Monday, July 16, 2018

Hope for the Lefferts Ave bridge


From the Queens Chronicle:

At a Wednesday meeting with elected officials and civic leaders, Long Island Rail Road President Phillip Eng said the MTA has devised a plan to save the Kew Gardens span and the handful of small businesses on top of it, according to multiple people who were at the gathering.

“It was a productive meeting. The LIRR came back and said there’s a way to fix the bridge to make it stable,” Assemblyman Daniel Rosenthal (D-Flushing) told the Chronicle on Wednesday. “There’s a very clear pathway forward to rehabilitate the bridge. Nothing is done until its done, but it was a very optimistic meeting.”

The MTA originally said last May that the century-old span had decayed to the point where it would have to be torn down come 2020 — the year the entrepreneurs’ collective lease expires.

But in the 14 months since, mass community outrage led to both the MTA softening its position and state lawmakers passing legislation calling for a bridge rehabilitation feasibility study.

Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills) even allocated $1 million for one.

But shortly after Eng took over as the head of the LIRR, he met with area lawmakers and civic leaders in June to hear their concerns and discuss how to potentially save the span.

In the following six weeks, Rosenthal said, Eng stayed true to his word.

“I’m not an engineer, but there is a way to — underneath the bridge — remove the deteriorating concrete and replace it,” the assemblyman said. “Today, [the LIRR] came back and they showed it was more than just words. They showed they have a realistic, tenable plan.”

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So our tax money will pay for the rehab of a decrepit structure at twice the price of of something new that could last another 100 years, to keep a few businesses on life support, while empty store fronts sit everywhere feet away. Got it. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Wow, something in this City might actually be saved.

Anonymous said...

The problem is that the "new" thing that would have been built would have included apartment buildings in place of the existing retail. The NYT always calls Kew Gardens "a bedroom community". The only thing it really has going for it is that it's relatively cheap and the houses are nice and spacious. But now that they're tearing down the houses and putting in apartment buildings, it's becoming worse. I'll take the crappy retail.

Anonymous said...

I think what you said was actually very reasonable.
However, think about this, suppose you added a little information? I
mean, I don't want to tell you how to run your website,
however what if you added a post title to maybe grab people's
attention? I mean "Hope for the Lefferts Ave bridge" is a little
vanilla. You could peek at Yahoo's home page and note how they create post headlines to get viewers
interested. You might add a video or a pic or
two to get readers interested about everything've got to say.
Just my opinion, it could bring your website a little livelier.

Anonymous said...

>while empty store fronts sit everywhere feet away.

Last I was there, there wasn't a single empty store front on the bridge or on the whole of that part of Lefferts.