Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
In the depths of the Jackson Heights subway station, a cultural center emerges
By
Arun Venugopal
Published Jul 29, 2024
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Arun Venugopal / Gothamist
By
Arun Venugopal
Published Jul 29, 2024
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
It was nothing less than a party.
The crowded, sweaty sort you might find in any given apartment building on any given weekend. Only this was a storefront, a subterranean space located in the bowels of the Jackson Heights subway station.
Some in the room took in the art suspended from the ceiling, or each other, while a few swayed to the beats. One DJ played the Afro disco classic “Agboju Logun” by Shina Williams and his African Orchestra while another spun “Ishq Naag,” a garage bhangra track by the British act RDB.
The scene Thursday inside a formerly abandoned retail space in the Jackson Heights subway station. It has been turned into a community radio station and cultural space.
Arun Venugopal / Gothamist
The Thursday event was opening night for the newest cultural center in Queens, operated by the grassroots nonprofit group Los Herederos (the Inheritors). Starting in August, the center will serve as an exhibition space and community radio station open to the public. The evening also marked the expansion of an innovative program from the MTA, one that’s been turning empty retail spaces throughout the subway system into sites of culture and community.
For Naomi Sturm, the executive director and co-founder of Los Herederos, the opportunity to occupy a rent-free space at the center of Queens was a godsend. But it came after a long struggle, during which the group felt it had been priced out of much of the borough, and the city.
“We were on the hunt for a space for several years,” she said.
The MTA initiative, known poetically as the Vacant Unit Activation Program, was announced last October as an effort to “make currently unused spaces more vibrant,” per an agency press release.
“We are looking to activate vacant spaces to improve the station atmosphere,” Jamie Torres-Springer, the MTA Construction & Development president said in a statement.
The scene Thursday inside a formerly abandoned retail space in the Jackson Heights subway station. It has been turned into a community radio station and cultural space.
Arun Venugopal / Gothamist
The agency has dozens of retail spaces it’s trying to fill, through traditional and less-traditional means. According to the MTA, there are 194 retail spaces scattered throughout the subway system. Of these, 53 are in operation, 19 are under construction and 64 are under negotiation. That leaves 58 spaces which an agency official said will be “marketed” over the next 15 months.
So far, the MTA has partnered with the Whitney Museum of American Art and ChaShaMa, an organization that helps turn unused real estate into visual art sites.
Currently, the agency has five spaces available, including at Jay St-Metrotech in downtown Brooklyn and Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike in Queens.
Mauricio Bayona, a co-founder of Los Herederos said he and Sturm were initially shown “a beautiful space” in the Forest Hills subway station but were later told it wasn’t available. Later, an MTA official showed them the space in the Jackson Heights station.
“They just opened the door,” said Bayona, “and we said, ‘Here we go. This is the space that the community needs.’” Sturm said the space was one she had frequently walked past and admired. “In Yiddish, we have a word, bashert, which is like, ‘meant to be.’”
The space, said Sturm, will be open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday as well as select weekends. The programming will include live broadcasts over the organization’s online radio stream, LHRadio, including talk shows as well as music.
Visitors will also encounter the gallery space, which was inaugurated with “Queens as Cultural Crossroads,” a yearlong project focusing on the people of Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights.
The scene Thursday inside a formerly abandoned retail space in the Jackson Heights subway station. It has been turned into a community radio station and cultural space.
Arun Venugopal / Gothamist
At the opening night party, as the E, F, R and M trains rumbled underneath, the crowd snacked on empanadas, samosas and pakoras – the unofficial fried foods of Jackson Heights – and sipped non-alcoholic drinks. In a corner of the room a DJ hunched over two turntables which were part of a larger, somewhat bizarre-looking contraption on wheels that the organization calls a Sonicycle, “an itinerant sound device, documentary tool and community organizing-activation platform ‘rolled’ into ONE,” as it described on its website.
The scene drew glances from many of the commuters rushing home from work, or backed up on the escalator to the 7 train platform. According to the MTA, the station is the ninth-busiest in the entire system, with 47,380 commuters passing through on an average weekday in May.
The travelers include local residents, people schlepping suitcases to and from La Guardia and Kennedy airports, and many others.
Tahima Karim, a South Asian hijab-wearing tourist from the United Kingdom, was passing through the station with her family and decided to enter the space. Back in London, she noted, “we have nothing like this.”
“I saw a hijabi,” she said, pointing to one of the artworks in the window, “so that represents me, so that was nice. And that's what made me actually walk in.”
Her 11 year old daughter Ayana Rahma nodded approvingly. “There was a lot of diversity in there,” she said.
Los Herederos is also counting on longtime residents of the neighborhood who simply want a place to gather.
“I was just in there and I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in years,” said Arif Ullah, who works for an environmental justice group in the South Bronx. “So it’s a real hub.”
For Bayona, the hope is that the MTA will keep the space free, or at least affordable beyond the initial one year. More than that, he said he thinks it can serve as a model for community organizations “around the city.”
“Because we are located in Queens and Jackson Heights,” he said. “But what about Brooklyn? What about the Bronx?"
Tagged
queens
Race And Justice Unit
jackson heights
MTA
Arun Venugopal
Arun Venugopal is a senior reporter for the WNYC and Gothamist Race & Justice Unit who focuses on issues of race and bias in our region. His reporting also tackles the topics of immigration, faith, and inequality. Arun serves as the regular fill-in host of the station's "U.S. of Anxiety" program. Arun was the creator and host of Micropolis, a series about race and identity. He is a contributor to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He has appeared on PBS Newshour, On the Media and Studio 360, and has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Salon. He also frequently serves as an emcee and moderator of panel discussions on race, religion, and identity issues and has been a guest host of NPR's "Fresh Air." He lives with his family in Queens.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Central Park birders, others remember 63-year-old woman killed in park
People who said they knew her described her as an artist and a familiar presence in the Ramble.
By
Charles Lane
Published Sep 28, 2026 at 7:04 p.m. ET
Dump truck driver hits and kills cyclist on 34th Street in Midtown, NYPD says
It's the latest in a string of hit-and-run deaths in the city in recent months.
By
Liam Quigley
News
Dump truck driver hits and kills cyclist on 34th Street in Midtown, NYPD says
It's the latest in a string of hit-and-run deaths in the city in recent months.
By
Liam Quigley
New ingredient mandated for Latin American kitchen, restaurant plates in NJ
By
Arya Sundaram
A Brooklyn jail cell filled with smoke. The emergency button failed, a lawyer said.
By
Samantha Max
Crews launch tunnel machines to dig first new Hudson River rail tunnels since 1910
By
Michael Sol Warren
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .