Asbestos On The Menu:
The Trib Uncovers Danger At Terrace

By Angela Montefinise, David Oats, Matt Higgins
and Gary McLendon

For the past 39 years, Queens residents have made memories at Corona’s Terrace on the Park, a premier catering facility and luxurious hotspot right in the heart of the City’s most diverse borough.

In 1997, the Tribune was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for the memory it made at Terrace on the Park - one that shook both the former management of the T-shaped establishment and the Parks Department, which owned it.

In a series of investigative articles published throughout 1997, the Tribune uncovered a dangerous asbestos problem at the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park catering hall, and unraveled a scandalous web of cover-ups and finger-pointing.

The story first appeared in the Tribune on Jan. 16, 1997, when the eerie words “Asbestos on the Menu” blazed across the front page. The article quoted a source close to Terrace on the Park as saying, “the place is crawling with asbestos.”

The source explained that when the building was constructed for the 1964 World’s Fair, spray on asbestos – the kind most likely to become airborne – was used as insulation in the pipes and in the walls.

The asbestos started to “flake,” leaving dangerous and possible cancer-causing conditions in the basement, kitchen and banquet hall areas of the catering hall, the source said.

When the matter was brought to the attention of the Parks Department – the entity that owns the Terrace on the Park building and chooses a company to manage it – spokesperson Steve MacQueen said the City had never done an asbestos inspection, and therefore was unaware of a problem.

However, the Tribune obtained a copy of a Request for Proposal (RFP) put out by the Parks Department for the Terrace on the Park building which required the lessee to “remove and dispose of all asbestos-containing and asbestos-contaminated building materials per all applicable rules and regulations.”

MacQueen still denied that the City had ever done an asbestos inspection, but said it was aware that asbestos was used for the building’s construction. He said, “Now that the contract is up, it is a perfect time to get rid of the asbestos.”

Still, he promised that the Parks Department would do an emergency inspection, and it did – leading to the immediate closing of the catering hall’s kitchen, which was ridden with flaking asbestos. The Parks Department blamed Continental Hosts, Inc., which managed Terrace. Continental paid $290,000 to fix the mess, but it didn’t stop there.

Although Parks Commissioner Henry Stern tried to downplay the damage, the Tribune entered Terrace on the Park undercover, and took shocking photos of crumbling asbestos falling from the kitchen and several other rooms in the building.

It did determine, however, that there were no asbestos particles in the catering hall’s air stream, proving that asbestos particles did not fly into the building’s air shafts.

The City demanded that Terrace on the Park’s management clean up the mess, still denying that it had any knowledge of the asbestos problem. Sources, however, told the Tribune that the City was fully aware of the problem, with Ed Buchanan, the former executive chef at Terrace saying, “Many of us knew of the problem from day one, as did the Parks Department and management of Terrace on the Park.”

Buchanan said when the building would shake – the result of an architectural defect – the asbestos could have easily flown into the air and into the ventilation ducts.

Former Parks Chief of Operations for Capital Projects Kenneth Myslik, also said the Parks Department knew of the problem, and presented notes showing the matter was discussed in meetings.

The end result of the investigation was that the RFP was awarded to a different agency, the asbestos was cleaned up, the 120-foot tall catering hall is now safe.