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2004 April 25
IF YOU'RE THINKING OF LIVING IN | BAYSIDE
Bayside Community Spirit and Top-Rated Schools
By CLAIRE WILSON

ROSEMARY ZIMMERMAN is one of Bayside's busiest preservationists. She
restored the house she lives in, then bought and restored her childhood home
next door, a 1920's-era colonial that once served as a Christian Science church.
And with the houses pretty much done, at least for the moment, she volunteers
for the Bayside Business Association's tree-planting program, whose goal is to
keep this leafy swath of northeast Queens as green as it was when Mrs.
Zimmerman was a child, if not greener.

"We've planted about 100 trees in the past 10 years, and we're hoping to get Bell
Boulevard treed," said Ms. Zimmerman, a media sales representative who
moved back to Bayside with her family after brief stints living in New Jersey and
neighboring Little Neck. "We got state money to restore it with new lighting and
sidewalks. The plans are all ready to go."

Zealous volunteers like Ms. Zimmerman and supercharged civic groups are
almost too numerous to count in Bayside, a quiet area on Little Neck Bay that is
less than half an hour from Pennsylvania Station by the Long Island Rail Road.
Bordered on the north by the East River and Little Neck Bay, on the south by
Union Turnpike, on the east by the Cross Island Parkway and on the west by
Utopia Parkway and Francis Lewis Boulevard, it is known for its laid-back style of
living, exceptional schools and in some quarters hidden utility lines and the
charming absence of curbs and sidewalks.

In spring, streets lined with single-family homes and attractive co-ops and
condominiums are sugar-dusted with cherry and Callery pear blossoms that
compete for attention with luscious pink magnolias and canary-hued forsythia.

Jerry Iannece, a lawyer and father of two who is chairman of Community Board
11, credits local volunteers with overseeing the details that give Bayside its
appeal, from public Christmas trees and menorahs to staff levels at the 111th
Police precinct and land-use issues at Fort Totten, the Civil War fortress, part of
which is slated to become a public park in the next few months.

"They are outspoken and involved, and they are passionate about their
community," Mr. Iannece said. "Everything we do here revolves around
quality-of-life issues, and we love doing it."

Betsy Pilling, a broker whose family real estate concern has been in business in
Bayside for 30 years, says it is a perfect environment for raising children. "It has
the advantages of city living with none of the disadvantages," said Ms. Pilling,
who has three daughters. "You can have a comfortable lifestyle here and feel
you have done the best for your family."

The profusion of civic associations and community groups corresponds to
Bayside's informal division into enclaves, with the character of each informed by
the size, style, age and design of the houses there. They range from Bayside
Gables, a cluster of private curving streets and sloping lawns where residents
pay common charges for private security and groundskeeping, to Bayside Hills,
where the brick houses have slate roofs and the streets have elaborately
landscaped center medians. Weeks Woodlands and Bell Court have homes that
are diverse architecturally. Houses with water views, although separated from
Little Neck Bay by the Cross Island Parkway, are likewise one of a kind.

One of these is said to have belonged to W. C. Fields, who, like Gloria Swanson,
Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Norma Talmadge, lived in the area when
Astoria Studios was in its heyday. Miss Swanson is said to have once walked
down Bell Boulevard with a pig on a leash.

CO-OPS and condos of all descriptions are concentrated in the Bay Terrace
enclave, but whether the Bayside property is a luxury apartment or a small
detached two-family in a zone called Treasure Island, prices are going up.

Holly Park, a broker with ReMax, says many first-time buyers are quickly priced
out of houses and opt for co-ops or condos. "The average home for the first-time
buyer is between $550,000 and $650,000 for a single-family detached," Mrs.
Park said. "There's a small inventory of homes in the $400,000-to-$550,000
range, but they sell in no time."

According to the broker, a two-bedroom one-bath garden-style co-op apartment
in the 1,326-unit Bay Terrace Cooperative Gardens sold recently for $180,000,
while similarly sized units in the more upscale 21-story Birchwood co-op are
priced at $250,000. Birchwood has a pool, health club, doormen and parking.
Maintenance is $700 to $800 a month.

The median price of a single-family home has more than doubled in five years,
to almost $700,000 from $257,000 for a small two- or three-bedroom house on a
50-foot-by-100-foot lot. Increasingly, houses exceed $1 million; this has been
fueled by builders who buy small older homes on large parcels of land, knock
them down and build several homes or multiple dwellings in their place.
Two-family houses with rental units are very much in demand.

Low interest rates on mortgages have softened the rental market, however,
making desirable units easy to come by, according to Donna Reardon of
Prudential. "Three years ago, we didn't have an apartment to offer anyone, and
now we find they stay vacant a little longer than usual," she said.

