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614 Woodward Avenue repossessed by the city

By Jessica Meditz

jmeditz@queensledger.com

Correction*

New information regarding the story “614 Woodward Avenue repossessed by the city” learned by the Queens Ledger after press time, indicates that a tax lien sale certificate has been placed on the property which remains in the possession of Silvershore Properties. Tower Capital Management is handling the sale.

Ridgewood’s biggest eyesore is no longer owned by Silvershore Properties.

The property, left abandoned and unproductive for several years, has now been repossessed by the Bank of New York because of unpaid taxes, NYC Department of Finance records show.

After years of 311 reports, complaints to the Community Board, and efforts to clean up the site, the property was taken back by the city on Feb. 24.

The action was filed to the Automated City Register Information System (ACRIS) on March 4.

Tyson Washburn, a resident of Ridgewood, suspects this was the plan all along.

He said that he knew the site would be an issue since the building, where there is now an empty lot, was illegally demolished about five years ago.

“They got a stop work order and a fine for that, and I sort of knew they were going to abandon it. The moment they stopped, they didn’t pay for their dumpster to be picked up, and so the guys who own the dumpster had to pick it up and pay the cost,” Washburn said.

“And it’s just kind of getting worse and worse. I’ve reported multiple times about the sidewalk being in terrible disarray and the scaffolding that has been up for more than two years. At one point, there was water constantly leaking from it.”

At least a dozen 311 service requests have been made regarding dirty conditions, graffiti, rodents, and illegal dumping at 614 Woodward Avenue in the span of the past month.

From February until now, eight summonses have been issued to Silvershore Properties by the Department of Sanitation, as a result of people illegally dumping their garbage there.

Washburn suspects that since the building was torn down illegally, the city may have to demolish the remaining property.

“It’s definitely unsafe,” he said. “If you look at that building, you can see it is crumbling. I’m not sure what they can do with it.”

Gary Giordano, district manager of Queens Community Board 5, said that the board has requested that the Department of Buildings reinspect the site.

“I don’t know what the Buildings Department is going to be able to do as far as gaining safe entry goes,” Giordano said. “So if they could see the property from the roof of someone nearby, they would get a much better idea about the condition of the property. Often, if the roof is a problem, the inside is going to be a real problem.”

He added that it’s hard to say if the site will be demolished, and that the “best situation” would be to have extensive work done on the property as opposed to demolition.

Giordano suggested that if there’s no demand to operate a business at the site, and the building can be salvaged and renovated, that people could eventually live there.

“There is a shortage of housing, and I haven’t seen anybody doing anything there that has been of any use for at least seven years. I think it would be a good site to have some apartments on the first floor,” he said.

“But you would have to go to the Department of Buildings to get that done. It would be hard to have something there for public use, in any period of time, where the property doesn’t sit there for a while.”

A representative from Silvershore Properties could not be reached for comment.

Elmhurst native makes impact on sneaker industry

By Jessica Meditz

jmeditz@queensledger.com

Sarah Sukumaran, founder of Lilith NYC.

The sneaker and fashion industries were always an interest of East Elmhurst native Sarah Sukumaran, but they were never something she thought she would pursue as a career.

A business graduate of Babson College, she found herself in the world of marketing and tech in New York, working as the head director product at Nike.

It was during March 2020 when she decided to quit her job and launch Lilith NYC, a Queens-based footwear brand for women and femmes in the sneaker world.

“Spending time at Nike, I realized that I wanted to definitely create shoes for women because for so long, I felt they were underserved in terms of selection, sizing and colorways,” Sukumaran said. “I gravitated towards men’s styles still as a 20-something-year-old, couldn’t get my size, didn’t care for the colorways dropped for women and the silhouettes had still been centered around male sport.”

Sukumaran emphasized that women spend more money on sneakers than men do, owning 80 percent of the wallet share.

Despite this, her time at Nike revealed that the industry is not moving at the pace that she would like, and feels that brands should make an effort to cater to their audience.

Lilith is Sukumaran’s outlet to reach out to other women who love sneakers and explore feminine identity and style through its designs.

“Everything from the brand top down is really through the lens of the divine feminine, because historically, everything has been either hyper masculinized or hyper feminized. In sneaker culture, the expectation for women is super sexually presented through campaigns or ads, or it was the opposite where you have to be a tomboy,” Sukumaran said.

“Especially in 2022, I question how we can express our gender, sexuality or style on a spectrum, and I wanted to do that through the lens of the divine feminine,” she continued. “It’s an energy that we all have, but it transcends the gender binary and doesn’t pigeonhole us the way the industry has wanted us to.”

Lilith’s debut silhouette, the Caudal Lure, is designed by Sara Jaramillo and named after a type of mimicry snakes take on to lure their prey. The shoe’s outsole resembles a snake’s tail.

The serpent, throughout region, culture and time, has been a symbol of the divine feminine, and this imagery is ever present in the brand.

As the daughter of Tamil refugees, Sukumaran expresses her culture through this imagery, since the Hindu goddess of protection is represented with a five headed cobra.

She simultaneously ties in her connection to Queens to the brand through Caudal Lure’s colors, concrete jungle green and amberlou brick.

The green pays homage to the grit of Queens and lush of urban life, redefining the urban jungle, and the amber-toned brick represents the bricks used by architect Louis Allmendinger for homes throughout Elmhurst, Sunnyside and Ridgewood.

Lilith NYC is currently online only, but Sukumaran said a physical storefront in Queens is a goal of hers.

She has participated with in-person popups, such as Queens Collaborative, to share the designs with locals, and hopes to release more colorways and a new design next year.

During Women’s History Month, Sukumaran embraces the fact that Lilith NYC is a women-run brand and commits to sharing women’s achievements through storytelling.

“Whether you’re a woman in tech, footwear or architecture, women’s contributions are constantly erased. They’re constantly overlooked, and sometimes attributed to men,” Sukumaran said.

“That’s why we named it Lilith; she was considered the first feminist because she didn’t want to be submissive to Adam. Historically, she’s been written out of history in a negative light, and so the name is to tell our own stories and men don’t get to dictate it.”

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