And just like that, e&c has been up and running for a month. Thanks y’all, and welcome to this May 31, 2019 edition of East & Creek, the Greenpoint newsletter.
What’s up in Greenpoint?
Anthropocenic water levels are what’s up in Greenpoint.
It’s been raining a lot lately in our little coastal community. Needless to say, the weather caused an ungodly and unseemly quantity of poo-poo and pee-pee to flow free-free into Newtown Creek-Creek this week-week. (Yes, this is ridiculous; so is Combined Sewer Overflow.)
But drainage problems in the neighborhood extend well beyond Newtown Creek. India St., which leads to Greenpoint’s ferry stop and abuts the “The Greenpoint” development, flooded on Wednesday, forcing sea-faring commuters to extend the sea-faring-ness of their commutes. Locals described similar flooding events in recent months. (Greenpointers)
NYC Ferry announced Thursday evening that it would suspend service to Greenpoint “until safe access to the ferry landing is available,” with shuttle bus service ferrying the unferried between Hunters Point South and Greenpoint. A service alert published this morning by NYC Ferry said that service would resume today.
As for the news on higher, drier ground: You’re about to see many more mopeds around the city. The micro-transit start-up Revel placed a thousand of their electric bikes in Brooklyn and Queens on Wednesday following a pilot in North Brooklyn. (Daily News)
Continuing this newsletter’s apparent alt-transit theme, the proposed and much-criticized Brooklyn–Queens Connector got its first hearing before city council members on Thursday. Questions abound! (amNY)
And since we’re on the subject, the transit-oriented podcast War On Cars consulted a rabbi to settle a matter of much concern and consternation: whether it is right or wrong for bicyclists to run reds. (War On Cars)
Okay! Back to Greenpoint news. The Go Green Brooklyn Festival returns to McCarren Park on Saturday. (Greenpoint Post) Also on Saturday, several groups will hold an “It’s My Park Day” at McGolrick Park.
At a community meeting on Tuesday, the Parks Dept. provided updates on progress at Bushwick Inlet Park. Most notably, the current tenant in the Enormous Blue And White Warehouse will vacate the now-city-owned property in March 2020, after which point demolition can begin. Preliminary environmental testing has been completed at the site of the Bayside tanks; that property will require remediation before demolition can begin.
In short, significant park development at Bushwick Inlet is coming, but it is still a ways away.
Turning our attention just across the inlet, the MTA may someday lease its Mobile Wash Unit site at 40 Quay St. for real estate development. The waterfront site “presents a significant opportunity to develop a large mixed-use project,” according to a request for proposals published earlier this month by the transit authority. Proposals are due on August 1 of this year.
And a now-defunct nonprofit run by Mayor de Blasio received massive donations from private developers seeking favors from his administration, including the developers of Greenpoint Landing. (The City)
Meanwhile in New York City…
The NYC Board of Elections released a revised list of possible early voting sites. The good news is that the closest site to Greenpoint may actually end up being… close to Greenpoint. The bad news: “There are still nine City Council districts without a single site for early voting. They include: central Harlem, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, and the Lower East Side in Manhattan; a portion of Flatbush in Brooklyn; Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and parts of Astoria in Queens; and Highbridge and parts of Morisannia in the Bronx.” (Gothamist)
Two City Council members proposed ambitious reforms to the city’s private commercial trash hauling industry, which has been the subject of a series of investigative deep-dives from ProPublica. (Daily News)
New York City will honor LGBTQ activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera with a Greenwich Village monument, the world’s first permanent, public artwork to honor transgender women. (Curbed)
(Meanwhile, at Three’s Brewing in Greenpoint, you can pick up a four-pack of “Gender Neutral,” a “light lager with hints of citrus served in an eye-catching rainbow can.”)
How much does it cost to revamp a New York apartment? For at least one developer: as much as it takes to (illegally!) de-regulate the unit using existing rent regulation loopholes, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York Attorney General. (New York Times)
A new analysis of city crime stats found that the NYPD systematically undercounted rape statistics for the last seven years. (Gothamist)
Your Subway Weekender
G - Normal service.
L - Abnormal service.
And one last thing about that SUV…
The executive committee of Brooklyn Community Board 1 held its first public meeting amidst media attention, mayoral condemnation, and potential investigation regarding its purchase of an SUV last year. The City, which first reported the purchase last Thursday, did a comprehensive write-up of the contentious — nay, emotionally hazardous — hours-long meeting.
When one member of the public asked about the SUV, Fuller slammed her hand on the table in front of her and said, “I don’t have to talk to you.”
[…]
The debate over the SUV didn’t end with Wednesday’s meeting for some board members. “We need to discuss how to prevent this from ever happening again,” said Maria Viera.
But Sonia Iglesias, the board’s recording secretary, wanted to move onto other subjects. “Why don’t we talk about affordable housing?” she asked. “My neighbors can’t even live here with all this development. And we talk about this stupid car?”
e&c, who was present at this meeting, would note that Iglesias also told her fellow executive committee members on Wednesday, “It seems to me like you guys were not transparent.” (Fact-check: true.) And if it isn’t immediately clear, her plea to return conversation to matters of more direct importance to her community seemed to have been in entirely good faith.
In spite of Iglesias’s cri de coeur, it is certain that the SUV issue — and broader concerns about corruption, entrenchment, placard abuse, car culture, and lord knows what else — will explode at next month’s public meeting of the full community board.
Thus concludes this May 31, 2019 edition of East & Creek, the twice-weekly newsletter about Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Read the full archives here.
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See you around town,
e&c