CB 11 Votes to Switch Little Neck Street Back to Two-Way

Community Board 11 voted unanimously to switch a one-way road in Little Neck back to a two-way street following an outpouring of complaints from residents that the roadway is dangerous.

Jerry Iannece, CB 11’s chairman, said the board had received a two-page petition signed by numerous residents of Leith Road.

Little Neck residents have been calling for the city to change the road back to a two-way street. It had been switched to a one-way road two years ago.

“Our concern is for the safety of the people on Leith Road,” resident Judith Marden said. “The way it has been restructured, residents have to travel up a hill that is curvy. During the winter, it’s very difficult to maneuver that street. It’s snowy and icy and our streets are not plowed quickly.”

Residents said the one-way street forces them to travel on the hilly Annadale Lane, which includes many spots where drivers are not able to see if another vehicle is heading toward them.

CB 11 voted unanimously to change the road back to a two-way street. The measure will now go before the city’s Department of Transportation.

The board also called for capital expense requests from the community for Fiscal Year 2013.

Walter Mugdan, president of the Udalls Cove Preservation Committee, said that all but four acres of the park’s land had been acquired.

“There’s no immediate pressure on those acres to develop it,” he said. “The city made a commitment many years ago to complete this acquisition.”

The completion of the park’s acquisition was also listed on the board’s Fiscal Year 2012 list of priority projects.

Mugdan said the preservation committee was also in the process of finding a contractor to remove several trees that fell in Udalls Cove, including two in Aurora Pond, when Hurricane Irene visited the city last month.

Iannece also updated the board on the massive sewer project on Northern Boulevard that will prevent flooding in northeast Queens. The sewer portion of the project has been completed, but CB 11 is still awaiting money from Borough President Helen Marshall that would allow for the completion one of the project’s other phases that includes the creation of a pathway around Oakland Lake.

During the meeting, 111th Precinct Capt. Ron Leyson told CB 11 members that crime as down 60 percent for the year in northeast Queens.

He said the precinct had seen a rise in the number of felony assaults. But the act of choking another person has been switched from being a misdemeanor to a felony assault, which Leyson attributes to the spike in the number of reported incidents.

The precinct has also been investigating a borough-wide robbery pattern during which a man approaches young men, tells them that his sister’s phone has been stolen, demands that they show him their phones to prove they are not stolen and then takes his victims’ phones.

During each incident, the suspect threatens to pull out a gun, but he has never actually displayed a weapon, Leyson said.

The captain described the suspect as a six-foot-four-inch black man with tattoos on his arms.

The suspect has struck 12 times in Queens, five of which were in the 111th Precinct.