As the gateway to a half-dozen subway lines, the sprawling Broadway Junction transit hub commands a prime location at the crossroads of six neighborhoods and serves as the unofficial welcome center in a fast-growing part of New York City.
The problem? It is anything but welcoming.
The dingy warren of passageways and platforms linking the A, C, J, Z, M and L are so packed that rush hour turns into a crawl. Outside, bus stops and a Long Island Rail Road station are plopped down in a depressing terrain of trash-strewn streets, chain-link fences rimmed with barbed wire and panhandlers camped out on sidewalks.
“You could do way better than this,” said Roody Fevry, 32, an exterminator who lives nearby. “It’s like nobody cares.”
Now Broadway Junction may finally get the makeover it has long needed. City officials are taking steps to create a destination stop with nearby restaurants, stores, gyms and other commuter-friendly amenities. Their aim is to turn the tired station and the surrounding area into a bustling economic center for a swath of Brooklyn that has long struggled with unemployment, poverty and crime.
The city’s Economic Development Corporation recently began a $200,000 study to identify potential avenues of economic growth in and around the transit hub — including office, retail and educational uses. A group of elected officials and community leaders has also been convened to come up with a vision for the area. The Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, and City Councilman Rafael L. Espinal Jr., a Democrat who represents the area, are the co-chairmen.
10 comments:
Just make it wheelchair accessible. Imagine such an important interchange and it is not accessible to the disabled!
I recently passed through here on the J. A few more stops down and the hipster do-nothing's start infesting the platforms. It's them and their mickey mouse politics that drive nyc policy and media. They will sterilize the entire city like they did to Seattle and Portland.
Maybe they can transfer the Queens cultural scene that is so perfect for Jamaica to an even better place - here! Better yet, why waste all that space around borough hall - move those offices here and no one will notice.
Make that building the home of the Queens Water Works or Queenboro Light and Power Company - or something similar - the architecture of the building screams for a public utility like that to move in.
Low income neighborhoods should have been in the crosshairs decades ago !!
Drive out dem po folk. Urban renewal people of darker hue removal
Anonymous said...
"I recently passed through here on the J. A few more stops down and the hipster do-nothing's start infesting the platforms."
Do tell. This new influx, or scourge if you will, has been somewhat benefited by the convenient rerouting of the M line to Broadway Junction in the past few months as the original M line is getting upgraded and the usual commuters for the Middle Village through Ridgewood have to wait for the shuttle bus.
All the talk of crime going down by the NYPD high brass and the past 2 mayors did not even acknowledge whatever improvements East New York had, but that's going to change now because of this. The problem with this glowing little preview of de Faustio's sop to the Gentrification Industrial Complex and the hipshit demo is that violent crime is going up again and a there is a massive community resistance to the inevitable displacement and disenfranchisement this supposed zoning program/mission is supposed to help.
The moronic technocrats behind this want to tout these improvements like it's good for you and everyone else. Kind of like being forced to eat liver.
"It's them and their mickey mouse politics that drive nyc policy and media"
And it and this madness will be stopped.
Eny and Brownsville have too many projects,i mean developments. Keep putting the haves next t the have nots. It will explode.
The unsaid motivation behind all this is the upcoming shutdown of the canarsie tunnel which will escalate, if it hasn't already, the hipshit pilgrimage from Williamsburg and even from Bushwick.
I hope the citizens realize that Espinal and Adams, a maitre'd more than a public servant for his borough just like Katz is for hers, do not have their interests in mind. These dopes think a cafe or a swanky poser speakeasy will supplant decades of blight and crime overlooked by this city.
Mostly, these transients are going to go nuts now that their commutes will be longer and more chaotically overcrowded in their new digs.
What does not kill us makes us stronger. Only the wealthy mentally and physically fit shall survive the Darwinian new New York!
Joe Crowley should move to the area. At least then he will be closer to his constituents.
Post a Comment