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Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2019 20 pages • Vol. 42, No. 7 Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint • February 15–21, 2019
LANDMARK ARGUMENT City could break its own preservation laws by turning Promenade into highway
L
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
State transportation officials
must indefinitely stop service on
the L train until they erase all traces
of the noxious gas fumes that filled
the line’s tunnels last week and reportedly
sent workers to the hospital,
and caused straphangers to
faint and vomit, according to a local
pol.
“MTA should immediately suspend
train service,” Williamsburg
Councilman Stephen Levin said on
Feb. 8. “Public health and safety
must be our first priority, and I
have heard from several constituents
about sickness, nausea,
and day-long headaches they’ve
experienced over the past couple
of days.”
Leaders of the state-run Metropolitan
Transportation Authority
suspended L service between the
Morgan Avenue station and Manhattan
for several hours on Feb. 4
Photo by Julianne Cuba
Private preservationists and local civic leaders penned a letter to the city warning that officials may violate
laws established to protect the Brooklyn Heights Promenade’s views if they move forward with turning the
walkway into a six-lane speedway during repairs to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway’s triple cantilever.
LOUD, NOT CLEAR
Gowanus rezoning meeting erupts into shouts
after locals filed reports
about the potent
smell floating
from the subwayl
and around the
neighborhood.
Firefighters and
state environmental
workers investigated
the odor,
originally claiming
it resulted from
an oil leak unrelated to work on
the L train that includes an ongoing
series of weeknight and weekend
repairs ahead of the massive
rehabilitation of the line’s Brooklyn–
Manhattan Canarsie Tube set
to kick off this April.
But following their initial assessment,
officials later said the
fumes wafted from an abandoned
diesel tank under a former gas station
along the line, according to
reports . And on Feb. 7, transit officials
brought in an outside environmental
consultant to test the
air, which showed
no contamination,
according to the
expert’s study.
Riders, however,
continued to complain
about the stink
later that night and
into the next day
— with paramedics
rushing a handful
of union employees
who work on the tracks to area
hospitals after they fell ill the night
of Feb. 7 night, according to their
union boss, who demanded officials
properly address the odor before it
causes even worse casualties.
“The L-train situation is completely
unacceptable. The air still
stinks and we are concerned about
long-term exposure and the health
of our members working 8-hour
shifts along the line,” said TWU
Local 100 President Tony Utano.
“We have pulled workers from
some locations, and if the situation
is not mitigated, we will take
further action to protect the safety
of our members and that of the riding
public.”
Levin doubled down on Utano’s
demands for a complete investigation
of the stink, calling for amped
up bus service to replace subways
along the L line until there is no
doubt the air is clear.
“Set up a robust bus service in
its place until we have more answers,”
the pol said. “We cannot
be too cautious when it comes to
workers and riders safety.”
The concerns over the fumes
echoed previous worries about
straphangers’ exposure to other
harmful chemicals potentially released
into the air during the Canarsie
Tube’s forthcoming repairs
— which will now allow trains to
run the line’s full length at reduced
rates throughout the fix as workers
spend nights and weekends fixing
one of its two tunnels at a time.
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
The city’s controversial proposal to
turn the Brooklyn Heights Promenade
into a six-lane speedway for cars and
trucks during the reconstruction of the
Brooklyn–Queens Expressway’s triple
cantilever could violate decades-old laws
established to protect views from the
fabled walkway, according to a landmarks
expert.
“Our opposition
is based in law, we
feel very strongly
that the Brooklyn
Heights Promenade
is protected by
a number of environmental
and preservation
laws, and
those cannot be ignored
when contemplating its future,”
said Simeon Bankoff, who heads the
privately run preservation group, the
Historic Districts Council.
Bankoff’s organization teamed up with
six civic groups — which collectively
represent about 40,000 Brooklynites —
to pen a letter to city, state, and federal
transportation leaders demanding the
local Department of Transportation rethink
its plan to put a temporary highway
on the historic walkway as part of its repairs
to the three-tiered infrastructure,
which experts say could start to collapse
in 2026 under the weight of the thousands
of trucks that travel it daily.
Turning the 70-year-old Promenade,
part of which sits atop the triple cantilever,
into a highway would block its
world-famous views of the East River
and Manhattan skyline — vistas the
city protected in 1974 when it named
the walkway a so-called Special Scenic
View District, forbidding any obstructive
construction along its path, the preservationists
argued in their letter.
“Transforming the Promenade into
a six-lane interstate highway through a
‘temporary’ six-year, multi-billion dollar
project would inflict severe environmental,
social, and economic harm
on the neighboring communities and
their tens of thousands of residents —
and is unacceptable,” the Jan. 31 missive
read.
The Brooklyn Heights walkway’s
scenic-view designation followed similar
decrees established as far back as
1965, when the Landmarks Preservation
Commission named the neighborhood
as the city’s first historic district,
leading the Feds to christen America’s
First Suburb as a National Historic
Landmark later that year.
The preservationists are prepared to
file suit against the city if it moves forward
with transforming the Promenade
into a speedway for no less than six
years, according to Bankoff, who said
they wouldn’t take legal action while
officials are reviewing the options on
the table to repair the 1.5-mile stretch
of expressway between Atlantic Avenue
and Sands Street.
Those options include the city’s socalled
innovative approach to send traffic
along the Promenade, which officials
say could allow the fix to wrap by
2026; its so-called traditional approach,
a lane-by-lane repair that could stretch
into 2028 and cause traffic jams for up
to 12 miles; and a third option recently
submitted by a local architect, which
proposes sending expressway traffic
down a temporary roadway closer to
Brooklyn Bridge Park.
