From the Daily News:The road to building a retail mecca in Queens is paved with backed-up one-way streets.
Rego Center opened its doors a few weeks ago, hoping to lure shoppers with Kohl's, T.J. Maxx and Century 21 department stores. And bargain hunters are coming.
But traffic in the already congested area, which includes the Long Island Expressway, Queens Blvd. and Junction Blvd., is also starting to jam up.
Costco, the bulk discount chain known for luring people who love to fill their cars with pallets of discounted merchandise, hasn't even opened up its basement store yet.
Local officials have been working with the city Transportation Department and developer Vornado Realty Trust to hash out traffic congestion issues.
DOT officials have reviewed plans and met with local leaders.
They are mulling a proposal to convert 62nd Drive to a one-way street and change the timing on traffic signals at Junction Blvd. and 62nd Drive.
And if you think it's bad now, wait until they build the 2 residential towers that go along with this project!
16 comments:
The same shit's going on with the "Flushing Commons" project.
Build first...fix traffic jams later.
In the meantime we can listen to a very boring, UNBELIEVABLE lecture from some DOT commissioner on how the log jam can be fixed by mitigating traffic flow.
WE'RE DOIN' THE OL'
MITIGATION MAMBO ONCE AGAIN
AT THE DOT...ARRIBA...OLE!
Funny, how we never hear about this from Penny Lee at Shitty Planning.
I thought she was an 'expert.'
Seems like she needs to go aback to school. Better yet, how about a new job assignment - in Youngstown.
Where are the Pratt Studies about this?
Where are the discussions by the preservation community on this?
Where are the position papers by Queens Civic Congress on this?
MITIGATION is a type of floating signifier these days...a concept that exists on paper, but really doesn't function in the real world. Nonetheless, such a word has helped countless urban theorists achieve tenure....
This is pretty insane. I avoid Queens Blvd. like the plague due to the ridiculous amounts of traffic.
This is shocking to me because I spent a decade in suburban Pennsylvania, and every time a massive new retail/commercial project went up, they were not allowed to open their doors until increased traffic capacity was in place. Road expansion projects would be completed in a couple of months, instead of years.
It is very, very sad how backwards things can be here.
10 pounds of bologna in a 2 pound bag...
Generate revenue and the hell with everything else...
Wait till the Maspeth High School is built. Nobody will be able to get down Grand Avenue with its two lanes of traffic. You will have Stop & Shop traffic, the high school traffic, PS 58 traffic, IS 73 traffic and then the shopping district traffic -- all which leads to the busy intersection at 69th street and the service road which accesses the LIE. Can't wait to see how they fix that mess. What ever happened to City Planning. Did they dismantle that group?
This mall if you call it a mall is one cheap piece of crap. The traffic is horrific! Walmart would have been a useful and appreciated store. Instead we have stores that sell cheap rags. Costco is different, at least they are a fine outfit that now folks who don't drive can access their goods and services without driving to the suburban wastelands, although one still does that to shop Walmart. However order you low price good on line to avoid the traffic, pay for parking and steer clear of this mall in general.
Folks, bitching about the mess is pointless unless you attack the cause of the mess. We are going to see poor planning at best, or no planning (as the norm) going forward as a matter of course.
Queens was planned by some pretty smart people. And in those early days, it worked spectacularly well.
But in the past generation the leadership is not only inadequate, but a complete joke - totally in over their heads.
Don't even want to discuss the sorry-assed state of the Queens papers, which are can't even get out of the starting gate when it comes to their traditional watch-dog role.
We got go after city council, city planning, urban think tanks, and the Queens civics.
Thank you to Queens Crap for bringing this out to the public.
Now, like a cat that dragged something home, what you YOU, dear public, going to do with it?
Skrew U car lovers.....all i need to buy is a bigger basket to put my stuff in...$50....and walk home...pfft!
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This is pretty insane. I avoid Queens Blvd. like the plague due to the ridiculous amounts of traffic.
and still the city thinks its going green
Where did you hear about them building a residential tower? the mall is complete, there will be no towers.
"Tentatively dubbed “Rego Park Mall II” by developer Vornado Realty Trust, the 277,000-square-foot (25,700 m2) site across the street from Sears will feature four floors of shops, a multilevel parking garage and possibly 450 new apartments, according to New York City Planning Commission records. An additional one block parcel owned by Alexander’s may include another 80,000 square feet (7,000 m2) of retail space, according to an Oct. 30 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Plans for two high rise apartments have been abandoned, but possibly in the future would likely include a 15 story tower at the corner of 97th Street and 62nd Drive, and a 20 story tower at the corner of Junction Boulevard and 62nd Drive, city records show."
That's funny... I wrote about Rego Park mall's traffic problems last month in the Queens Chronicle.
Now, the Daily News (my alma mater) is on it.
Who knows local issues better than the local papers? It's good to see the city papers catching up.
Okay thats from wikipedia which was last updated bout half a year ago, vornado owns the land across the street from the mall which is the parking lot for truks, and they plan on making an extra parking lot for customers, but i think its to late to build those towers now, besides its impossible to build a tower on 62nd and 97th cause thats a parking building already.
MuniLot1 in Flushing is already a parking building, too, but they are putting towers on top of it - after 5 years of stalling.
They have approval for it, they or someone they sell the lot to will build on it sooner or later.
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