A Boston-based architectural firm was hired by Borough President Donald Manes in January to look into the feasibility of creating a major performing arts complex for Queens, perhaps in Long Island City… Tribune reporter Joseph Queen reported in March on the deterioration of buildings at Queens College. Dangerous stairways, leaking roofs and broken windows were found to be evidence of a sad state at the college campus…. Queens DA John Santucci called for a federal ban on fake and toy handguns…. First Lady Rosalyn Carter accepted the endorsement of her husband by the Queens Tribune at a ceremony at LaGuardia Airport. President Jimmy Carter was opposed in the New York Democratic Primary by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts…. In March, Ronald Reagan came to Queens to speak to supporters of his presidential bid outside the Wilfred Dalton Republican Club headquarters in Richmond Hill.

Over 1,000 angry Astoria residents protested at the entrance to the Rikers Island bridge, opposing the planned state take-over of the prison on the island….Three hundred fifty people attended a day-long conference on “the Future of Flushing in the 1980s” at Flushing High School. Mayor Ed Koch and top city planners and civic leaders attended workshops and forums….In April, a transit strike hit New York, and Queens streets were devoid of city buses and subways, and Long Island Rail Road entrances were blocked closed….The Flushing Boys Club began a major fundraising drive to stay open. In a promotion in the April 10 issue of the Tribune, football star O. J. Simpson appeared with boys from the club and was quoted, “For many kids like myself, the talent is there, but the guidance to channel it in the right direction isn’t.”…

Queens Councilman-at-Large Eugene Mastropieri was indicted by a federal grand jury in April on tax fraud charges. Mastropieri was censured by his fellow councilmembers in June of 1979 for misconduct in a disciplinary action, unprecedented in that body. The council was still investigating reports that Mastro-pieri did not reside in Queens (as required by law), but in Sands Point, L.I. Queens Borough President Donald Manes said, “Frankly, I don’t understand how he could take all this pressure and remain in public life. There is a tremendous amount of pressure he must be feeling.”… According to figures from the Census Bureau, the growth in the population of Queens in 1979 was 1,600, bringing the borough’s total population to 2,025,574 and remaining the most populous borough after Brooklyn….The  city-owned Queens Zoo in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park would be transferred to the New York Zoological Society, operators of The Bronx Zoo, according to Mayor Ed Koch. The arrangement called for a $4.5 million program of improvements at the zoo….A student pilot and his instructor were killed when their single engine private plane crashed a few feet from the Whitestone Expressway shortly after taking off from  nearby Flushing Airport. The incident renewed calls from local officials to close the facility.

In May, the National Guard announced that it was vacating the 75-year-old Flushing Armory on Northern Boulevard. Housing Guard Units A and B of the 106th Infantry, the castle-like building also served as a major community meeting place.

Two developers went to jail for misappropriating $2 million for Bayside’s Village mall project.

Community leaders announced an all-out drive to prevent the Pomonok Housing Development in Flushing from being taken over by the federal government…. The state Board of Regents approved plans for the Queens Law School…. The third Flushing Fantastic Street Festival drew over 250,000 people in June….At the giant Queens Day festival in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on June 22, the Tribune unveiled a proposal to bring a third world’s fair to New York in 1989….The Queens Museum opened its expanded and newly renovated galleries with a retrospective exhibition on the 1939 World’s Fair called “Dawn of A New Day.”

In July, Councilman-at-Large Eugene Mastropieri resigned…. The city raised the bus and subway fare to 60 cents….Deputy Borough President Lawrence Gresser resigned in order to head up a private development project. Donald Manes appointed Claire Shulman, director of Queens community planning boards since 1972, as the new deputy borough president…. Manes also selected Steven Orlow, his counsel for six years at Borough Hall, as the new Queens councilman-at-large, replacing Eugene Mastropieri…. City Comptroller Harrison Goldin charged that the city lost $43 million in revenue from the College Point Industrial Park because it had been allowed to remain “virtually vacant.”… A giant enclosed shopping mall, larger than the Queens Center Mall in Rego Park, was proposed for the site of the famous RKO Keith’s theater on Northern Boulevard in Flushing. Lawrence Gresser, the former deputy borough president, would be the developer of the $70 million “crystal palace” structure, to be called Flushing Plaza…. Tribune reporter Joseph Queen covered the Queens delegation to the 1980 Democratic National Convention, held at Madison Square Garden…. The Iranian hostage crisis affected a Queens mosque in Woodside. The Islamic Center required police protection because of threats of violence against the center….

In September, College Point residents won a long and sometimes bitter battle to block the sale of the 112-year-old Poppenhusen Institute…. Korvettes department stores on Kissena Boulevard in Flushing and in Douglaston closed after the parent company was purchased by an Ohio firm. The Flushing store was built on the old site of St. Joseph’s Convent…. Private developer George Kauffman was named as the operator of the historic Astoria Studios, which he would expand into a state-of-the-art motion picture, television, radio and recording complex….