There are a few points to keep in mind as the state begins the visioning process for the southern part of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center campus. And amazingly enough, they’re all good for the people of Queens, especially those who live near…

King Manor in Jamaica was home to a framer and signer of the Constitution, Rufus King. He farmed the land, owning 150 acres at the time, served as a senator and ambassador to Great Britain, and passionately fought to end slavery. His son, Joh…

Capitalism is dynamic, often replacing one thing with something better as millions of people make individual decisions on what is valuable. Refrigerators replace iceboxes. Honda Civics replace Ford Fairmonts. Facebook replaces Myspace.Many of…

Borough President Donovan Richards has disappointingly taken the wrong side in opposing two Success Academy charter school co-locations at campuses in Southeast Queens. Richards last week wrote the mayor to express his “strong opposition” to …

Faced with a rapid influx of destitute people in desperate need of city services including shelter, Comptroller Brad Lander’s instinct is to go on Twitter and tell them to come on in, while suggesting taxing the rich some more to pay for them…

It took GuiYing Ma a few months to die after Elisaul Perez pounded her head in with a rock. The North Corona grandmother was in an induced coma for 10 weeks and was kept alive with a ventilator and a feeding tube. A couple weeks after she wok…

There’s nothing incoming Congressman George Santos won’t mislead us about!Amidst the chaos that has marked the Republicans’ ascension to leadership in the House of Representatives, Santos’ office had a press release on his official website sa…

We were glad Steve Cohen bought the Mets, and he’s lived up to the hype, spending big to build a top team.But he may be getting too greedy. That’s no surprise coming from a billionaire, but we do expect Cohen to follow the law. He appears to …

Few people have the impact on their city and nation that Francis Lewis did, having been a signer of the Declaration of Independence representing New York in the Continental Congress. The wealthy merchant and lawmaker paid a high price for his…

“We don’t report the planes that land,” is an old reporter’s adage, betraying some of the jaded cynicism that also produced gems such as “If you’re mother says she loves you, check it out.”But there are exceptions to just about every rule, an…

Over at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, students learn in a building that houses nearly 4,500 kids and operates at 160 percent capacity. It had been at 200 percent before a new annex with 555 seats opened this year. It’s a top-not…

The number of anti-Semitic hate crimes reported in the city more than doubled last month. Did you notice? Or were you too wrapped up in the anti-Semitism displayed by a basketball star, by a former hip-hop celebrity and by the United Nations …

Unless you never go anywhere, you’ve seen some truly disturbed people out on the streets or in the subways — unkempt, to be kind, maybe muttering to themselves, maybe yelling, maybe just lying there oblivious to the world. They need help. The…

There are some people on the City Council who really do seem determined to drive businesses out of the city. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising when they bill themselves as Democratic Socialists, but it still is.The latest move reportedly c…

This page has long stood for law and order, decrying Albany’s insane bail “reform” law that’s got the revolving door of justice spinning faster, advocating against replacing Rikers Island with smaller jails that simply would not hold enough p…

We understand if Mets owner Steve Cohen wants to have it all — he’s a billionaire. They tend to want a lot. But a line has to be drawn somewhere. And that line has to be drawn here in Queens.Last week we got the news that a soccer stadium wil…

When the Queens Chronicle asked the state’s Office of Cannabis Management (yes, we have that now, along with a Cannabis Control Board) for a list of those who had won the new licenses to legally sell marijuana, we were really only interested …

If there’s any development proposal that’s a perfect fit for Willets Point, it has to be a soccer stadium, and Queens got a big boost Wednesday when the mayor announced that the New York City Football Club will make its home there.Constructio…

No one’s going to do anything about the scourge of illegal e-mopeds on our streets, since they’re so vital to our economy and our leaders’ goals for transportation, but the least we can do is make their batteries less likely to burst into fla…

Queens history runs deep, and we’ve covered a lot of it in our annual Anniversary special editions over the years, once even delving all the way back to about 18,000 BCE, when the land we stand upon literally was being formed as the glacier a…

These are confusing economic times. And not just over the long term, and not just for amateur economists like you and us.On Wednesday the Federal Reserve announced an interest rate hike of three-quarters of a point, to a range of 3.75 to 4 pe…

Nationally, the pundits say, the 2024 race will begin as soon as next week’s midterm elections are over. Here in New York City, there will be another set of contests in between: for City Council.“Wait,” you say, “we just voted for Council las…

Trying to bring some order to the growing chaos and lawlessness on city streets and sidewalks, City Councilman Bob Holden of Maspeth has introduced a bill that would require all those e-bikes and e-scooters you see weaving through traffic to …

Election Day is Nov. 8, but there’s no need to wait to cast your ballot. Early voting begins Saturday, Oct. 29 and runs through Sunday, Nov. 6.You have plenty to vote on: our next governor, lieutenant governor, state attorney general, comptro…

Nothing in city law requires a developer to set aside 55 percent of the units in a new housing project as affordable — meaning rented at below-market rates and mostly subsidized. Yet that’s the arbitrary demand City Councilwoman Julie Won is …