“You can’t file a lawsuit unless some
action has been taken, no action has
been taken, the city is still looking at
several plans,” Bankoff said.
Leaders of another group formed
specifically to oppose transforming the
Promenade into a highway doubled down
on the preservationists’ demands, expressing
no reservations about taking
the city to court if officials proceed with
their innovative option, which Mayor
DeBlasio endorsed last October before
dialing back his support.
“The courts are always an option of
last resort, and we are prepared to use
every tool to fight this to the end,” said
Hilary Jager, a spokeswoman for advocacy
group A Better Way NYC, who lives
in Brooklyn Heights. “Our focus is on
working collaboratively to find a better
way to reduce traffic and pollution
across the city. That’s why we’ve asked
the city to stop moving forward with its
proposed plan, engage with stakeholders,
look at and seriously consider alternatives,
and listen to the community.”
FIXING
the BQE
The city tapped engineers
to review its BQX plan.
Rolling!
Signs of life for
the BQX trolley
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
The city tapped an engineering
firm to study the environmental
impacts that Mayor DeBlasio’s
beloved Brooklyn–Queens trolley
may have on the neighborhoods
through which it would run, according
to the leader of an advocacy
group for the so-called Brooklyn
Queens Connector.
“Today’s news makes it clear:
the BQX is moving forward,” Jessica
Schumer, the daughter of Sen.
Chuck Schumer (D–New York),
said on Feb. 6. “These steps show
meaningful progress for the project
— something we’ve been eager
to see.”
The city’s Economic Development
Corporation awarded
Manhattan-based firm VHB a
$7.2-million contract to lead the
environmental-review process and
subsequent Uniform Land Use Review
Procedure the trolley proj-
Economic Development Corportation
By Julianne Cuba
Brooklyn Paper
A long-awaited public meeting
about the city’s proposal to rezone
a massive chunk of Gowanus devolved
into a shouting match, after
its hundreds of attendees arrived to
find that officials would not present
their plan, but instead expected
locals to passively learn the future
of their neighborhood by staring
at posters on the walls.
The lack of a city-led presentation
about the scheme — which Gowanusaurs
and pols spent the better
part of two years crafting — was a
slap in the face to locals hoping to
hear more from officials after they
hosted a similar session following
the release of the plan last year.
“We want a real meeting today,
we don’t want to just put signs on
a poster, we want questions and
answers,” said Karen Blondel, a
member of community group the
Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition
for Justice, who lives in a nearby
Red Hook public-housing complex.
“We’re demanding that the open
house format tonight be turned into
a real public meeting.”
City planners on Jan. 30
dropped more details about their
scheme to rezone swathes of the
historically industrial neighborhood
in order to pack more residents
into bigger buildings there,
roughly seven months after revealing
a first draft of the plan that
Mayor DeBlasio initially floated
back in 2016.
And locals on Feb. 6 expected
those officials to lead a presentation
about the dramatic changes
they’re proposing — which include
allowing buildings as high
as 30 stories along parts of the
fetid Gowanus Canal, and structures
as tall as 17 stories along a
stretch of Fourth Avenue.
But instead, leaders of the
Department of City Planning
and other agencies stood behind
booths around the packed PS 32
auditorium, forcing folks to stand
in line in order to seek out the
information they thought would
be provided to them, another attendee
said.
“I would like to know why this
is the format today. The least we
could have is a presentation of the
draft that we participated in, and
I don’t see a lot of things that we
requested in this draft,” said Gowanusaur
Helena Whitaker.
The frustrations with the format
quickly escalated, with Blondel
and other members of the Gowanus
Neighborhood Coalition for
Justice bursting out into chants of
“Gowanus rezoning is incomplete,
’s bad smell turns dangerous
Pols, union leaders demand suspension after workers fall ill
City Hall take a seat,” and “Before
you rezone, fix our homes,” while
other attendees meandered around
the room nibbling on cheese and
crackers.
The group then demanded the
city planners answer their questions,
Photo by Julianne Cuba
including why the rezoning
proposal excludes the neighborhood’s
crumbling public-housing
complexes, whose residents make
up a quarter of the community, and
why it does not do more to create
a so-called eco-district to promote
See BQX on page 15
environmentally friendly living in
the neighborhood known for its
notoriously toxic canal.
“After two years of community
engagement in this process,
the city of New York continues to
exclude any commitment to fix
the environmentally unsafe conditions
in local public housing, and
provide equity and environmental
justice to the long-standing residents
of Gowanus that currently
comprise more than 25 percent
of the residents in the neighborhood,”
Blondel said.
Two city-planning officials
eventually conceded to the locals’
loud demands, addressing
the crowd and assuring that Gowanusaurs
are part of the overall
plan for their neighborhood.
The agency employees said residents
will get more opportunities
to discuss the scheme at two
upcoming meetings, a yet-to-bescheduled
session with the Coalition
for Justice, and a presentation
of the proposal to Community
Board 6’s Land Use Committee
on Feb. 28.
Locals wandered around the room during the meeting as
activists, including housing advocate Sabine Aronowsky of
Fifth Avenue Committee (left), and residents of Gowanus
Nycha complexes broke out in chants demanding answers
from the city.
P l i
RIVER OF TEARS
Photo by Caroline Ourso
Local classic
Gourmands with the James Beard Foundation honored restaurateurs Geet and Noel
Brown, the owners of Bedford-Stuyvesant Caribbean eatery A&A Bake and Double and
Roti Shop, with an American Classics award for its authentic dishes such as doubles — a
doughy Trinidadian street food often eaten with chickpeas. Read more in GO Brooklyn.
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