Don’t call us Long Island!
Officials and business leaders want to change the name of Queens neighborhood Long Island City to the trendier “LIC” — so as not to be confused with Long Island.
“It’s bad for hotels, it’s bad for real estate, and it’s bad for morale,” explained Rob MacKay, head of the Queens Local Development Corp. Tourism Council and a Long Island City resident.
“It puts us out on Long Island, and that’s inaccurate — we are urban and hip.”
The name is also a problem when MacKay tries to persuade foreign travel agents to book guests in the neigbhorhood’s hotels.
“They are constantly telling me that when they do booking and see Long Island City, they say, ‘Oh, that’s too far’ from Manhattan — they think it’s either in suburban hell or the Hamptons.”
The 21 hotels in Long Island City’s East River waterfront area could be losing 5 percent of their business simply because of the confusion, said Jeffrey Reich-Hale of the Wyndham Garden hotel.
“All people focus on is the name,” Reich-Hale said.
“From a marketing standpoint, it’s difficult selling the area and letting people know we’re not on Long Island, we’re two [subway] stops from Manhattan.”
There’s no official mechanism to change an area’s appellation, because the city classifies only boroughs and community-board districts.
Not everyone is sold on the suggested new moniker.
“I think that’s really stupid,” said architectural historian Francis Morrone. “It’s like changing the name of New York City to NYC because people may confuse it with upstate New York.”
Aside from whitewashing history, There might be another problem for LIC — what if people pronounce it “LICK” or “LICE”?
“I don’t think that would help us,” admitted MacKay.