By George H. Tsai
It’s a shame that Flushing has to rely on just a few volunteers to pick up litter on its sidewalks and streets. To keep the town clean is an impossible mission without the support of businesses and shoppers. Volunteerism only makes a ripple. I hope the business improvement district plan will soon sail through the City Council and be put into practice.
Dirty and chaotic, Flushing looks more like a city of an underdeveloped nation than a town in the world’s richest country. It’s embarrassing, but a lot of residents think so.
Overcrowding, of course, is the root of the problem; obviously there is no magic bullet to cure it. In the past 30 years, Flushing has had little physical expansion, despite its rapid population growth.
New immigrants keep coming to this ostensibly booming town because they consider it a gold mine on the East Coast. Apparently, low-paying odd jobs are plentiful here.
New York City is mulling over the BID plan for the town, but some business people balk at it. The plan, which requires an annual budget of $380,000, is designed to keep the streets neat and clean.
City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) claims that about 80 percent of Flushing’s merchants back the BID plan, in which he has played a major role.
But 120 representatives from local businesses recently gathered to voice their opposition on the grounds that it would increase their financial burden.
The opponents’ view reflects their lack of foresight. I am on Liu’s side, and I hope the City Council will pass the plan later this month. If approved, every store should pay its fair share.
I can hardly think of anything we can brag about in Flushing, except the library. Restaurants, grocery and cell phone stores are the dominant businesses in the busiest section of Main Street. On 40th Road alone, there are about 20 eateries. This road is perhaps the shortest, yet the greasiest, in town. I was told that a group of volunteers in blue uniforms scrub and wash that gooey street dutifully at 5 a.m. every weekend.
Besides, grocery stores are jam-packed almost every day, particularly on the weekends. Apart from that, stalls selling fruits, books, gifts and food take up quite a bit of sidewalk space. And their brisk business leaves behind heaps of trash every day.
When there is a downpour, the corner by the subway entrance at the south section of Roosevelt Avenue is inundated with filthy water because of the clogged sewer. With such an ugly image, there is no way the town can attract tourists or reputable businesses.
While the city and four foreign groups are talking about developing the west section of Flushing, business at the Flushing Mall is going downhill, and the Prince Center, a pride of Flushing, remains 99 percent vacant. The off-again, on-again Expo project, reportedly featuring small stores, entertainment and leisure facilities at the former Caldor department store on Roosevelt Avenue, appears to be dormant again.
Recently there have been renewed talks that developers soon would turn the long-closed RKO Keith’s Theater on Northern Boulevard into a 14-story shopping center. Before doing anything, they should conduct a thorough survey about the purchasing power of local residents. In addition, a shopping center of this magnitude certainly will deal a staggering blow to some struggling local stores.
In the meantime, four conglomerates from China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan are reported to have shown interest in the development of western Flushing.
A large-scale development seems unfeasible in the near future unless we can get rid of some stumbling blocks, such as the garbage-transfer station and the sandstone-making plant by the polluted Flushing River.
A couple of months ago, I urged authorities to pay a little more attention to the growing rivalry between the two shuttle van fleets on 41st Avenue. A recent wrangling over parking space was so serious that police had to intervene.
Local law enforcement agencies should move one of them to another part of the town or keep them on sections of Main Street that are farther from one another.
In a free society, one can open up any business as long as it doesn’t encroach upon the freedom of others. To the shuttle vans, 41st Avenue is perhaps the best area in town, but to pedestrians and motorists, it’s a bad idea to let those commercial vans occupy a long strip on that narrow road, where traffic is always slowed up.
