Bulldozers Tear Down Jewish Chapel In Rego Park, Locals Say

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — A former Jewish funeral home in Rego Park is now a construction site.

Parkside Memorial Chapel, located at 98-60 Queens Boulevard, is being bulldozed this month in order to make way for an apartment building, permits show.

News of the teardown first made headlines in August, when demolition permits and plans for a 7-story, 51-unit apartment building were filed with the Department of Buildings. (Workers got the go-ahead for demolition on Jan. 4 but the condo plans are still awaiting the city's approval as of Jan. 20.)

The papers, however, were just written proof of what neighbors had been anticipating for months; plans to build affordable senior housing in place of the funeral home first surfaced last February.

Patch couldn't reach the building's listed owner, David Matatov, at his workplace, RB Realty Capital, and no one else at the real estate development company would say if the building is still slated to be affordable senior housing.

Regardless of its future use, razing the building has provoked the ire of some neighbors, hundreds of whom took to Facebook to dispute the teardown.

Some locals said they were upset to loose the building where they mourned loved ones, while others contended that local politicians didn't do enough to save an architecturally and culturally significant site.

Instead, neighborhood preservationists reportedly saved some of the chapel's items; most are now on sale to cover the salvaging costs, but preservationists hope they are purchased by community members.

Anti-development arguments are not new in Rego Park and Forest Hills; suburban-like areas of central Queens that have seen a housing boom in the last decade, especially as parts of northwest Queens become increasingly unaffordable and the city's housing crisis worsens.

RB Realty, for instance, is working on several disputed neighborhood projects.

Up the block from the Parkside Memorial Chapel, the development company is behind a just-financed 22-story luxury condo, which one neighbor is already predicting will increase neighborhood congestion and be an "eyesore."

Nearby, in Forest Hills, RB Realty is working on another luxury building at 107-02 Queens Boulevard; that project is a partnership with RJ Capital Holdings, the development group that plans to build a much-contested apartment at the site of a historic theater-turned-synagogue.

Related Article: Developer To Demolish Funeral Home For Housing, Application Shows