✨ Business Spotlight: Healspace Is Coming To Long Island City

🎉 TONIGHT: America's 250th at Astoria Park

🏊 The Pool Opens Tomorrow — What You Need to Know

You walk in and the first thing you notice is the light. There's a patio out back, plants going in, room to breathe, and upstairs a studio where you can roll out a mat and look straight onto a garden while you move. Picture a hot yoga class that finishes with a breathwork session in the open air. That alone is rare in Long Island City. But Healspace is after something bigger than a nice room with good light. It wants to change how you think about getting well in the first place.

Here's the idea behind it. One of the founders, Eziah, runs a business in nutrition and digital health and lives with an anxiety condition, and he kept hitting the same wall: the only things ever offered to him were talk therapy and medication. Why not a specific breathwork class? A particular kind of yoga? His brother and other founder, Sheraz, is a physical therapist who sees the same gap from the other side, treating lower back pain without ever tapping the right yoga or medical massage that would actually help. Put those frustrations together, add Anke, Healspace’s other founder, who moved here from the Netherlands and has made this neighborhood home, public schools and all, and the rest of the founding team, and you get a place built to close that gap on purpose.

So what's actually inside? Upstairs is the mind, body, and spirit floor: yoga, Pilates, barre, hot yoga, plus quieter rooms for meditation, breathwork, and sound healing, and individual treatment rooms for medical massage and acupuncture. Downstairs, opening later, goes full medical: regenerative medicine with a hyperbaric chamber, laser, and stem cell therapy, alongside physical therapy, with an experiential retail waiting room and a health bar and lounge meant for lingering. The part that ties it together is that the providers actually talk to each other. Your PT can tell the yoga teacher to steer you away from downward dog because of your hip. Your massage therapist knows your history. One coordinated plan instead of six disconnected ones.

A small detail that tells you who they're building for: when they were getting started, Anke ran a poll in the local parent groups, and the neighborhood asked for hot yoga over and over because the one place that used to offer it had closed. So they built it in. That's the whole approach in miniature. Ask the block what it needs, then put it in the room.

On cost, the founders are clear that memberships and treatments will land in line with other LIC studios, and the goal is to stay accessible rather than precious about it. The bigger draw might be everything they plan to give away. Free community events are baked into the model: speakers on women's health, parenting, life transitions, and mental health, open to anyone, because their read on the neighborhood is that we've got an epidemic of loneliness and not enough places to just be around each other. Anke calls it "neighborism," the quiet backlash where people start craving connection close to home instead of online.

The rollout is happening fast. The upstairs studio is targeting July 1st, with the lower level and the regenerative medicine wing aiming for September. If you live along the waterfront high-rises or anywhere from Hunters Point toward Astoria, this is landing right in your backyard.

Keep an eye on Healspace and be among the first through the door by following along on their website at https://healspace.nyc/.

Join us in welcoming Healspace to the neighborhood. A place this ambitious choosing to build free community events into its foundation is exactly the kind of arrival that makes this corner of the city worth watching.

Tonight at 7:30pm, Astoria Park's Great Lawn becomes the stage for 'America! Come Together in Harmony!' — a free outdoor concert put on by the Central Astoria Local Development Coalition to mark America's 250th birthday. This is rain-or-shine, no tickets required, and the setting is hard to beat: the Great Lawn under the RFK Bridge with the Manhattan skyline in the distance.

The July 4th holiday is still more than a week away, but tonight is the neighborhood's own version of the celebration. Bring a blanket, bring your people, and get there by 7pm to find a good spot on the lawn. It's a free summer night in Astoria. There is nothing better.

The park has hosted this kind of community gathering before, and the CALDCO has been one of the more consistent forces behind Astoria's public life for years. If you've never been to one of their events, tonight is a good first one. Make it yours.

👉 More on Astoria Park events at CALDCO →

After a long spring of watching the water stay roped off, Astoria Pool officially opens Saturday, June 27 — and if you've never gone, this is the year. NYC's largest outdoor swimming pool is free all season, holds 3,000 swimmers at capacity, and sits inside Astoria Park with a direct view of the RFK Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. It doesn't get more New York than that.

The pool runs daily from late June through Labor Day, typically 11am to 7pm (closed Tuesdays for maintenance). You don't need a membership, a reservation, or anything other than a MetroCard and a swimsuit. Lockers are free with a lock. The pool does have rules — no outside food, swim attire only, children under 11 need an adult — but the vibe inside is one of the most genuinely democratic experiences left in this city.

The weekends fill up by noon in July and August, so go early or go on a weekday. The N or W to Astoria-Ditmars, then a short walk to the park. This is one of the great free things about living here. Use it.

👉 Astoria Pool info at NYC Parks →

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The platform highlights local news, events and community stories, providing businesses with an opportunity to reach a highly engaged local audience and showcase what they offer.

From restaurants and shops to services and community groups, all are encouraged to participate and share their story with readers across the Astoria and surrounding areas. Don’t own a business? That’s ok… Know of one that should be featured?

Those interested in being featured can reach out to learn more about available opportunities and upcoming editions. Click the button below to feature your business or send an email to [email protected] with your business details and we’ll reach out!