April 12–18, 2019 Brooklyn Paper • www.BrooklynPaper.com • (718) 260-2500 AWP 15
DONATE YOUR CAR
Wheels For Wishes
benefiting
Make-A-Wish®
Metro New York
* 100% Tax Deductible
* Free Vehicle Pickup ANYWHERE
* We Accept Most Vehicles Running or Not
* We Also Accept Boats, Motorcycles & RVs
WheelsForWishes.org
* Car Donation Foundation d/b/a Wheels For Wishes. To learn more about our programs or
Call:(917) 336-1254
THE CITY CLERK
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
NOTICE OF SPECIAL ELECTION
45TH COUNCILMANIC DISTRICT
Pursuant to provisions of Section 25(b)(1) of
the Charter of the City of New York, notice
is hereby given that a special election will
be held in the Borough of Brooklyn,
County of Kings on, Tuesday, May 14,
2019, between the hours of 6:00 AM and
9:00 PM for the purpose of electing a
candidate for the 45th Councilmanic District.
Only registered voters in this district are
eligible to vote.
For any information on whether you are eligible
to vote or where your poll site is located,
please call (212) V-0-T-E-N-Y-C. TDD for the
hearing-impaired is (212) 487-5496.
The City Clerk of the City of New York
Town Hall draws ire for mayor
Brooklynites blast ‘expert panel’ for alternative proposals for BQE
Photo by Kevin Duggan
Who is on this ‘expert panel’?
$1,500
SAVINGS
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
It’s time to brainstorm.
The city has formed a panel
of experts to sift through the
multitude of alternative proposals
to fix the ailing Brooklyn
Queens Expressway,
Mayor de Blasio announced
April 3.
The panel will be led by
Carlo Scissura, the chief of
the building industry advocacy
group the New York
Building Congress and previous
head of the business
advocacy group the Brooklyn
Chamber of Commerce.
Scissura will meet with 15
fellow eggheads to examine
the alternative proposals over
the coming months in order
to find the best solution for
the project, according to
de Blasio.
“The BQE is a lifeline for
Brooklyn and the entire city
— which is why we are bringing
in a panel of nationally-renowned
experts from a range
of fields to vet all ideas and
make sure we get this right,”
Hizzoner said in a statement.
“We will be engaging in a
transparent, collaborative process
to find the best solution
for one of the most critical
transportation corridors in
the nation.”
The brain trust will begin
meeting this month to
look at the ever-growing
number of alternatives that
have emerged since the Department
of Transportation
announced its controversial
plans last September, and
will file a report with their
recommendations to the city
this summer, according to the
mayor’s office.
It consists of a number of
top figures from academia,
industry groups, local civic
organizations, as well as labor
and business interests,
according to its chair.
“The panel that has been
assembled represents the absolute
best minds in urban
planning, transportation,
business, design, engineering
and construction and will
create a thoughtful, meaningful
and inclusive process,”
said Scissura.
The city may announce
additional panelists in the
future, according to the
mayor’s office.
Politicians, civic groups,
and world-renowned architectural
firms have all put
forward their plans as alternatives
to the department’s
unpopular schemes to either
repair the highway bit-by-bit
or run a six-lane highway
along the beloved Brooklyn
Heights Promenade during
construction.
The department recently
indicated it was backing off
from those plans and instead
would look at the new
alternatives.
The agency has met with
several local residents, politicians,
and businesses to
hear their concerns, including
a closed-door gathering
with leaders of community
boards 2 and 6, but members
of the former board’s transit
committee want to become
more involved in the
project by having a liaison
from the agency to keep them
informed.
The transportation agency’s
chief said that the expert
panel would provide a
new way for the community
to get involved and that the
panel’s combined expertise
would be a chance to find the
best plan.
“This new panel presents
an important opportunity to
create the best plan possible —
with community voices heard
throughout the process,” said
Polly Trottenberg, the department’s
commissioner.
Here’s the full panel:
• Carlo Scissura, New York
Building Congress (Chair)
• Rohit Aggarwala,
Sidewalk Labs
• Vincent Alvarez, New
York City Central Labor
Council
• Kate Ascher,
BuroHappold Engineering
• Elizabeth Goldstein,
Municipal Arts Society
• Henry Gutman, Brooklyn
Navy Yard Development
Corporation/Brooklyn
Bridge Park
• Kyle Kimball, Con Edison
• Mitchell Moss, NYU
Wagner Graduate School
of Public Service
• Kaan Ozbay, NYU
Tandon School of
Engineering
• Hani Nassif, Rutgers
School of Engineering
• Benjamin Prosky,
American Institute of
Architects
• Denise Richardson,
General Contractors
Association
• Ross Sandler, New York
Law School
• Jay Simson, American
Council of Engineering
Companies of New York
• Tom Wright, Regional
Plan Association
• Kathryn Wylde,
Partnership for NYC
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
This panel got panned!
