[NYguy]

Daily News

Plans to double size of Queens Museum of Art

BY DONALD BERTRAND


The Queens Museum of Art has unveiled new architectural designs for an expanded museum, which officials hope will be better received than plans that were proposed four years ago.

The new plans call for the size of the museum - now located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that served as the New York City Building in the 1939 World's Fair - to double.

The latest design calls for an ice rink that now occupies the southern half of the building to move into a $55.2 million facility being built in the park. That new facility would include an Olympic-sized indoor pool and a National Hockey League-size skating rink with seating for 400.

In 2002, a group of preservationists and architectural historians lambasted the original design, with one calling it the "London Blitz design, because it looks like the building was bombed in the London Blitz."

Museum Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl said the new design will bring more light into the building and make it more inviting.

Finkelpearl conceded that the museum's exterior makes it look like "a worn-out, rundown kind of place," and said he gets frustrated when one visitor after another tells him: "This place is much better than I thought."

"We want people to say, 'This is just as good as I thought,'" he said. "The exterior of the building should be as good as the interior."

If all goes according to plan, the final ice rink season in New York City Building would be next spring, with expansion construction following. The expansion is to be finished in January 2010.

The expansion project will cost about $37 million. So far, $33 million in funding has been allocated, with some $21 million of it coming from Queens Borough President Helen Marshall's office.

Mayor Bloomberg's office provided an additional $7 million in funding, and the City Council $4.6 million.