🚛 Business Spotlight: Queens Trucking School: 50 Years of Putting Astoria on the Road

🚊 The IBX Is Coming — Feds or No Feds

🏠 Good News for Renters: Extreme Rent Hikes Are Falling

🛒 Mayor Mamdani's City-Run Grocery Plan Is Coming to Queens

🏗️ Rowan II Arrives This Summer: 90 New Apartments for Astoria

THURSDAY, MAY 21

💃 Dancing with the Queens Stars

6:00 – 9:00 PM  |  MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave, Long Island City

Queens community leaders trained with professional choreographers perform for prizes and bragging rights. A fundraiser for the Queens Boro Dance Festival. Tickets $109. Get tickets →

SATURDAY, MAY 23

🌸 Woodside Spring Festival

10:00 AM – 6:00 PM  |  Woodside Ave & 61st St, Woodside  |  FREE

Woodside on the Move's annual street party returns with food, fashion, live music, and pure community energy. One of Western Queens' best free outdoor events of the spring. Learn more →

🎌 Crunchyroll Anime Awards Watch Party @ MoMI

3:00 AM doors / 5:00 AM ceremony  |  Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave, Astoria  |  FREE

Yes, it starts at 3am — but it's free and it's at your local museum! The 10th annual Crunchyroll Anime Awards is happening live in Tokyo, and MoMI is hosting a watch party in the Redstone Theater. Cosplay encouraged. RSVP →

MONDAY, MAY 26 — MEMORIAL DAY

City offices and many businesses closed. Check MTA's holiday schedule for subway and bus changes. MTA Holiday Info →

🗓 COMING UP — MARK YOUR CALENDAR

📽️  Astoria Film Festival Opening Night — Thu, May 28 | Heart of Gold, Astoria

🌊  LIC Springs! Street Festival — Sat, May 30 | Vernon Blvd, 46th–50th Ave, LIC

🎡  Astoria Park Carnival — June 3–7 | Astoria Park

🥂  Socrates Sculpture Park 40th Anniversary Gala — Thu, June 4 | Spacetime CC

Picture this: you walk into a driving school and the person behind the desk already knows your family. Maybe your grandmother learned to parallel park here. Maybe your dad failed his first road test and came back, humbled, to try again. That's not a hypothetical at Queens Trucking School in Astoria. That's just Tuesday.

You may also know them as Queens Driving School: the school has been a fixture in this neighborhood since 1972, when Maria's in-laws opened it as a modest driving school. Over five decades, it grew into something harder to put in a box. Maria and her husband eventually took over, and now their sons are in the mix too. Three generations of one family running a business that's helped three generations of Queens families get their licenses. At some point, you stop calling that a driving school and start calling it a local institution.

What sets Queens Trucking School apart isn't just the longevity, though 50 years is a number worth sitting with for a second. It's the scope. Yes, they do standard car training, and yes, they're very good at it. But they also run a full CDL commercial driver training program, which means if you've ever thought about getting into trucking, this is where you'd start. They also run a bus training program too. They operate out of two locations, Astoria and Corona and are a community of individuals from diverse backgrounds challenging each other to explore, understand and improve our society, our world, and ourselves. Queens Trucking School takes particular pride in their commitment to increasing access to all qualified students of varied backgrounds, races, and conditions, regardless of financial means.

Oh, and one more thing. They were on A&E. A reality show called "Last Chance Driving School." If you were in Astoria long enough, you might already know that. If you're newer to the neighborhood, now you do, and it's a great detail to drop at your next block party.

Right now, they're running a deal worth knowing about: $19 for your first car driving lesson if you're a new student. To put that in perspective, that's less than most people spend on lunch in the city, and it gets you behind the wheel with instructors who've been doing this since before GPS existed. They're also trilingual. Greek, Spanish, and English. Because Astoria is Astoria, and they've always known that.

The next phase for Queens Trucking School is about visibility. They're putting more energy into social media and community events, showing up and doing presentations, staying present. They've built something real over 50 years. Now they're making sure newer residents know it's here.

If you want to learn more or get started, head to queenstruckingschoolinc.com or reach them directly at (718) 626-6260. They're as local as it gets and they're genuinely good people to do business with.

