FMCP casino opponents rally

continued from page 19 built on losing our hard-earned dollars to casino profits.”

Jean Silva, president of the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Conservancy, said this is the fifth time in the last 20 years she has seen plans for development in the park.

“And none of them put a cent back into the park,” she said.

John Park, a member of Community Board 7, told the Chronicle on Friday that he supports developing the site. He is not pushing specifically for a casino. But he also is not opposed to one should Cohen secure a gaming license.

“I drive by every day for almost 40 years on the Grand Central Parkway or the subway or on Northern Boulevard,” Park said. He said a parking lot used primarily during home games for the Mets can generate jobs and city revenue if developed properly.

“You can’t stop development, but you need a balance,” he said.

Park also said gambling is not about ethnicity, but about gambling.

“We have the bus here that takes people to Atlantic City. Sometimes they go to Connecticut,” he said. “Friends go to Las Vegas every year. Gamblers are going to gamble.”

A spokesman for Cohen, in an email to the Chronicle on Friday, said community input is essential to the process.

“The community is our first and most important partner,” he said. “Over the past six months, we’ve been listening to the community and they’ve made it very clear that they want more from the 50 acres of asphalt around Citi Field. We’re encouraged by what we have been hearing and will continue to host community workshops over the coming weeks to further inform our ultimate vision for the area.”

Among the ideas submitted by residents during the sessions held by Cohen include public green space; athletic fields; improved connections to the Flushing Bay waterfront; a hotel with the ability to host live music and conferences; and improved mass transit infrastructure.

Cohen said in September that any project would need to have dedicated open space for the public and that park space is essential to the community, even around Citi Field.

While opponents have pointed to the property’s designation as parkland — which led the state Court of Appeals to reject a plan for a shopping mall on the site in 2017 — Albany could agree to alienate the property. Pryor said if that happened there is no guarantee that the 50 acres would have to be replaced elsewhere.

But proponents of the plan argue that the area has been underused, serving mostly as a parking lot since the 1939-40 World’s Fair.

They also have pointed out that the state Legislature authorized development on the land in 1961 to facilitate the construction of Shea Stadium. Q

• two Baretta-model ghost gun build kits;

• one large-capacity ammunition feeding device capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition;

• 15 additional magazines;

• four blank model Mac-11 and Mac-10 ghost gun frames;

• two bullet-resistant vests;

• one taser; and

• ammunition of various calibers.

Manuals for various weapons and tools also were among the items seized.

Authorities later obtained an additional search warrant for a storage facility on 70th Street in Glendale which Katz’s office said was owned by Blachowicz, where law enforcement recovered items including:

• nine complete ghost gun assault weapon build kits, with the ability to accept a detachable magazine and a threaded barrel, for the assault rifle models AR-9, AR-10, AR-15, and AR-30;

• one complete ghost gun semiautomatic 9 mm assault pistol build kit, with the ability to accept a detachable magazine and a threaded barrel;

• one complete Sig Sauer 9 mm pistol build kit;

• five complete Polymer 80 semiautomatic ghost gun pistol build kits, for the following models and calibers: .45-caliber, 9 mm Glock 17, 9 mm Glock-26, 9 mm Glock-43, and .22LR-caliber;

• two complete model AK-47 assault rifle ghost gun build kits;

• 25 “solvent traps” that can be made into firearm suppressors or silencers;

• 12 unfinished lower receivers;

• one model 1911 lower receiver;

• 24 assault rifle lower receivers;

• more than 207 large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition; and

• one ghost gunner, which the press release said is a milling machine that gives the owner the ability to take unfinished lower receivers and convert them into components that can be further completed to build fully functioning firearms.

The DA’s Office said based on the items recovered, Blachowicz is alleged to have possessed one operable assault weapon, along with all of the components necessary to build up to an additional 19 completed ghost guns, including numerous assault-rifle-style weapons and semiautomatic pistols.

Authorities added that the items were all allegedly possessed along with foundational components necessary to build additional firearms, dozens of silencers, thousands of rounds of ammunition and large capacity magazines that can hold over ten rounds of ammunition. Q

Correction

The March 2 story “An existential threat from Albany” misidentified which community board the Rev. Carlene Thorbs chairs. It is CB 12. Due to an editing error, her first name also was misspelled. Also, a civic activist was misidentified in a photo caption. It was Henry Euler. We regret the errors. Q

NYBC calls blood emergency

The New York Blood Center has declared its first blood emergency of 2023, with school breaks, poor weather and cold and flu season leading to a 12 percent drop in donations from this time in 2022.

Information is available at nybc.org, and upcoming drives include:

• The Reform Temple of Forest Hills, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 12, at 71-11 112 St. in Forest Hills;

• NYC Department of Design and Construction, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 28, at 3030 Thomson Ave. in Long Island City;

• LaGuardia Community College, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 30, at 31-10 Thomson Ave. in Long Island City;

• Knights of Columbus #5103, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, April 7, at 84-05 78 Ave. in Ridgewood;

• The Shops at Atlas Park, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 8, and Saturday, April 29, at 8000 Cooper Avenue in Glendale; and

• Hemja Welfare Society, noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday, April 9, in the mobile collection site at 37th Road and 74th Street in Jackson Heights. Q

ARTS, CULTURE & LIVING

by Deirdre Bardolf

If you’ve ever taken a yoga class, it is likely you did the tree pose, a balancing posture in which weight is shifted to one leg while the other knee bends and the foot is placed on the inner calf or thigh, improving posture and alignment.

So for Shelly Yang, the new addition of art focused on trees is perfect for her studio Form + Flow in Long Island City, where practitioners can stand tall and root into the ground and look to the works for inspiration.

The Tree of Life exhibition comes from Studio 41, the newly formed art collective right next door to the studio.

An opening for the new exhibit, free and open to the public, will be next Friday, March 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. at 27-05 41 Ave.

It is the second time Studio 41 and Form + Flow have partnered up to adorn the space. Yang, who opened her studio four years ago, has rotating exhibits on view.

She described the studio as “a community hub that blends yoga, art and wellness to inspire and nurture the soul.”

“It’s beautiful when people do yoga and they get to admire these pieces,” said Yang. “We get a lot of students in the studio every day versus a gallery that won’t get many people inside the space.”

And that’s what Studio 41 co-founders Dianne Martin and Nancy Gesimondo hope for as they work to draw visitors to their new co-creation space.

“We were really happy to have developed this relationship with Form + Flow,” said Martin. “Shelly stopped into our studio not long after we opened and saw what we were doing. A lot of the artists, including Nancy and myself, worked with nature-related themes so the relationship seemed pretty automatic,” she said.

The artists hope to “cross-pollinate” visitors who may be interested in both expressions.

The works on view at Form + Flow include Martin’s monotype prints, James Seffens’ enamel paintings on wood, Tina Glavan’s encaustic, or hot wax, continued on page 27