Korean Americans. And as Korean Americans leave downtown Flushing, moving east along Northern Boulevard through Bayside and Little Neck toward Long Island, the issue is likely to stir debate in a far wider area, Kim said.
But why? In some instances, he said, it is difficult for owners to translate the nature of their business into English, a point which some Chinese-American business owners also made.
In other cases, vertical signs do not lend themselves to displaying English characters since space is limited, he said. To that end, his organization is now surveying the roughly 120 businesses on Union Street, taking photos of each and researching their businesses, Kim said.
But sometimes this can be difficult. At 36-22 Union St. is Eunice Fashions, a clothing store owned by Hyong Ok. She sells women’s clothing on the second floor, where she has a prominent window display, but she also has several racks inside a little boutique on the first floor. A little farther back is a nondescript bar that has a sign in Korean only.
Ok, who is the landlord, said she was issued a $500 fine several months back and was told to remove a vertical sign and a neon light strip that hung near the first-floor window outside her clothing store. She said she thought that the inspectors unfairly targeted her.
Paul Wein, a city Buildings Department spokesman, confirmed that a violation had been issued for 36-22 Union St. on Dec. 18 for installing a sign without a permit – which is required. But he said he did not believe a monetary fine had been imposed, noting that his agency responds only to complaints and does not make random inspections.
The signs for Eunice Fashions are in English, and when the bar owner put one up that was not, Ok said she told him not to hang up any more. Although she was unaware that a state law requires signs to be in English or the merchant could face a fine, she said since she lives in America, signage should be in English.
The inability to distinguish one business from the next because signs are not in English also raises safety concerns, Padavan said. If a store is burglarized or catches fire or if someone falls ill, the emergency workers will not be able to identify the address of the building, the senator said.
It was still unclear which city or state agency is responsible for enforcing the law requiring signs to be in English. Padavan and a spokeswoman for the Department of State in Albany both said the Police Department was the enforcing agency, a claim that the police denied. Even so, the senator said issuing violations is secondary to educating the store owners.
“The existing law ought to be enforced,” he said. “However, we have to take a more productive approach in working with the Korean business associations.”
The bar inside Eunice Fashions is clearly an exception on Union Street since most Korean-American businesses do have signs in English.
Hyung Park, the owner of the Rock Art Gallery who has been on Union Street for 20 years, has a sign in English as well as Korean. Though Park, who frames works of traditional Korean art, has found that most of his customers are Korean Americans, he still displays signs in both English and Korean.
One of his signs, a small white box with blue lettering that hangs over passersby, is a reminder of an abortive attempt 10 years ago to standardized signage on Union Street. Back then, the store owners got together, pooled their money and purchased the signs, which are neatly printed in English and Korean.
In the long run, Park thinks the signs served no purpose since newer ones went up, eclipsing his and the other owners’. In fact, some of them still stand long after their stores have gone out of business.
“The city is very apathetic about enforcing the law,” he said.
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
