A street corner in New York will be co-named "Little Manila Avenue" to celebrate the large Filipino community in the area.
A report in the Sunnyside Post, a community news platform in New York, said the southwest corner of Roosevelt Avenue and 70th Street in the Woodside neighborhood of Queens will also carry the new name after the NYC Parks and Recreation Committee voted 15-0 in favor of the proposal. It will become official after the full NYC Council vote, which the Sunnyside Post says is "almost certain to pass."
More than 3,000 people signed a petition to put up the street sign for "Little Manila Avenue" in 2020, which led a council member to sponsor legislation to make it happen.
This area of Woodside has long had a significant concentration of Filipino-American residents. According to the community presentation about the co-naming project uploaded on the OurLittleManila website, Filipinos settled in the area in the 1970s when immigration rules were eased. Many of them were nurses who filled a shortage at the time. Today there are numerous commercial establishments that cater to Filipino-Americans in the area, including restaurants, remittance centers, salons, clinics, and other professional services. In fact, Jollibee's first-ever branch in New York City opened in Woodside in February 2009. A Red Ribbon bakeshop, which is also owned by Jollibee Foods Corp., opened there a year later.
There are about 86,000 Filipinos and Filipino-Americans living in New York City based on the most recent census, over half of whom live in the borough of Queens.
"People were talking about renaming the area Little Manila and I wanted it done," the Sunnyside Post quoted Jimmy Van Bramer, the council member who sponsored the legislation to name the corner, as saying. "I wanted to honor the Filipino and Filipino American community who are an important part of the Woodside community."
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