History sure seems to repeat itself for the Queensboro Motorcycle Club.

The biker group was unceremoniously uprooted from its original clubhouse among the old ash heaps of central Queens in 1939 to make way for the creation of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in time for that year’s World’s Fair, according to Bill Goldstein, the club’s president.




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The city never installed sewers, running water, sidewalks or other urban amenities in Willets Point and the 62-acre section of land is in a new administration’s sights. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has paved the way for a multibillion-dollar mixed-use development to replace the area’s industrial and auto shops. The city claims it has bought or is in agreements to buy 64 percent of the land and it recently began to relocate businesses to other sites. The plans for Willets Point leave the bikers in a lurch as they attempt to continue their gatherings, rides and community service activities from a point with an uncertain future. Goldstein said the club pays $4,000 a year in taxes and he asks only that the city tell them what will become of them in coming years. “We understand that this is an area of contention and that no one wants to breathe a word about it,” he said over sodas in the club’s wood-paneled meeting room. “But we pay $4 grand a year and we get nothing for it. We get no road repair, no sidewalks, no streetlights, there’s no sanitation. This place is an absolute pigsty.” Or, as club member James Frost put it last week, “it looks like Beirut now.”

Source: Willets Point bikers want answers about future

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