The highest demand is for one-bedroom one-bath units, which rent for $1,100 to
$1,200 a month. Two-bedroom units average $1,300 to $1,500, Ms. Reardon
said.

Property taxes are low in Bayside, running about $3,300 a year, compared with
more than $5,000 for a comparable property just over the line in Nassau County,
but schools seem to be an even more important attraction. District 26 is the
highest ranked in the city, with 93.8 percent of fourth-grade students performing
at or above grade level in math (at Public Schools 188 and 205, it is 100 percent)
and 86.1 percent performing at or above grade level in reading.

Eighth graders at the two middle schools in Bayside, M.S. 74 and M.S. 158, are
also among the highest achievers in the city. In the four middle schools in District
26, 68.9 percent of the eighth graders perform at or above grade level in math
and 64.8 percent in reading.

Anita Saunders, who is superintendent of District 26 as well as local instructional
superintendent, said that money from private sources like the Empire State
Grant, VH1 or the Annenberg Foundation helped to finance special music and arts
programs but that there was a special emphasis on reading. Many fifth graders,
for example, are enrolled in a Shakespeare for Kids program and at some
schools, parents join children for Breakfast with Books. Some schools have adult
book clubs, too. "Expectations are high, people work hard and almost every
school gets better each year," Ms. Saunders said.

Bayside High School and Benjamin Cardozo High School both have newly
renovated athletic fields. At Bayside, with a student body of 3,100 in Grades 9
through 12, there are selective music and art programs as well as selective
science and math courses; six students recently won awards in the 2004 New
York City Science and Engineering Fair.

On the SAT reasoning tests, the average score on the verbal test was 466 last
year, compared with a statewide average of 496, and 504 in math, compared
with 510 statewide. Last year, about 54 percent of Bayside's graduating seniors
went on to four-year colleges.

At Benjamin Cardozo, with almost 4,000 students in Grades 9 through 12, last
year's average score on the verbal SAT reasoning test was 497, while the
average score in math was 545. There are 19 advanced placement courses at
Cardozo, where students can apply from outside the district for special academic
programs, including the Da Vinci Science and Math Institute or the mentor law
and humanities program. There is also a highly regarded dance program to
which admission is by audition only. Some 85 percent of last year's graduating
seniors went on to four-year colleges.

Private school options in Bayside include the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic
School, with 540 students. It teaches kindergarten through the eighth grade and
has a special program for 2-year-olds. Tuition is $2,750 a year per child if the
family is in the parish, $3,300 if it is not. Last year's fifth-grade cupcake sale
raised $1,700 for a Manhattan-based program for the homeless, Dennis Farrell,
the principal, said.

At St. Robert Bellarmine on 213th Street, tuition is $3,200 per student if the
family is a member of the parish, $5,000 for two children in a family and $5,500
for three or more, according to Sister Mary Ann, the principal. The school has
335 students in prekindergarten through the eighth grade. Out-of-parish tuition is
$4,200 per child.

The 45-year-old Queensborough Community College offers associate's degrees
in business, health careers and fine and performing arts to 22,000 students. It
has just instituted a course in massage therapy that will soon welcome
stressed-out members of the public to its student-staffed clinic.

The first residents of Bayside were the Matinecock Indians, whose name means
"land of the hilly ground." They lived peacefully on the shores of Little Neck Bay
until 1637, when the West India Trading Company lured the first Dutch farmers
with the promise of free property. The first permanent dwelling, a stone
farmhouse, was constructed by an Englishman, William Lawrence, in 1644. The
area was occupied by British troops during the Revolutionary War. The area's
name, written as Bay Side, first appeared on a public record in 1798.

By the end of the 19th century, wealthy Manhattanites had claimed Bayside as
their summer resort of choice, and Joseph Crocheron, a businessman whose
Bayside House was a favorite stomping ground, lives on in Crocheron Park, a
breezy green space on the water that bears his name.

It is adjacent to J. Golden Park, another of the four major parks in Bayside that
also include the 623.5-acre Alley Pond Park, which has a popular environmental
center for children, and the 18-hole Clearview Golf Course. Weekend greens fees
are $34.

Shops in the Bay Terrace mall, built in 1959 but recently renovated, include
Murphy's Flowers, Waldbaum's, Barnes & Noble and Victoria's Secret. They
complement the smaller shops and family-owned restaurants on the bustling Bell
Boulevard, which hops with night life on the weekends.

Parking is scarce around Bell Boulevard, especially near the train station, but
Maureen Higgings, a Pilling broker, said, "It's a place where you don't need two
cars because you can walk to the shops."

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