Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Neglected Kew Gardens bridge needs some quick help
From the NY Times:
The bridge over the railroad tracks is Queens’s rickety answer to the store-packed Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It doubles as the hub of the bedroom community, with restaurants and stores on either side of the crossing on Lefferts Boulevard. But it is also a crumbling mess, in dire need of drastic repairs, according to the agency that owns it, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. To the dismay of the tight-knit neighborhood, the M.T.A. says that the best way to fix it is to tear the bridge down as well as the shops.
Now, the community is scrambling to find other answers before 2020, when the leases of all the business on the bridge expire. The M.T.A. said it will not permit the leases to be renewed while it makes plans for the bridge.
One suggestion from the neighborhood has been to stave off demolition by building a new bridge underneath the existing span to prop it up. The agency has offered a glimmer of hope, saying it would consider other options for the dilapidated bridge if a study were produced outlining the feasibility of alternatives. But the M.T.A. has said it is unable to pay for such a study, which it estimates would cost $1 million. State and local lawmakers who represent the area have said they will push to fund the study.
14 comments:
Will the Kew Gardens Cinema be somehow affected by any possible bridge demolition?
Maybe the boy mayor will award a contract to the guys who couldn't repair the Fresh Pond Road/Metropolitan Avenue bridge, they certainly are the right guys if you want to wait 10 years for completion.
The MTA has a history of ignoring problems with bridges, witness the Fresh Pond Road Fiasco...
BTW If you visually head up north - via the Street View - along Lefferts Boulevard to Austin Street, take a look at the Kew Gardens Cinema. I've always wondered what that strange free-standing roof contraption is on the cinema's main roof. Anyone know?
The MTA welcomes the study, but has no money for the study to see if shoring up the existing bridge is feasible. Therefore, when those leases are up, adios storefronts.
Another nail in the coffin for KG if this thing gets torn down and replaced with apartments. It seems like the goal for KG is to make it as dense as parts of western Queens without any of the amenities. In other words, a tenement slum.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry when reading this. The MTA can't find $1 million for the study? That makes me laugh! If they just eliminate all the graft and corruption that they seem to have money for, they should be able to find at least a million easily. Where are the local representatives who should be addressing this pending disaster?
The MTA is a force of corruption that devalues honesty itself. It's an impenetrable kakistocracy of profligate, wanton waste that is openly practiced, with impunity!
Two years ago, when I asked telephoned Governor Cuomo's two lackeys (appointment director Carey Maloney and Catherine Montrose), and asked the question: Who oversees the MTA and the MTA Office of the Inspector General, they both refused to answer me, and then they both hung up on my call
Worse, every time I travel throughout the working class ghettos and labor camps of Queens County and the other boroughs (as well as upstate New York), I see more signs of a crumbling society, and a colony collapse modeled after the fall of the Roman Empire. There are whole counties in upstate New York that look like they suffered a complete collapse of society and civilization (i.e., abandoned homes, decaying and rotting homes, closed plants and empty/abandoned storefronts), and a complete hollowness in the downtown business districts, and no real life and commerce to speak of)!
Frankly, New York City and New York State have been completely neglected for nearly 50-plus years BECAUSE of the DemonRatic, party-machine-failed system that gives corruption, graft, greed AND mendacity a bad name. There is no workforce power (America's millions of formerly stable and unionized jobs that cemented the birth of the American middle clase have now been replaced by corporate wage slavery for the rank-and-file, and corporate welfare for billionaires like Walmart for which we pay the taxes to fund). No one in government works for a living (much less is held accountable for NOT working, but ironically get obscenely overpaid without any public referendum!), but everyone else DOES work for less (and pays obscene, crushing taxes to prove it), and the public be damned (again and STILL)!
New York State is a graveyard, SO ORDERED by all city and state government that now openly operates as a totalitarian monarchy rule under police state operation, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In fact, living in New York City and New York State makes hell look like heaven.
GTA, it is some of the ugliest solar panels you will ever see.
The MTA blew 1.4 Billion of Fulton St, no funds for a crumbling bridge over the main line of the LIRR. Pathetic.
I've posted this NYT article from 1993 before. Nothing changes, not even the politicians names.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/10/nyregion/kew-gardens-sighs-for-its-bridge-of-stores.html
This is in Councilwoman Koslowitz' district.
What no study. NYC agencies LOVE to spend money on idiot studies that they already know the answers to, like trucks driving legally on residential streets. GIVE ME A BREAK, MTA throws money down the fuck toilet all the time, just do the damn study, eliminate several of you top paying management positions, who don't know shit. Also sounds like a ploy to fuck up another nice neighborhood. Send in the developers.
By the way Georgie, that thing above the theatre is some time of solar panel: https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140929/kew-gardens/kew-gardens-movie-theater-going-green-with-rooftop-solar-panels
>But the M.T.A. has said it is unable to pay for such a study, which it estimates would cost $1 million.
This is the first time I can ever recall that the MTA refuses to spend money. Suspicious.
I wonder how much were the studies that the MTA, the worst fucking transit system in the universe, that went into their plans for the moronic high end restaurants and knickknack stores at the Columbus Circle station TurnStyle. And they just recently added 70 inch LED screens, about 20 of them, all over the mezzanine at the Fulton Hub downtown.
Nothing fishy about this, being that it definitely is an established kakistocacy. The MTA, under orders from the state and willful ignorance by the city and that louse Karen Koslowitz, is going to continue to let that bridge decay and wait for the businesses, the RELIABLE businesses owners to quit and move so it can be replaced with the same "hip" high end restaurants or chains that they prefer to go along with the encroaching condensed affordable luxury towers invading the area.
Nothing is going to happen with the theater, it's the only cultural thing there but it's possible that the showing of movies will be replaced with some interconnected social networking bullshit or arena niteclub. Dani's pizzeria might get affected also.(That place is in the top 5 of slices, even if the counter guys are snobbish incompetent dopes and slow as shit to prepare pies for service)
@Gary W:
That article of yours. Funny how little things change.
>The residents have now rallied the support of elected officials, including Representative Charles E. Schumer, State Senator Emanuel R. Gold and City Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz.
Especially the electeds.
How did this get resolved back then? Or has the MTA just let the bridge crumble for the last 25 years?
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