By Bill Parry
Administrators of Queens Community House still face logistical nightmares after their main headquarters in Jackson Heights was destroyed in a massive five-alarm blaze April 21.
More than 50 businesses and Plaza College were forced from the Bruson Building, at 74-09 37th Ave., to find new spaces around the borough.
This posed an enormous challenge for the 40-year-old, multi-service nonprofit, which provides community-based programs in 23 locations in 11 central Queens neighborhoods.
“The most immediate challenge was getting our programs up and running,” Chief Strategy Officer Dennis Redmon said. “We were able to put our English classes for immigrant adults at the Sunnyside Community Center. That was tricky because those classes are from 9 a.m. to 10 at night, and our Gay Senior Center is running out of Kew Gardens, but only for two days a week.”
The Queens Community House staff of 350 full- and part-time workers are also dispersed as well. Several perform community outreach on the public plaza at 75th Street, informing clients where their programs have been re-located.
“Hopefully, we can get everything back under one roof, hopefully in Jackson Heights, but we’ll look at Elmhurst and Woodside, certainly something along the No. 7 subway line,” Redmon said.
For that the Queens Community House will need funding.
“There was a wave of empathy following the fire and the community was great, but we needed to mount a more expansive effort,” Redmon said.
Two weeks ago, Queens Community House began a peer-to-peer, online funding campaign using social media.
“It’s called the Phoenix campaign, rising from the ashes,” Redmon said. “We started getting donations from California and as far away as Milan. We’ll run Phoenix until June 16 and then we’ll see where we are.”
Meanwhile, Plaza College is preparing to open its new Forest Hills campus in July after the Bruson fire forced its relocation. Nearly 200 seniors will be offered an accelerated summer session to make up for time lost, forcing the delay of their graduation.
The summer session is optional, but the students will be encouraged to attend.
“Our students have very demanding schedules that include making time for family, work and other responsibilities,” spokeswoman Brittany Travis said. “We believe that asking students to decide on a program that does not necessarily meet their immediate time frame can be extremely challenging.”
Travis added that they will not know how big the graduating class will be until the seniors register later this month.
The nearly 100-year-old college had planned to move its campus to the 17-story Forest Hills Tower, at 118-35 Queens Blvd., in September. Plaza College was able to accelerate the move due to the cooperation of the building’s owner Muss Development LLC.
“We are grateful for the overwhelming support and dedication from the Muss organization,” Travis said. “In addition to co-locating our faculty and administration, they are vigorously working on accelerating the build out.”
Travis added that the transition was surprisingly smooth, thanks to the staff, students and implementation of a disaster recovery plan.
“The college’s communication and computing structural backbone was actually revived at approximately 60 percent capacity within four days,” she said.
Throughout the ordeal since the Bruson fire in April, only one student out of 700 has withdrawn from the school.
“The student reaction to the announcement of a new campus has been extremely positive, and they’re all excited to return,” Travis said.
Reach reporter Bill Parry by e-mail at bparry@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
