Frustration growing among community over building left abandoned for years in Ridgewood, Queens
RIDGEWOOD, Queens (WABC) -- Anger and frustration are growing for a neighborhood in Queens, where residents say a building has remained abandoned for more than a decade.
By night, the southwest corner of Linden Street and Woodward Avenue sits enshrouded in darkness. Families are forced to dart through the pitch-black tunnel under an ancient sidewalk shed.
By day, it's clear the blight the building has become to neighbors who have lived here forever.
Glenn Ocasio was born and raised Ridgewood, and he can't remember a time when 614 Woodward Ave. wasn't sitting, abandoned and surrounded by corroding scaffolding, with its desiccated structure slowly disintegrating.
"The drug addicts come over here. You see them over here. You see their drug paraphernalia all over the floor and whatnot," Ocasio said.
"I grew up on this block. All you want to see is positivity," said neighborhood resident Elisio Paz. "Once you see this it's, like what the hell?
Now, new neighbors are taking over.
"Actually, when it's dark I cross the street because there are a ton of rats here," said one woman.
Whether it was a concerned community member or the actual property owner, someone put "no dumping" signs on the outside of the scaffolding.
It hasn't had much of an impact though. The sidewalk is just as trash strewn as neighbors say it's been for years.
The one-time funeral home has become a so-called "zombie building," racking up more than half-a-million dollars in fines in abandonment, but no owner is around to pay them.
"You can't find them. I mean nobody can locate them," Councilmember Robert Holden.
Holden is the local city councilman, trying to unlock the future of this dormant plot of land.
He wrote a letter to the Department of Buildings and Housing Preservation and Development, demanding action.
"I would love HPD to take over the property and renovate it and sell it off or just sell it off as is," Holden said. "I mean if you own the property and you owe that much on the property, that property should be taken away."
The Department of Buildings said they received the letter from Holden, and said they are working on their own letter in response.
"The Department is committed to using all of the tools at our disposal to compel property owners to make needed building repairs, so that long standing sidewalk sheds that are detracting from the vibrancy of our neighborhoods can be safely removed," the department said in a statement. "This sidewalk shed is included in the Department's Long Standing Shed program, subjecting it to enhanced enforcement scrutiny from the Department. Department attorneys are currently researching into whether enhanced enforcement actions taken against the property owners are appropriate in this case."
They said that inspectors were last on the scene on Feb. 7, where they say they found that the sidewalk shed was in good condition, and the building was properly sealed against "unauthorized entry." They said their inspectors did not see any "immediately hazardous conditions."
Meanwhile, the city's Sanitation Department said in a statement that "we recently spoke to the owner about property owners' responsibilities to keep sidewalks clean." They said they cleaned the location as recently as Feb. 4, and issued four dirty sidewalk summonses in the last month alone.
A man, that city records list as an owner, told Eyewitness News that he no longer has anything to do with the property, and that the person who does, is in foreclosure.
In the meantime, there's little hope for progress in this blighted corner of Queens.
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