The de Blasio administration is ending 2015 by addressing a long-standing controversy over the fate of 43 community gardens on city-owned land with a decision that has prompted mixed reactions among New Yorkers close to the divisive issue.
The administration is preparing to build more than 800 below-market-rate apartments on nine gardens — including two unused ones —while preserving another 34 gardens, according to several sources briefed on the plans.
City officials gathered representatives of the gardens at a meeting in City Hall on Wednesday afternoon to reveal the plans and distribute a list of which spaces will be preserved and which would be turned into development sites.
The city promised that when it builds on current gardens, it will create a new gardening space within a quarter of a mile of the original, but it is unclear whether the new spots would be the same size.
The two sites already being prepared for low- to moderate-income housing are Sparrow's Nest Community Garden in Queens and A Small Green Patch in Brooklyn. The other seven include one on East 111th Street, another in Coney Island, the Pleasant Village Community Garden II, Jackie Robinson Tenant Association, Mandela Community Garden, New Harvest Garden and space at Van Siclen Warwick, according to a list distributed at the City Hall meeting and obtained by POLITICO New York.
The city is promising that all apartments built on these sites will be entirely below-market rents.
15 comments:
I seem to recall that virtually all community gardens on City property were designed to be temporary uses until sold or developed. Most have had long lives and it seems perfectly reasonable to develop the land and find comparable sites for gardens.
We have to get things ready for the Syrian refugees...
Here's a novel approach: How about the current, recalcitrant administration start aggressively enforcing no more cheap, hideous high rises that are turning New York into a filthy, filled-to-capacity cesspool, while clawing back all obscene, unbridled, unchallenged, un-Democratic power that currently, falsely empowers all city council members, so that they can no longer operate like insidious, unilateral, de facto construction developers in the first place (are you hearing and listening, Jimmy Van Bramer, and the Vallone Dynasty henchmen)???
Alas, the destructive realities that former, dishonest-and-disloyal billionaire/autocrat Michael Bloomberg created (the quintessential Emperor without clothes), was a flagrant, self-imposed and lawless abuse of drunk-with-power authority (that was never in his purview to exploit in the first place!), by inviting all of his friends and their henchmen to a NYC construction bacchanalia that decimated whatever open, public community gardens existed--- with sparsity---to begin with (the present Willets Point debacle is one such case that revealed how he intentionally sold public land to developers for a paltry sum, that was unlawful---and not a peep from his counsel)! Now, the party is LONG over, but the hangover remains, like a citywide 'malaise' that never lifts!
Hence, it's WAY overdue to stop building in New York on FINITE land space! Now, I hate to spoil the new year with some urgently needed 'Cold Light of Day' reality, but not everyone who wants to live here will be able to make the transition, much less with any pretense of fair and affordable housing to prevail, when the rapidly vanishing American middle class continues to evaporate into oblivion by the hour!
Add to that grim, 'Happy New Year' reality the fact that infrastructure is about one, new, flimsily made building away from collapse, on top of a transportation system that is beyond riding capacity (not to mention sanitation issues, and many other essential services, like water supply---10 years ago, the water pressure in my neighborhood, which used to have the force of stripping wallpaper off the walls at will, is now down to what looks like a weak, trickling stream, versus the ever climbing water bill), and that's only one example of a growing many, regarding quality of life issues that are in deep trouble!
And, there it is. . .
Less plants, more middle class welfare. At least we know one type of green de blasio likes, and I don't mean money!
But But But what about CARBON FOOTPRINT and OVER POPULATION,WERE THEY JUST
TALKING POINTS,LIP SERVICE ?
LOW INCOME HOUSING EQUALS FEDERAL DOLLARS
PEOPLE BE DAMMED BY THESE LYING CORRUPT POLITICIAN'S
@Richard Iritano said..
Spot on!
Community gardens are "underutilized" land awaiting development.
With a closet REBNY mayor like De Blasio, they are doomed.
Every mayor takes his orders from the Real Estate Board of NYC. Make no mistake about it.
Hey remember! It's major Welhelm or Wilheim.
cue the music
altogether now
"Detroit here we come"
New York ain't like Detroit
Detroit over expanded and its primary industry...automobile building... went bust...buried by Japan.
NYC is and will always be a world class city. Despite the numerous downturns throughout its history, NYC a,ways came back.
the community gardens are full of burnt out overworked white liberals who feel that black children need to learn how to eat properly so that they won't grow up to be thugs, rapists and murderers, like a lot of their relatives. It's free baby sitting for the black parents happily living in subsidized housing like NYCHA or section 8 projects. That way the black parents have more money to free up to buy crack, new clothes, vacations and nice automobiles. They don't ride the bus like the white liberals do.
Any low rent housing will go to the Chinese. The blacks control NYCHA so they won't be screaming too much.
NY ain't like Detroit,NY always comes back
I could say something mean or stupid about that statement but what would be the point.
Why are so many posts on this blog racist and/or just plain ugly? How about limiting comments to fact-based opinions and rational analysis?
I call all my friends racist like black people call each other the N word,
Hey what's up racist,laugh every time.
Racist doesn't mean what it used too.
No one cares if you call them a racist.
r185...
Blacks can openly call white people names. Hispanics can openly call blacks names. Muslims can openly call Jewish people names.
Sorry, but by their example, racism is apparently allowed now.
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