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new
‘expert panel’ for the Brooklyn
Queens Expressway lacks
wat chdogs
from elected
off ices or
neighborhood
associations,
according to
the attendees
of an April 3 town hall.
Several audience members
at the event, held at Brooklyn
Heights’s Plymouth
Church, raised the question
of why the mayor didn’t select
more community reps or
watchdogs for his 16-member
panel , which is chaired by the
head of a building industry
advocacy group and includes
urban planners, engineers,
architects, labor reps, and
several academics.
One of the event’s organizers
read out an audience
question addressing
this concern which she said
was common among the
submitted queries.
“This question came up a
lot,” said the co-founder of
the activist group to save the
Brooklyn Heights Promenade
A Better Way, Sabrina Gleizer,
before reading out one
submission.
“The mayor’s commission
has an impressive array
of experts but it appears
to be thin on community organizers,
representatives, and
tax payer watchdogs. How can
we make sure we are represented,”
Gleizer read.
Gleizer and her fellow head
of the advocacy organization
Hilary Jager met with de Blasio’s
office to ask whether they
could join the panel, which
was unlikely, according
to Jager.
“We asked for a seat at the
table, I don’t think that’s going
to happen,” she said.
But both activists and their
partners at the civic group
and co-hosts of the event,
the Brooklyn Heights Association,
agreed that the panel
would field the community’s
input during the whole
process.
“We’re insistent, because
we can be really insistent,
that we have to have a way
to check in with community
groups, not just A Better Way,
Close to 1,000 people came to hear the latest news on the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway repair project at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights on April 3.
After some two hours of presentations by architects and politicians, audience
members demanded to know why the mayor hadn’t included community reps
and watchdogs on his new 16-person expert panel for the project.
not just the Brooklyn Heights
Association, other groups on
a regular basis, whether that’s
bi-weekly or bi-monthly, we
need to have something really
set up and we made that
clear,” Jager said.
A spokesman for the mayor’s
office said that the panel
would engage with the community
regularly over the next
months.
“The panel will be taking
input from and engaging
substantially with the
community through a robust,
transparent process,”
said Seth Stein. “Throughout
that process, the panel
will meet with local stakeholders
and civic groups to
solicit feedback.”
The mayor’s original release
left open the possibility
for further additions for the
panel but Stein said that City
Hall didn’t currently have any
more panelists to share.
“Additional members are a
possibility but we have none
to announce at this time,”
he said.
The panel will meet this
month and examine several
current and future proposals
for an alternative to the Department
of Transportation’s
two original plans to either
repair the triple-cantilever
bit-by-bit or build a six-lane
highway on top of the beloved
Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
Some time in the summer,
they will put forward a
short report with their recommendations,
according to the
mayor’s office.
Civic associations, residents,
politicians, and most
recently, the international
architecture firm Bjarke Ingels
Group , have all floated
their ideas for the beleaguered
roadway.
The Dumbo-based architects,
along with Heights local
Mark Baker and architect
Marc Wouters laid out
their ideas to locals at the
town hall who applauded the
proposals.
In addition to de Blasio’s
brain trust, the City Council
will hire an independent outside
firm to look at the alternatives,
Speaker Corey Johnson
announced at the event.
“The Council will be hiring
an independent firm to evaluate
each of the options that
are presented so we can understand
the pros and cons of
every option that’s put on the
table,” Johnson said.
A spokesman for Johnson’s
office told this paper that they
were beginning to hire the
firm, but declined to comment
on the move’s cost or
which company they would
tap for the job.
“The Council is beginning
the process of hiring an independent
firm,” said Jacob
Tugendrajch.
Six elected city and state
officials attended the meeting
and roused the crowd in opposition
to the city agency’s
original plans, including Johnson,
New York City Comptroller
Scott Stringer, Borough
President Eric Adams,
councilman Stephen Levin
(D-Brooklyn Heights), Assemblywoman
Jo Anne Simon
(D-Brooklyn Heights),
and state Sen. Brian Kavanagh
(D-Brooklyn Heights).
Levin said he didn’t support
either of the department’s
plans but urged the
audience to form a consensus
around a plan so that it
can have a chance of passing
through the city’s Uniform
Land Use Review Procedure
without hitting any
roadblocks, such as litigation
or political obstruction along
the way.
“We have to get this right
and we have to get this right
now. I think we’re on track,”
he said.
Johnson, along with two
other potential future candidates
for mayor, Stringer and
Adams, railed against the topdown
planning of the Robert
Moses era, that saw the original
construction of the triple
cantilever and envisioned
how its reconstruction could
change the city’s approach to
transport, development, and
affordable housing.
“We can’t keep building
luxury towers and pushing
rezonings in the name of affordable
housing,” Stringer
said. “Because those houses
are not affordable to all the
neighborhoods in Brooklyn
and you know that.”
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER:
twitter.com/BrooklynPaper
FIXING
the BQE
/WheelsForWishes.org
/www.BrooklynPaper.com
/www.BrooklynPaper.com
/BrooklynPaper