Juniper Park Civic Association

44th Anniversary Edition Juniper Civic is a world a-park

From graffiti cleanups to fighting City Hall, the JPCA’s ready

by Michael Gannon

Senior News Editor

It’s not hard to get Tony Nunziato, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, to brag just a little about what the group does, which is more than one might think.

“We run the Juniper Juniors,” he said. “We clean up graffiti. We clean the side streets. If there are any problems, we reach out to all city agencies to make sure they’re taken care of. We do five to six summer concerts, the Memorial Day and Veterans Day parades. We make sure the community is taken care of.”

And yes, Nunziato said, the civic also makes sure the 55-acre park is maintained as a green oasis for active and passive recreation for all ages.

The group as it exists today was founded in 1938 as Queens prepared for the World’s Fair. Councilman Bob Holden (D-Maspeth) served as president of the JCPA, one of the largest civic associations in the state, for nearly 25 years before being elected to the Council in 2017.

He said the area had been a mix of farmland and developing communities in the early 20th century.

“My mother grew up around the corner from where I live now. My grandfather built three homes, each multifamily, so everybody grew up together. They told me there were a lot of farms everywhere, and my grandfather had a flower farm. There were a lot of cemeteries, so my family had a florist business ... My grandfather bought in this area because he saw the potential. The park came first, and PS 49 was there before the park,” Holden said. “You had a housing explosion in the ’30s.”

Developers came up with their own names for the new tracts of housing, such as Juniper Park, which Holden said did not stick; and Liberty Park in Glendale, which did.

The Juniper Park Homes Civic Association merged with the Eliot Avenue Civic Association in 1938.

Holden said he had known about the civic association, and that his wife’s aunt, Lorraine Sciulli, was a very active member.

He did not become active himself until back in the mid-1980s, when the state began widening the Long Island Expressway.

“They kept closing the LIE in the wee hours,” he said. “Trucks would spin out into our neighborhood. I couldn’t sleep at night because I had 18-wheelers coming down these back streets and they couldn’t get out. The streets were so narrow. So you’d hear all this commotion at 2 in the morning and I’d have to go out and direct traffic.

“My wife’s aunt said, ‘You should go to the Juniper Park Civic and tell them what’s going on.’ So I went to the meeting and I had a big mouth. I said, ‘This is ridiculous.’” He also said a lot more. “So after the meeting the leadership came up to me and said ‘We need you.’” And a civic star was born. “I served 25 years as vice president and president,” he said. “I’d always been involved in the neighborhood with things like Little League and neighborhood cleanups. But this time I was joining a bigger

ACTIVE organization.” A serendipitous benefit came to CITIZENRY the Juniper Berry, the civic’s quarterly publication, which began in 1940. Holden, a graphic design professor for four decades, was able to make the good even better. “Since I was a graphic designer, I took it over when I became president,” he said. “ I thought ‘Boy this is a great way to communicate. I could build the civic, build up the name recognition and build up the membership by doing this magazine.’” Usually the JPCA president did not handle the Juniper Berry hands-on. But with Lorraine Sciulli editing as well as writing many articles, he said the periodical at its peak had a print run of about 10,000, though it is down to about 5,000 now. Nunziato said he too had come to the civic in a roundabout way. He had known Holden through Community Board 5 and other civic activities. The JPCA president said the group now has a good roster of longtime volunteers and what he said is a small group of young newcomers that he hopes keeps right on growing. He said it is all about building and caring for the community. And he said being a native or newcomer to the region can be a question of just whom one might ask.

“What makes a native?” he asked. “Nunziato’s, a florist, started in 1911 in Woodside. My family was in the florist and mausoleum business. My grandfather started a stonecutting business in Maspeth in about 1915 to 1920.” His grandparents had 11 children, all of whom went on to leadership positions in the civic and business communities.

“I got married and moved to Maspeth in 1980. That’s 42 years. So am I a native? I don’t know. This area was one of the original settlements for the British. Some families have been here for five generations.”

His own florist business has been in Maspeth since 1986.

Nunziato said while he always has been active in he community, he became seriously involved with the JPCA when he and other residents and the organization became determined to turn the site of the old Elmhurst gas tanks — famed in song and story and decades’ worth of news radio station rushhour traffic reports — into a park.

He said he and Holden really clicked when the JPCA took on the fight in what he believes is the organization’s proudest moment.

“They said it was a done deal, that it was going to be a Home Depot; that’s it, and there was no way it was going to be a park for the community,” he said. “Keyspan owned it ... And there was some big money and big politicians behind it, saying it was going to go through.”

If the players thought they were dealing with civic association folks whose interests stopped with getting the grass mowed in the park, they could have not been more wrong.

Nunziato said JPCA volunteers put up posters, banners, billboards and never stopped applying pressure, be it in civic

meetings or at City Hall. “We did everything,” he said. “I remember going out with Bob at 2 in the morning and dangling upside down over roads to hang signs to make sure people got the message. They did. And we got it.” The city eventually obtained the property for the sum of $1. “Today, when I go through that park I see the memorial to [area residents] who were killed in Vietnam ... I see all the people in the park. It’s an accomplishment beyond belief.” Nunziato said an incomplete victory, but a win nonetheless, was the ability of the civic and preservationists to disassemble the old St. Saviour’s Church in Maspeth and store it in trailers until they can find the money and a site to reassemble the 19th-century structure that was removed in 2002. Nunziato said once again, it was a triumph of community, with people such as himself, Holden, Newtown Historical Society president Christina Wilkinson and others, all with Juniper Valley Park under construction in August of 1937. It would quickly become a jewel of different backgrounds, personalities and central Queens. PHOTOS COURTESY JPCA ways of approaching a problem. “Put us in a centrifuge and it works out,” he said. “The results were unbelievable.” It was shortly after Holden was elected to the City Council that he recruited Nunziato to serve as the JCPA’s new president, arriving at the florist shop with everything needed for the job in a bag. “Bob came to my store and said, ‘I want you to be the new president.’ I said, ‘No thank you.’ He left the bag with the phone and a thank-you note. When you have someone who leaves the Juniper Park phone on your counter and says, ‘You’re the only one who can do it,’ and leaves, what can you do? All I saw was the back of his suit running out of my store.” Comprehensive information on the JPCA is available online at junipercivic.com. Q

Mayor Mike Bloomberg, future Councilman Bob Holden, right, and Tony Nunziato, rear, in 2005 at the announcement for the future Elmhurst Park.