By Adam Kramer
The white population has dropped in Bayside while the number of Asians has nearly doubled in Flushing over the past 10 years, the 2000 Census breakdown for northeast Queens showed.
Whites and Asians account for 82.3 percent of the northeast Queens population, the Census figures reveal, while they only made up 61.6 percent of the entire borough.
Northeast Queens, covering Bayside, Flushing, Auburndale, Glen Oaks, Bellerose, Floral Park, Fresh Meadows, Jamaica Estates, Little Neck, Douglaston, Whitestone, College Point and surrounding neighborhoods, had a total population of 574,697 residents, or 26 percent of the borough’s population.
The largest group is whites who comprise 52.8 percent of the area’s population totaling 303,310 compared to boroughwide, where whites number 982,725, or 44 percent.
In Bayside, which stretches east from Utopia Parkway to Cross Island Parkway and north from the Long Island Expressway to Little Bay, the white population has declined by nearly 20 percent, while the Asian population nearly doubled in the past 10 years, according to the Census figures.
Asians are the second most dominant group in northeast Queens, which has 169,728 of the borough’s 391,500 people of Asian origin. They make up 29.5 percent of the area’s population, whereas Asians comprise only 17.6 percent of the boroughwide count.
In northeast Queen, Asians account for 43.4 percent of the entire borough’s Asian population, which is concentrated in Glen Oaks, Floral Park, Bayside and Flushing.
In Flushing, which stretches from the Van Wyck Expressway east to Utopia Parkway and from Willets Point Avenue south to Booth Memorial Avenue, the Asian population nearly doubled between 1990 and 2000.
Along Main Street in downtown Flushing, stores advertise wares in English, Chinese and Korean. The area has also become known to many New Yorkers as a second Chinatown.
Hispanics comprise only 15.1 percent of the population in northeast Queens with 86,704 residents, compared to 25 percent of the 556,605 Hispanics living throughout the borough. Northeastern Queens Hispanic residents — concentrated in Flushing — make up only 15.6 percent of the entire Hispanic population in Queens.
In the Briarwood and Jamaica Estates area, which ranges from the Van Wyck Expressway east to the Utopia Parkway and Hillside Avenue north to Union Turnpike, the Hispanic population has grown by nearly a third since the last census in 1990.
The smallest major minority classification, according to the Census, is the black population, which accounts for only 6.8 percent of northeast Queens. Blacks comprise 20 percent of Queens’ total population.
There are 39,225 blacks in the northeast section compared to 446,189 blacks living in all of Queens. Blacks living in northeast Queens neighborhoods make up 8.8 percent of all blacks in the borough.
The 2000 Census numbers show Queens had the largest overall growth of the five boroughs, adding more than 270,000 people. It has grown by 14.2 percent since 1990, pushing the borough past the 2 million mark for the first time in its history with a total population of 2,229,379.
Reach reporter Adam Kramer by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 157.
