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Elmhurst: Boulevard of Life

BY ROBERT POLNER | NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

March 18, 2006

Cream-colored and curved, with more than a dash of Miami Beach, the condominium will, when completed, contain 30 apartments, a rooftop patio and something uncommon for its largely working-class environs -- a doorman.

Taller at six stories than most of its neighbors, the building's terraces will look out over a low-rise landscape striped by 12-lane Queens Boulevard and checkered with century-old homes, newly built town houses, trendy nightclubs and a hodgepodge of shops, restaurants and billboards. The developer hopes the best apartments will sell quickly, and for nearly $1 million.

This terrain, with Manhattan's skyscrapers looming on the western horizon, bears the unmistakable marks of an unprecedented wave of commercial and residential investment that has crested on a once sooty pass-through to Manhattan. The stretch has been reborn as a vibrant social and shopping destination in its own right. Everywhere, it seems, one thing is demolished and another -- usually bigger -- is built in its wake, as a cacophony of jackhammers and backhoes punctuates the 24-hour din of traffic.

Nurtured by the flood of immigration to the New York region over more than 40 years, this 1.2-mile segment of Queens Boulevard in the heart of America's most ethnically varied community -- Elmhurst -- is awash in rapid growth and renewal. The "Boulevard of Death" is pulsating with new life.

Change with every step

A walk along the boulevard presents a world of visual contrasts, often changing block by block. It is a scene mirrored on commercial strips similarly influenced by immigrants eager to make their mark -- for example, Hillside Avenue's South Asian-accented segment at the Queens/Nassau line, Korean-American Union Street in Flushing, or Main Street in Hempstead with its heavy Latino presence. But rarely has such a transformation been as dramatic or as rapid as on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst.

The last two generations of immigrants have created opportunity here, where others saw decline. And their often grueling efforts have paid off.

They have benefited from a mixture of hard-won racial acceptance and a favorable economic climate. Continuous population growth has spurred investment, and the area has an ample supply of subways, buses, decent places to live and work, and large parcels of land in a city where space is a precious commodity.

At the 79-year-old Elks Lodge, with a shadow of the influence it once wielded, new owners saw their chance and seized it. The New Life Fellowship Church, a multiethnic, nondenominational Christian fellowship, bought the building, filling it with nearly 800 congregants every Sunday for worship in the ornate auditorium on the second floor while church staff operates community programs down the hall.

A block from the old lodge on the boulevard stands Pop, a diner that evokes a bowling alley with its orange hue. For years it was the Sage Diner, and in the 1980s it was where a Queens Boulevard lawyer from Elmhurst ordered coffee and eggs at one of the Leatherine booths and gathered cash bribes for Donald Manes, the borough president who knifed himself to death as investigators zeroed in. If Pop's retro design belongs to the classic style of the American diner that remained popular as late as the era of the World's Fair -- staged nearby in 1964-65 -- the restaurant's menu is all 2006. Entrees as varied as Thai salad and Roumanian goulash cater to the kaleidoscopic mix of palates, and are as much a part of the menu as burgers and shakes.

A few blocks east, the Italian Charities of America -- a white, two-story stucco-and-brick edifice built in the 1950s -- houses both the offices of the charity and a city-funded senior center. Two-thirds of those who come to the "Italian Senior Center" are ethnic Asians -- about 700 people in all -- who engage in manic games of mah-jongg and ping-pong downstairs and whirl to Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett in the cavernous ballroom up a steep set of stairs.

From there, head down the "Boulevard of Death" -- so named by headline writers because it is notoriously unforgiving to pedestrians, with 10 killed on average each year during the 1990s. Soon, you'll enter a circular building that houses Queens Center, one of the busiest malls in the United States and recently enlarged, welcoming upscale franchises such as Banana Republic and Coach, along with all manner of quick eats.

Breaking down to build up

On both sides of the boulevard, demolition crews are doing a fine business. Older structures, including two or three longtime fast-food restaurants, are giving way to upscale residential ventures. In a deep lot on the south side of the boulevard just east of Van Loon Street, a bulldozer tills the dirt behind a construction fence to make way for an anticipated 11-story hotel, which would be the first new hotel on the strip in decades and the tallest building on this stretch.

Just around the corner, two four-story apartment houses are going up; one is nearly complete and the other was recently begun. In place of what had been a neighborhood fixture -- a now-defunct Firestone Tires dealership -- a 60-unit apartment building was erected about two years ago and in that time has been filled with residential tenants, new businesses as well as small medical offices. Diagonally across the boulevard, near 51st Avenue, a large automobile parts store has been leveled to create room for an anticipated seven-story apartment building.

Like its retail space, Elmhurst housing rarely stays empty for long, due in large part to the torrent of foreign-born residents who started arriving in the community after Lyndon B. Johnson signed the U.S. Immigration and Reform Act of 1965. An astounding 73 percent of Elmhurst's population hails from abroad, according to the Census Bureau. The figure is twice the city's 36-percent average, while 14 percent of Long Islanders are from other countries. Elmhurst's first-generation population is greater than that of any other community of at least 100,000 in the country. Just as striking, 125 countries of origin are represented.

Immigrants continue to arrive, in some cases replacing those who have followed the classic easterly trajectory out of the neighborhood toward something almost mythic in the imagination of their countrymen back home: a house of their own in the suburbs.

Elmhurst, where some civic leaders in the 1970s tried to fight back the heavy immigrant influx, has forged a unique identity across lines of ethnicity, culture, language, race and class. The community's newcomers during those years, along with their children, are the merchants, homeowners and investors of today.

Investing their dreams

Andre Rodriguez, the son of immigrants, has invested his hopes and money on Queens Boulevard. In September, he opened Nuves, a video-and-DJ tapas lounge catering to 20-somethings. Its name is the Spanish word for clouds.