Gianaris extolled the virtues of the film and television industry and the local restaurants. The January meeting of the Long Island City/Astoria Chamber of Commerce was held at Ponticello Ristorante on Broadway and was the second of two meetings devoted to tourism in the greater Long Island City area, which includes Astoria, Sunnyside, and Woodside. The luncheon audience heard from Deborah Robinson of LaGuardia Community College, speaking about internships and how they could be helpful in the development of tourism; Jack Eichenbaum, an “urban geographer”, who had much to say about Long Island City’s history; Bob Singleton of the Greater Astoria Historical Society (GAHS), who spoke of the treasury of local information available at GAHS; and Louis Xifaris, who spoke of programs to attract tourists that could be made available at the local hotels, whose number has greatly expanded in recent years and continues to grow.
State Senator Michael Gianaris also spoke at the beginning of the meeting. His district covers most of greater Long Island City and more, but Astoria is his home base, as it was during his 10 years in the Assembly, so he extolled the virtues of its film and television industry and its restaurants. The former, exemplified by Kaufman Astoria Studios, was described as “the single best development” in local business in the last 10 years. Of the latter, he said that when he is in Albany he often hears legislators and others from all over the state speak enthusiastically of restaurants they have enjoyed in Astoria.
The senator’s remarks provided a good introduction to Chamber President Arthur Rosenfield’s proposal to found the Travel and Tourism Council for Long Island City (TTCLIC). Rosenfield said TTCLIC could enlist the talents of LaGuardia Community College interns for its development. He said he had worked on this idea for some time and found himself aided in the cause by the continuing appearance of new hotels in both Long Island City and Astoria, especially in the Dutch Kills section north of Queens Plaza. He introduced Robinson of LaGuardia’s Business and Technology Department, who spoke of internships and how to make them a successful experience. The first step, she said, is to orient new interns to the function of the organization they are working for and describe their job duties. They must meet the same standards and follow the same rules as regular employees. In a school-run program, they work between faculty advisors and employers. They are required to attend school seminars where their work experiences are examined. They might even have to make reports that would entail interviewing employers and employees. Rosenfield said it is important that interns be paid, and he foresaw grants to fund TTCLIC, to enable such payments.
Eichenbaum said that in 1963 he was living in Flushing and commuting to Cooper Union in Manhattan. He was utterly ignorant of Long Island City until his senior year, when he and his class in industrial engineering made a tour of the Jack Frost sugar refinery located there. He found himself fascinated by the entire Hunters Point industrial section, beginning with the dirty old plant he’d just visited, where tarantulas nested in the sugar cane. Upon graduation that year he left the city for more than a decade, during which time, in 1967, Jack Frost was razed. When he returned to the city in 1976 he looked for an apartment in Astoria or Hunters Point, and though he settled again in Flushing, where he still lives, his devotion to Long Island City lasted. As a tour guide these days, he finds the best tours to lead locally are through Gantry Park on the East River; over the Ed Koch- Queensboro Bridge; and in and around the revitalized Queens Plaza—though the site, or sight, that most impresses foreign tourists, he said, is the Five Points building on Jackson Avenue and Crane Street, with all the elaborate graffiti on its walls of peeling yellow paint. He mentioned Newtown Creek. In the early 19th century it was pleasant enough for De Witt Clinton to have a summer home there, but by the end of that century, after decades of being an industrial canal provided by nature, it was considered the most polluted place in New York. “It’s still bad,” Eichenbaum said, but he conducts boat tours on it anyway. Finally, he said a tour that is a sellout every time it’s made available is the No. 7 train tour from Main Street in Flushing to Queensboro Plaza, with much explanation of all the neighborhoods (Flushing, Corona, Jackson Heights, Woodside, Sunnyside and Long Island City) in between.
Singleton told the meeting that the Greater Astoria Historical Society has more than 5,000 local history images online and that for 10 years he was the exclusive tour guide for Steinway Street. His knowledge of Western Queens is extensive. He said he is currently composing a brochure for a Brooklyn group that covers East River history from DUMBO (the neighborhood Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) to Astoria. Last summer, he said, he served as an historical consultant to the makers of the new movie version of The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s novel includes a long automobile ride, circa 1922, through Western Queens and over the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan. Singleton was around to assure that that and other parts of the book had an air of authenticity when brought to the screen.
Xifaras, a relationship manager with Heartland Payment Systems, said he is interested in the further development of hotels in Long Island City. To that end, he seeks to bring in the aid of the American Hotel and Lodging Association. His market, he said, is the smaller hotel chains and independent hotels. Asked about promotional devices, he dismissed gift cards as “a thing of the past”, succeeded by loyalty cards. Rosenfield said they can be beneficial to merchants, if they know how to use them the right way. John Dallaire, chamber secretary, recalled that at the December meeting, Markly Wilson, of the New York State Department of Tourism, said, “Give me the product and I can market it.” That should be a cue for the chamber to put packages together that others can market. Singleton had earlier suggested that the chamber secure all these new hotels as members and help to develop marketing plans.
The next chamber meeting is February 16, though at the close of the January meeting no one was sure where it would be. The Waterfront Crabhouse might be open by then, or perhaps it can be held on the 16th floor of the Court Square Building, effectively the chamber’s board room.