Astoria has a habit of hiding its best stuff in plain sight. Queens Trucking School has been here the whole time. Now you know where to find them.

The MTA isn't waiting for Washington. Despite the Trump administration's repeated interference with New York's infrastructure funding, MTA Chairman Janno Lieber announced that the Interborough Express — the $5.5 billion light rail line connecting Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Jackson Heights, Queens through Western Queens — will move forward, federal dollars or not. The MTA's 2025–2029 capital plan already includes $2.75 billion toward the project, and the agency is exploring alternative financing for the remaining half.

Lieber was direct about the stakes: the IBX would serve 160,000 to 200,000 riders daily. The MTA is adopting 'optimistic realism' — still applying for federal money, but not counting on it. Community board workshops are underway along the IBX corridor through May.

For Astoria and Western Queens, the IBX is a generational opportunity — direct connections across the freight rail corridor, cutting commute times and relieving pressure on the already-packed N/W lines. The environmental review phase continues through 2026 with the Draft EIS public hearing expected in late fall.

👉 Read more: MTA Prepares to Fund IBX Without Feds (Streetsblog NYC)  |  MTA IBX Project Page

Rent hike culture is getting humbled. A new analysis of renter-reported lease renewals across NYC shows that the share of renewals with increases above 10% dropped from 26% before the state's Good Cause Eviction law to just 9% after it passed in April 2024. In unregulated apartments — which cover much of Astoria's rental stock — average renewal increases fell from 8.6% to 5.1%. That's real money in your pocket if you're one of the tens of thousands of unregulated renters in Western Queens.

The data comes from Openigloo, which tracks self-reported lease renewal behavior. Even buildings NOT covered by Good Cause Eviction saw renewal increases ease — from 7.4% down to 5.7% — suggesting the law may have had a market-wide softening effect.

Landlord groups pushed back, pointing to rising insurance, tax, and utility costs. The Rent Guidelines Board is still deliberating over stabilized apartment increases, with a potential rent freeze being floated. Either way, if you've been dreading your lease renewal conversation, this spring might be a better time than most to have it.

👉 Read more: Rent Hikes Drop in NYC, Data Shows (Patch)

Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants the city to be your next grocery store landlord. His new $70 million initiative will open five city-owned grocery stores across all five boroughs — including one in Queens — where the city owns the land, subsidizes overhead, and brings in a private operator to sell staple foods at significantly below-market prices. The first location, in East Harlem at La Marqueta, is expected by late 2027.

The model is a subsidized real estate play: by eliminating rent and slashing overhead, operators can price essentials lower than any private competitor. Grocery prices in NYC have risen nearly 66% over the past decade. Independent grocery owners and bodega operators have raised concerns about unfair competition.

No Queens site has been officially announced yet, but the borough's density and food access gaps make western and central Queens strong candidates. A city-subsidized grocery landing somewhere in Astoria would be a genuinely big deal. Watch this space.

👉 Read more: Mayor Mamdani Announces La Marqueta as First Site (NYC.gov)  |  Mamdani's Grocery Plan Faces Challenges (The City)

Astoria's newest luxury building is almost here. Rowan II — the second phase of the Rowan development by FBL Development — is on track to complete this summer, bringing 90 new residences to the neighborhood. The 70-foot building, designed by INOA Architecture, delivers an amenity package that's hard to argue with: an indoor pool, sauna, gym, golf simulator, business lounge, and rooftop terrace. Ground-floor retail will round out the base.

Phase II's summer opening marks the full buildout of the site. It continues a pattern of high-end residential development reshaping Astoria's housing market — good news if you're a landlord nearby, mixed news if you're a renter watching median prices inch upward.

No official leasing date has been announced yet, but units are expected to hit the market this summer. If you're apartment hunting — or just curious what a golf simulator in your building looks like — this one's worth watching.

👉 Read more: Rowan Development Enters Second Phase (Astoria Post)  |  New Renderings: Rowan Phase II (NY YIMBY)

Astoria Insider is inviting local businesses and organizations to be featured in its growing community newsletter.

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!