Helping hands finally arrived to clean up two ugly scenes in Queens.
A former Rite Aid in Astoria overrun by drunkards, migrants, trash heaps and human waste was finally cleared out a week after the dystopian scene was exposed by The Post.
Workers for owners Frank Tehrani and Perry Moradof said they’d spent the week purging the junked couches and junk draped from the building’s roof, while raising an 8-foot-tall wooden fence on the perimeter to secure the lot.
“We’re getting a permit for the fence,” assured one of the workers, adding two large garbage trucks have already hauled away debris. “The neighbors are all happy. They’ve been bringing us pizza pies and donuts — cold water.”
Rite Aid moved out in 2019. Tehrani and Moradof paid $11.1 million for the site in February 2023, with a mind towards redeveloping the 25,000-square-foot space into a five-story mixed-use structure with housing and retail.
Before the clean-up began, state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) called the situation “completely unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, the owner of a Long Island City variety store getting hit by migrant shoplifters up to six times a week told The Post NYPD officers “showed up in full force” at the business on Tuesday.
children once used as a jungle gym is mostly gone. Helayne Seidman
Chris Sciacco, the owner of Kaiya’s Pallets at 36-37 31st Street, said cops suggested changing the configuration of some shelves and security cameras in a bid to try to prevent theft – which has been rampant since 17 migrant shelters popped up within 13 blocks of the store over the last two years.
The cops also promised to do daily patrols around the store and vowed to press charges against two caught-on-camera thieves Sciacco had reported to the 114th Precinct recently.
“Hopefully in the future, Albany will change the laws to help the cops out and keep these criminals inside [rather] than releasing them immediately back onto the streets,” Sciacco said. “But I guess one step at a time.”