| 1973
The popular Adventurers Inn amusement park was condemned. |
The Tribune began 1973 by entering its third year as a weekly, rather than a bi-weekly, paper....The Tribune discovered horrible living conditions on 137th Street in Flushing, showing photos of crumbling homes and deteriorating infrastructure that Assemblyman Leonard Stavisky pledged to fix....
The construction of a 26-story high-rise in Bay Terrace, called Village Mall, became a target of local protesters, who called the structure out of character with the residential community....
In March, about 400 concerned New Yorkers were invited to a Queens meeting where Queens attorney Mario Cuomo announced his possible candidacy for mayor of New York…A raging controversy emerged in Forest Hills’ School Board 28 when the board refused to comply with Schools Chancellor Harvey Scribner’s attempt to conduct an “ethnic census” among the district’s school personnel....
The 200-year-old Kingsland Homestead in Flushing, which had been spared the wrecker’s ball in 1968 and moved to a new site next to Flushing’s Weeping Beech tree, was restored and opened as a permanent historical museum....In April, Queens District Attorney Thomas J. Mackell was indicted on charges of conspiracy (in a “get-rich-quick scheme”), hindering prosecution and misconduct in office. Charges against Mackell – who declared himself “completely innocent” – were brought by Special Prosecutor Maurice Nadjari… The progenitor of cable television carried a tenant town meeting over an experimental community televised station that was installed by Orth-O-Vision for over 4,800 residents of the Parker Towers apartment complex in Forest Hills. Al Simon, president of the company, called the system the nation’s first community-run television station....
Five days after the governor began proceedings to remove him from office, Queens District Attorney Tom Mackell resigned...In June, hundreds of people stood in the pouring rain on Main Street to welcome home Richard Tangeman of Kew Gardens Hills, a returning Prisoner of War from Vietnam, where he had been held for five years after being shot down in his Navy plane over North Vietnam. “I sure am proud to be home and to be an American,” he said...
In June, the Board of Higher Education approved plans for a Queens law school to be built on the site of Queens College....
On the 4th of July, the city officially re-dedicated the old Singer Bowl arena from the 1964 World’s Fair as the Louis Armstrong Stadium. On what would have been the famed jazz trumpeter’s 73rd birthday, thousands of people turned out for a concert at the Louis Armstrong Stadium, featuring Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Eubie Blake, Gene Krupa and other jazz greats….
The city, acting at the urging of local residents and politicians, moved to condemn the property occupied by the Adventurer’s Inn amusement park on College Point Boulevard in Flushing. The city said the land was needed immediately to make way for the proposed College Point Industrial Park....In August, Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Ille Nastase, Virginia Wade and Billie Jean King competed in the U.S. Open at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills....
In September, one man was killed and over 200 were seriously injured when the ceiling of the old Steinway tunnel collapsed on top of a Queens-bound No. 7 Flushing line train....
A vertical regional shopping center – the first in an urban area – opened in Elmhurst. The Queens Center offered two large department stores (A&S and Ohrbach’s), approximately 70 specialty stores and a large top-floor restaurant, as well as a central enclosed plaza and a parking garage.….
Flushing Hospital, local merchants and drug prevention groups protested the operation of amethadone clinic on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, charging the facility with overdosing patients, dealing drugs and attracting undesirable elements. The Tribune exposed many of the conditions at the methadone center in a series of investigative articles that eventually closed the facility....
Pandemonium broke out at Shea Stadium as thousands of fans stormed the field at the conclusion of theMets’ win in the final game of the National League Championship Series against the Cincinnati Reds. The jubilant fans were celebrating the Mets’ second pennant....
Mark Weiss
Mark, a founding partner of Harbor Group Communications and the former president and CEO of the Rowland Corporation, had also served as president of the Windsor Park Tenants Association. |
Congratulations on the 35th Anniversary of the Queens Tribune – the heart and soul of Queens County.
While I’m sure some will reflect on this occasion in terms of the number of issues published, the number of pages printed, the circulation growth and maybe even the incredible number of advertisers that have sought exposure through the Trib, for me, a long time community activist, I choose to focus on the Tribune in its role as a neighborhood “soap box” – a platform for those individuals and civic organizations that would otherwise have had little chance to take their vision, mission or points of view to the community at large.
From my start as the President of the Windsor Park Tenants Association, the Queens Tribune was recognized as a vehicle for taking tenant concerns to the surrounding community. As tenants, we took our citizenship seriously and we understood the important role well maintained rental properties played in attracting young residents to the neighborhood – residents that often planted seeds in Windsor Park and either stayed in the complex or moved to other parts of the borough. The Queens Tribune gave us a place to voice our concerns about landlord policies and practices with an eye toward their impact on tenant’s quality of life and ultimately their impact on the entire neighborhood and the borough of Queens.
To garner the support of all Queens residents and the political and legislative communities, we maintained a direct line of communications with the reporters at the Queens Tribune and we benefited always from the paper’s fair and accurate coverage of what turned out to be some of the most critical landmark court decisions governing landlord-tenant relations.
Whether it was a fight to keep a local public school from closing, a battle to keep Department of Sanitation trucks out of our parks, a drive to convert a closing library into a senior center, the Queens Tribune was there – to listen, investigate and report. The Tribune added importance and relevance to our community’s concerns and always raised awareness of our positions before our local representatives.
In my role as a tenant and civic leader, I learned that the strength of a community can best be found in its people, its institutions and most importantly in the spirit that guides the progress of both. The Queens Tribune has in the past, and continues today to bolster each of these community assets and for this reason, deserves the respect and admiration of the entire borough of Queens County. |
