Daily News, September 25, 1998 It's landmark neglect, local activists charging By Claire Serant Queens has the fewest individual landmarked properties in the city, but it appears to lead the other boroughs in the number of historic buildings that have fallen in disrepair, say local preservationists. "The most prominent cases of neglect are in Queens," said City Councilman John Sabini (D-Jackson Heights), chairman of the Council's subcommittee on Landmarks, Public Siting and Maritime Uses. The subcommittee held a hearing Wednesday on the plight of city landmarks at the Long Island City Courthouse. The hearing drew Borough President Claire Shulman, city Landmarks Preservation Commissioner Jennifer Raab, local politicians and several preservationists. Raab said the commission believes it will have some success with new legislation that levies civil penalties against building owners who violate landmark laws. Critics, however, contend that those efforts do little to save crumbling landmark structures whose owners have allowed them to decay. Queens has 39 individual landmarked properties of which three - the RKO Keith's Theatre in Flushing, St. Monica's Church in Jamaica and the Terra Cotta Works Building in Long Island City - suffer from neglect at the hands of private owners and the city, preservationists said. This year, the roof of St. Monica's Church - a 142-year-old, city-owned structure on the Jamaica campus of York College - collapsed after heavy rains. "We can't take care of the treasures we have," testified Susan Tunick, president of Friends of Terra Cotta. The Manhattan-based preservation group is concerned about the Terra Cotta Works Building, a blighted property owned by Citibank on Vernon Blvd. In Long Island City. Raab said the Landmarks Preservation Commission's threat of "legal action and bad publicity" against Citibank finally forced the bank to seek negotiations with an undisclosed developer to sell the Terra Cotta site. Terri Thomson, Citibank's director of governmental relations, said the bank had been had been "looking at the future of the building for many years." The commission's new enforcement effort requires violators to be sent warning letters, Raab explained. The rules set a time frame of 20 working days for a response. So far, 163 warning letters have been sent, and about half of the recipients responded, she said. "Given the potential for significant penalties if a violation is not cured, we believe the vast majority...will cure their violations," Raab said. Flushing developer Thomas Huang, who owns the long-vacant RKO Keith's Theatre in Flushing, has removed asbestos from the landmarked building, said Marc Wurzel, a spokesman for Attorney General Dennis Vacco. As a criminal case brought by Vacco against Huang and Yeh Realty for environmental- related crimes proceeds, Huang must work with the commission to restore the building's landmarked lobby, Wurzel said. But, Jerry Rotondi, a member of the Committee to Save the RKO Keith's of Flushing Inc. testified that he was not impressed. "[The] commission has been guilty of demolition by neglect by not implementing the full force of the landmarks law to compel the owner into legal compliance," Rotondi said. "We are losing, on an almost daily basis, the history and architecture that make our neighborhoods distinct, said Paul Graziano, a board member of the committee. Raab said state legislators should give the city's Environmental Control Board the authority to automatically docket judgements in landmark cases, to make collecting fines easier. And she insisted that the news was not all bad, citing the success story of the historic Hammerstein House in Beechhurst. The house was on the decline for many years but it is being restored as part of a condominium development. go to top