Leaving Citi Field on Sunday night, following a half-hour of excitement (pregame and the first inning) and two and a half hours of the slog toward the death of the 2022 Mets (everything that followed), an aura of disbelief and disappointment …

Any hope of restoring train service along the Long Island Rail Road’s old Rockaway Beach Line was always slim to none. Yes, it would be great in theory to have a new public transit connection from Rockaway to Rego Park, but the obstacles were…

People living in public housing deserve hot food, not hot plates. Yet the latter is what they need at the Bland Houses in Flushing, where nearly 400 residents have been without cooking gas since the beginning of May. Some say they also lack g…

Where were the cops? That’s one thing JFK Airport security guard and mother of five Elizabeth Gomes has wondered since she was savagely beaten, kicked again and again, by some degenerate at the Howard Beach A train station last week. She may …

There should be an Indigenous Peoples Day in New York State. It just shouldn’t be on Columbus Day.Yet the push to replace the holiday that honors the explorer and celebrates both Italian-American heritage and Western civilization itself with …

So, they’re in. After running roughshod over the National League for five and a-half months (save 10 days earlier this month, when they fell out of first place, reclaimed first place, then got swept by the Cubs while still retaining first pla…

There’s a lot of confusion out there when it comes to the e-bikes and scooters that are taking up more and more of our streets and sidewalks. What exactly was made legal may not be clear to everyone — in fact it’s not even always clear to pol…

Reducing class sizes is easier said than done, but try telling that to the state Legislature and Gov. Hochul. She just signed the bill lawmakers passed in June placing new limits on class sizes. It’s a noble goal, but what about unintended co…

The plan to close Rikers Island and replace it with jails based in every borough save Staten Island was always more about wishful thinking, virtue signaling and pandering than anything practical. The only sensible aspect of it was that detain…

The State of New York is discriminating against our best drug dealers.In order to get a marijuana dispensing license during the lucrative first round of permitting, you must either have a pot-related conviction on your record or have a close …

Don’t worry, kids, you can still go to the store to buy whipped cream for those sundaes you’re making at home!This week a number of media outlets, from local to national, put out some bad reporting about the state ban on selling nitrous oxide…

Summer’s almost gone, which means not just that kids are going back to class and we’re all going into autumn, but that you’re doing it armed with the Queens Chronicle’s annual Back to School and Fall Guide special edition.We hope you’ll find …

Even if you’re such a nice guy that you wouldn’t hurt a fly, we ask that you make an exception. The spotted lanternfly has got to go.To get a better look at the destructive little bug, check out our story in this week’s edition or at qchron.c…

We’ll all suffer if congestion pricing is imposed, but one group that would really take a hit are for-hire vehicle drivers.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has laid on the table seven different plans to siphon money out of your pocke…

Just about every weekday morning, even in summertime, the folks at ICCD, the Interdisciplinary Center for Child Development, on 62nd Drive in Rego Park go out to the arriving buses to guide the preschoolers inside. One of the adults usually h…

The powers that be seemingly will not rest until they add to everyone’s cost of living by imposing congestion pricing fees on people driving into Midtown and Downtown Manhattan. Even if you don’t go into the city much, the companies that deli…

Outside one restaurant in Flushing, the outdoor dining shed wasn’t even being used for dining. A handwritten sign appeared on it in Chinese characters, saying it was busy store location available for rent, according to an affidavit filed in s…

All-day and all-night operation of speed cameras in school zones is here. Just a few notes on that:The definition of school zone has been warped beyond all recognition to allow cameras anywhere within a quarter-mile of any campus.

“Thanks for the hot dog, chief. Now how about the hotdogging up and down the streets that these dirt bike and ATV riders are doing all the time? What are you doing about that?”Though they need not be quite so blunt, Queens residents will soon…

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won her western Queens district in large part because the incumbent congressman had become complacent, spending so much time at his suburban Washington home that he became known as “Virginia Joe Crowley.”Is Ocasi…

If there’s one community that could lay claim to the title “capital of Queens,” it’s Jamaica (sorry, Flushing; you’re a respectably close second). Its history as a center for commerce goes back to Dutch Colonial times at least; Jamaica Avenue…

The City Council’s 51 districts are in the midst of being redrawn, and if you have an opinion on how that should be done, you’ll get your chance to voice it at a hearing to be held sometime next month.Draft maps have been drawn up by the New …

Don’t throw the ferry out with the math-water! It’s true the numbers don’t add up when it comes to the cost of running NYC Ferry, as per a new audit from city Comptroller Brad Lander, but that’s no surprise. This was a Bill de Blasio joint. O…

The havoc caused by dirt bike and ATV riders who clog up roadways and intimidate or even attack innocent drivers is getting worse, and must be addressed more forcefully.For the past three Sundays, a band of riders that South Queens City Counc…

There’s been a lot of Queensifying, as we call it — taking statewide and national news and localizing it — here at the Chronicle lately, with good reason.It’s a given that events in Albany, in Washington and worldwide have repercussions here,…