By LIZ GOFF

The Tribune was launched in February 1970. The first issue was eight pages, specifically geared toward covering the Flushing community.

The paper was a monthly publication back then. Production took place at two desks in the back of a Main Street real estate store, where Trib founder Gary Ackerman rented space.

By mid-1970 the paper had grown to 32 pages and was published bi-weekly. Subscriptions were offered to help offset production costs and increase circulation.

In 1979, Michael Schenkler assumed part-time responsibility for production of the Tribune, a 12-to-16 page weekly. Schenkler left his job as a school principal in 1982 to take on the full-time challenge of the Tribune.

Then-partners Ackerman and Schenkler sold the paper in 1989, and the Tribune graduated from a hometown paper to a public company – News Communications (NCI). Under Schenkler’s watchful eye (he remained as publisher after the sale), the Tribune expanded to cover the entire borough of Queens. In 1991, Schenkler rose to become president of NCI, and he again expanded the company to 22 weekly newspapers, a glossy magazine and a newspaper dedicated to serving Capitol Hill.

While the Tribune continues to grow and prosper, it has lived up to the credo Ackerman and Schenkler applied to it 30 years ago – "All News Is Local" – covering the activities of Queens residents, quality of life issues and much more, while pausing weekly to feature issues and controversies which effect the borough on a broader level.

Moses: He Connected The Dots

"More than any other person since God, he physically changed the landscape in Queens," is how one admirer had summed up the accomplishments of the late Robert Moses in Queens.

Born in Connecticut, educated at Yale, Oxford and Columbia, Moses started his career in public administration in 1927, as Secretary of State to Governor Alfred E. Smith. It was the beginning of a career that would see Moses usher in a statewide system of parkways, bring wholesale road, bridge and park building to New York City, create Jones Beach, the Long Island system of highways, and find the first home for the fledgling United Nations.

The catalog of his achievements once prompted the observation that Moses was a man "who built more public projects than the Pharoahs."

The most significant of the projects he brought to Queens was the creation of the Triboro Bridge, which connects the borough to the Bronx and Manhattan. Building the bridge, in turn, led to the creation of the Grand Central Parkway. The search for a connection between the Grand Central and Long Island roads brought Moses to the Corona Ash Heap, which he amazingly transformed into the present Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

He was also responsible for the creation of Shea Stadium, the Queens Botanical Gardens, the Whitestone Bridge, Kissena and Alley Pond parks, the Douglaston and Crocheron parks, the Northern State Parkway, the Long Island Expressway, the Clearview Expressway, the Belt Parkway, Kennedy Airport and LaGuardia Airport, named after the Mayor who appointed him Parks Commissioner in 1936.

1972 - Mario Cuomo:

In February, 1972 Corona attorney Mario Cuomo stepped into a fire-and-brimstone dispute over a proposed Lefrak hi-rise development in Forest Hills.

Cuomo led the community to victory when, in July 1972, Borough President Donald Manes announced a compromise on the height of the development.

1973 - Queens Center Mall:

The Queens Center Mall opened its doors on Sept. 12, 1973.

The mall wrote some history of its own that day, opening as the only urban retail shopping center in New York City. It remains the only indoor, climate-controlled mall in the county. The mall occupies almost 700,000 square feet on a 5.5-acre plot located at the corner of Queens and Woodhaven boulevards.

The mall’s opening brought the first Abraham & Strauss and Ohrbach’s department stores to Queens.

Its retail capacity allowed for an additional 65 shops and service outlets, surrounded by a multi-level indoor parking facility.

Queensites were no longer forced to travel to Long Island and the suburbs for the convenience of mall shopping. And the Queens Center, easily accessible by bus or subway, is actually within walking distance for many borough residents.

The opening of the Queens Center also represented a significant change in the shopping habits of the urban consumer. It marked the beginning of the end of the retail flight to the suburbs and the regeneration of urban retail muscle.

A recently completed multi-million dollar renovation and expansion at the mall included redevelopment of a new third level at the Queens Center, opening up an additional 43,000 square feet of retailing space.