The Forest Hills Gardens Blog

Where are all of the Forest Hills Jazz lovers?  The Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce has asked for your help to donate to their “Save Jazz Thursdays” campaign.  Jazz Thursdays consists of two Thursdays in August which feature world class performers.  This is a must see for families and allows you to be as comfortable as possible, whether you prefer to bring blankets or chairs.

For this year’s 10th anniversary, which kicks off on August 7th and takes place on 70th Rd., the Forest Hills committee is hoping to increase their number of performances from two nights to three with your help.

They have launched an indiegogo campaign with a goal of raising $8,000.  So far they have managed to raise $700.

Click here to donate to their campaign which ends tonight at midnight.

John F. Haggerty, Jr., a former Bloomberg political operative who bought his deceased grandfather’s home in the Gardens with money meant for election day ballot security and poll watching lost his appeal with the state’s highest court on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Haggerty was convicted in 2011 for misallocating $1.1 million of the $1.2 million he was given by then-Mayor Bloomberg for the state Independence Party while on the campaign trail in 2009. Flickr user Azi Paybarah has a few snaps of Haggerty and Bloomberg hamming it up on March 15, 2009, at around the same period the embezzlement is said to occur. The court ruled unanimously against his appeal.

On Sept. 30, 2011, the NY Times’ City Room blog posted a photo of the “shabby” Haggerty house on a hill, located at Greenway North and Puritan Avenue. A neighbor told the blog that he “keeps it that way [shabby] so it looks like no one is home.” And apparently when the set director for HBO’s miniseries ‘Mildred Pierce’ hired a landscaper to clean up the yard while they were shooting next door, Haggerty was upset about it, much in the way that children get angry when you point out their flaws in public.

One interesting little tidbit in this case is that Haggerty, Jr., was buying out his brother’s share in the home from his own father, a move that not only allowed his family to maintain ownership of their property, but also to – in effect – increase his family’s net worth by several hundred thousand dollars.

 

 

 

A photo emerged on social media via the 112th Precinct Community Council at just after midnight on Mon., June 30 showing smoke and flames rolling out of Florist Hills on Woodhaven Boulevard at 68th Road across from St. John’s Cemetery. At about 1 a.m., Facebook user Anne Lyons Flemming posted:

“[The] fire is out….looks like the top of the florist….no one was hurt and the strange thing is you can’t even smell the fire…one of the firefighters said it was big when it started….good thing is no injuries!”

Flemming reported that it seemed only the upper area of the flower shop was damaged. She speculated in reply to another commenter that it may have been an electrical fire, adding, “Not sure how else it could start in a florist!”

The communities of Forest Hills and Ridgewood were recognized by 311 this week for leading the city with the most litter and recycled good reports.

Check out how other neighborhoods matched up in numerous categories on this daily leaderboard put out by Here Here NYC.

Renovations to the Mary Whalen playground, located in Oak Ridge in Forest Park were proposed yesterday. Mary Whalen playground is located on the corner 79th and Park Lane South. Over a million dollars has been allocated from council member from Elizabeth Crowley.  Queens Borough President Melinda Kat, will be contributing an additional 180,000 to the project.  

The projected plan will break the playground into sections, gearing each section towards a specific age group.  Additionally the parks planted area will be increased by 150 percent, and increasing the tree count by 200 percent.  The entire  renovation presentation can be viewed on YouTube.

Forest Hills Volunteer Ambulance Corp is having a Fund Raising event “Laughter is the Best Medicine” on Saturday, June 7th at Grace Lutheran Church 103-15 Union Turnpike in Forest Hills starting at 7PM. A live auction to follow.  Tickets are $20 and are available at www.comedytogoinc.com or A Royal Collectibles, 96-01 Metropolitan Ave.  Call 718-793-2055 for more information.

Grace Lutheran Church at 103-15 Union Turnpike in Forest Hills is having a Fine Arts and Arts and Crafts Show on Saturday, May 31st from 10AM – 4PM.  It is an outdoor event, in case of rain it will be held indoors.  Questions?  Call Ruth Kessler at 718-268-2749.

Even as you were probably reading this morning about three new elevators that were finally put into operation by the MTA after years of work and delays, one of the trio broke at around 10:30 a.m., trapping an elderly man inside and prompting FDNY response.

Stephen Melnick, treasurer of the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce, saw the firemen outside of the elevator at around 11 a.m. and took a photo for Facebook.

“I happened to be passing by just as the elderly man was freed from the elevator. He walked away like nothing happened,” Melnick said in a Facebook message. “FDNY had to pry the door open. According to a bank manager [at the NY Community Bank branch], people saw the man trying to get out. The manager hit the emergency button on the outside.”

Melnick reports that he was told the FDNY arrived in short order, and that the man was led out after about a half hour of being trapped inside.

Costing a total of $24.7 million at the end of the day, the project was initiated by the MTA in 2011, but when Hurricane Sandy struck the agency had to pull workers away from improvement projects, causing several delays in completion. Servicing roughly 30,000 straphangers per day, the station is the fifth-busiest in the borough, and until yesterday, the closest subway elevators were at the Union Turnpike station in Kew Gardens and the Roosevelt Avenue stop in Jackson Heights.

While an MTA representative said that details will not be available as to what caused the incident until Monday, the agency expects the broken elevator should be repaired and back in service by Sunday night or Monday morning.

“FDNY told me that there was a piece of equipment that was loose and dangling from the top of the elevator,” Melnick reports. “What concerns me is that the FDNY could not contact anyone from MTA in order to have the power shut off. They ended up telling an MTA worker what had happened who was going to relay it to MTA management.”

The FDNY has not yet provided a statement on the incident.