A Queens neighborhood holiday party attended by hundreds of New Yorkers annually came at risk of being canceled for the first time in its 20-year history because of government inefficiency, organizers claimed.
The Sunnyside Holiday Lighting Ceremony was still waiting for approvals from the city Street Activity Permit Office (SAPO) just a week before the planned Nov. 20 extravaganza — despite historically receiving the OK at least a month in advance, planner Dirk McCall de Palomá said.
“I was getting ready to call everybody on Monday and say the event’s not happening,” McCall de Palomá, the executive director of the Sunnyside Shines Business Improvement District, which hosts the annual event, told The Post.
“I have five groups of youth who are performing at the event … I don’t want the parents to show up and the event’s not happening,” he said Friday. “I was going to tell them ‘If I can find an indoor space, we’ll go ahead and try to do it as an indoor space’ — but I didn’t get any notifications.”
Hours after The Post contacted City Hall about the permit delay Friday, a rep reached out to say they’d finally been approved.
McCall de Palomá said he had submitted the application on Oct. 16, the same way he does every year: more than five weeks before the bash that takes over half of a city block running along Lowery Plaza in Sunnyside.
Each year, hundreds of locals swarm the hub to share hot cocoa, watch holiday performances and count down to the illumination of the “Welcome to Sunnyside” banners that stretch across Queens Boulevard.
McCall de Palomá said he hung the holiday lights, as well as secured a sound team, barricades and a police presence in anticipation of obtaining the permit in time — but was still waiting on SAPO with just a week to spare before the party.
“It’s just so crazy,” McCall de Palomá told The Post on Thursday morning. “There’s no way to actually get the answers.”
The unexplained delay was sending organizers and expected participants into a frenzy, McCall de Palomá said, noting that he had yet to formally announce the event or confirm bookings of the line-up of dancers, drum corps and Christmas carolers — groups that are mostly comprised of neighborhood kids.
“All the groups that are performing, they’re all going nuts. They’re like, ‘Where are the posters? Why isn’t everything up?’” McCall de Palomá said. “And I say, ‘Well because SAPO hasn’t bothered to give us the permit yet.’”
A rep for SAPO on Friday blamed the delay on McCall de Palomá, saying a change in date and switch in describing it as a “street event” instead of “block party” had caused the application to be considered late, and forced the documents through all involved agencies for a second time so they could provide comments.
“The permit was issued yesterday (11/14), two weeks from the day the date change was requested and the day our office received documents from the applicant for review,” the spokesperson said.
But McCall de Palomá — who is paid by the city to manage the plaza and organize regular events — responded that SAPO was using “any excuse they could come up with.”
He claimed the debacle marked the second time recently that the Sunnyside Shines BID — a city-funded nonprofit that promotes the Queens neighborhood — has run into a brick wall over securing permits.
The organization got city approval to host its annual Día de Muertos celebration just two days before the Nov. 2 party.
“Fortunately the Mexican community is really, really organized. We still had a huge crowd and it went well, but it would have been bigger if we actually had the ability to collect the signage at the time,” said McCall de Palomá.
The business promoter noted that the city does have a “Holiday Permitting Embargo” that suspends permits from being issued in some areas of the five boroughs from mid-November through January each year — but said it’s never posed an issue in the past.
He suspects disorder at SAPO, or within City Hall, could be to blame.
McCall de Palomá said he made numerous calls to the office over the last few weeks to check on the status of the permits for the lighting ceremony, including one conversation earlier this week in which an employee apparently believed the event wasn’t happening until December.
The organizer said he dealt with a rotating list of SAPO employees over the weeks, and each of them gave him the runaround, telling him: “We’ll get back to you. We’ll get back to you. We’ll get back to you.”
“I can’t even promote the event. I got all these different groups of kids dancing and I don’t really know what to do. It’s beyond frustrating,” he said Thursday.
McCall de Palomá was considering being forced to find a new date for the celebration — before The Post made him aware Friday afternoon that the permits were finally approved.
SAPO representatives called him late in the afternoon asking what they could do to help push the application over the finish line, he said Friday.
An online system marks his application as approved, but McCall de Palomá said he has not been properly notified by email, as is customary.
He wondered if the permit would have been approved in time had The Post not reached out.
“If it did get approved, it would have been approved next Thursday night, and I would have already canceled the event,” he said.
“It’s insane.”
