Store circulars, discarded receipts, bags and numerous wrappers from products blow through the parking lot at Waldbaum’s every day. The paper eventually finds its way under the fence and onto the lawns and driveways of all the residences on the street. Forum Newsgroup Photo by Patricia Adams.
Residents along 95th Street between 156th and 157th Avenues in Howard Beach say they’ve had just about enough strife—and now, they are fixing to do something about it. The problem they say, stems from trouble with their neighbor– Waldbaum’s.
Complaints about the incessant garbage flow have been made for years according to the residents, and they all fall on deaf ears. Luricilda Guglielmo and her husband Lino have lived in their home, directly across the street from the parking lot, for the last 44 years. “I remember when the store first came,” says Luricilda, “the garbage started right away and just never stopped. We continue to clean it up because they won’t do anything about it.”
But she says cleaning up the garbage is no longer the central focus. Concerns for the Guglielmo’s and their neighbors have shifted to ward a much more serious direction. Over the past few weeks, residents of the street have repeatedly come across used hypodermic needles, glassine bags and other well-known drug paraphernalia.
Neil Iovino owns one of seven houses on the seemingly quiet tree lined street. He bought his house on two years ago with plans to spend the rest of his life there with his wife and daughter. Now he says those plans are complicated by the quality of life concerns emanating from the supermarket.
Iovino shakes his head as he leads the way to his back stairwell, pointing downstairs to the basement entrance where he says circulars, bags, paper, and cardboard pile up a couple of feet in the well—he cleans it every couple of days. “Sometimes it’s impossible to keep up with it,” Iovino says, “but we have to because we can’t live this way anymore.” In agreement with his neighbor, he too says that the problem with drug abusers right outside his front door takes priority over the garbage. “We’ve put up with alot from the store and the parking lot,” says the frustrated homeowner. “People are changing the oil in their cars, playing loud music, throwing empty beer bottles to the ground, shattering them and spraying glass onto the sidewalk beyond the fence. It’s just disgusting. But now we have a new problem and it’s not dirty. It’s plain dangerous.”
Many of the residents on the block say they have spoken to the store manager in the past and presently, however the problems do not get solved. “We need to get security back there.” Joe Baretta has lived on the block for 55 years.
“They don’t want to spend the money to fix the problem. They need a security car in the parking lot so people know they can’t just come in here and do what they want.” Baretta says conditions in the store are almost as bad as they are outside. “The store is never clean. The shelves are never full– the only thing there’s plenty of is trouble.”
Edwin Perez, a nine-year veteran of the NYPD says when he moved to Howard Beach he did so to provide a safe environment for his wife and 7-year-old son. “I don’t want to be forced to answer my son when he asks ‘Daddy what that?’ and points to a needle.” Perez says that after discovering drug paraphernalia on the street, he worries about his son and wife, now four months pregnant with their second child.
Outside his home, Perez points to the tree infront—the branches are adorned with filthy,tattered plastic bags carried by the wind and snagged in their travels. Walking to the edge of the sidewalk to show a gutter full of bottle caps, receipts and other garbage that continues to settle from one end of the street to the other he points to the ground. “We have to sweep all this and pick it up. The other day a sanitation worker said he wasn’t taking my neighbor’s pail because it was too heavy.” The pail was filled, he said, with Waldbaum’s debris his neighbors had cleaned out of the gutter.
Residents say they have taken steps to get local elected officials involved by emailing them to let them know the seriousness of the problem. Community Affairs Officer Kenneth Zorn of the 106th Precinct urges residents to call 911 if they observe what they believe to be drug related activity. “If people let us know what’s going on out there we can address the problem.” And Zorn says it’s easier to get the extra patrol once reports come in that a particular area is having trouble.
Iovino says when he contacted Waldbaum’s store manager Mario, he was invited to come into the store and talk things over. “I don’t want to talk anymore,” the frustrated resident told The Forum, “ he told me they were going to clean everything up and make things better. Let’s see.”
And in agreement with his story, a call to the store to speak with the manager yielded the same answers. He admitted to knowledge of the resident’s complaints and said that he personally addresses all situations he is aware of. “We have been sending someone out twice a day to clean up the lot and the fence area.” One of the big problems with the store, he says, is that it is a high volume location with constant deliveries.
On a visit to the lot on Monday afternoon, The Forum was present when an employee did arrive at the fence area to clean up wind blown bags, circulars and receipts. In the mess on the ground, two used hypodermic needles stood out. “Hey be careful,” one resident cautioned,“there’s used needles down there.” The Waldbaum’s employee laughed and replied, “Oh yeah? Maybe I can get a hit off it.” But the group of residents assembled on the other side of the fence found no humor in his remarks. “I don’t find anything funny about drugs,” said Paul Botto who has lived on the street for 8 years with his family. “My son is nine-years-old and I don’twant to have to explain heroin and needles to him just yet.” Botto says that finding needles down the street from his home has really put him over the top. “We have to deal with the garbage. We have to deal with shopping carts in our driveways. We have to deal with outdated, spoiled food. But to think we should have to deal with drugs and the people that use them is going too far. Way too far.”
Residents say they want the store to address the problems and fix them. As far as the garbage problem, many feel that it could be partially rectified by putting up a wall instead of the fence or at least a structure with a closed bottom so that the paper garbage could not “creep” under the fence as it does and wind up all over the residents property. The other issues of major concern to them require a much more complex solution and police action.
“We’ve let everyone know what’s going on here now,” says Neil Iovino, “and we’re hoping it puts them [Waldbaum’s] in a position where they have to do something about it. One thing is for sure, the entire block is united to fix this. We are not going away. Not until we accomplish what we set out to do. We want the store to get its act together or get out of town.”
By Patricia Adams
