The IBX the MTA, accidental Governor Kathy Hochul and the urbanist cult lobbyists love so much is going to require eminent domain to get it done.
This means over a decade of construction that's going to cause damages to homes and displacement of residents and also the destruction of the environment by razing trees and green space all long the transit line that will stretch from middle class Middle Queens to low area median income towns in South Brooklyn.
This transit plan must be terminated.
After falling short in her last three political campaigns, former Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley has shifted gears, allowing her to win her first election in over a decade. The Glendale resident will succeed Lou Coletti as president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers Association (BTEA), the largest construction trade association in New York.
Crowley became the first woman to lead the BTEA in its nearly 120-year history.
“I look forward to working with BTEA membership companies to advance the construction industry as it addresses the pressing needs of people in our communities, drives innovation and adds to a more sustainable and resilient skyline that is built by a diverse and inclusive union workforce,” Crowley said.
Under her leadership of the contractor organization that represents 1,200 member companies across New York, Crowley said BTEA will continue to promote safety, bring more women and diversity to the construction industry, increase resilience in the built environment and lead in the fight against climate change. During her two terms on the City Council, Crowley fought for a record amount of funding for school construction in her district and passed resolutions that strengthened construction safety standards, expanded opportunities for Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises and funded programs that provided industry training including Nontraditional Employment for Women.
“This is the first time I won an election unanimously,” Crowley told QNS. “I went into politics in the first place to do good and make a difference and affect positive change and as an advocate for the building construction industry in New York, we do just the same.”
Back in the day a McMansion would be built here but we have a housing crisis so we're going to be seeing a lot more of this. Not sure if this will be affordable though.
This is also a mixed use building so it's anybody's guess what will occupy it the commercial spaces. Hopefully a day care center but maybe also a ebike battery charging bike shop or weed store.
It just might not be finished by the summer...
Residents of a Queens co-op building told PIX11 News it’s a neverending battle against dirt and dust. The culprit — a massive mound of dirt located on an ongoing construction site.
After six years, they said they’ve had enough.
“I want my life back,” resident Collette Smith said. “My neighbors deserve their lives back. Enough is enough.”
The construction vehicles at the site, located near the Van Wyck and Grand Central parkways, kick up debris in the yard, which causes dust to travel into nearby apartments. The residue is found on multiple surfaces throughout their homes.
“I don’t need to be breathing this stuff,” Connie Hemingway said. “I want to extend my life, not shorten it.”
From what it looked like on the first 90 degree day of the spring on the week before the “official start of summer” this Memorial Day weekend, the possible was achieved. For the fences that were supposed to deter people from going on the shore that were there for their safety were torn apart and beach combers made do with what little space on the sand there was.
The beachcomber rebellion was most glaringly apparent by B 91 street where the temporary summer shut down of the beach began. Two large stop signs were pried off and fencing was cut off to prevent access to the citizenry for their safety.
Heading down the ramp towards the perilously eroded shore was a sight to behold as people made do and set up their places with what little sandy real estate they can find under the omnipresent cranes and some plows left behind for the continuing reconstruction of the shore to save the peninsula from being submerged.
A crane toppled onto a Queens building under construction Friday morning, officials said.
The commercial boom truck fell along the side and on top of the two-story building on 36th Avenue near 35th Street around Dutch Kills about 8:30 a.m., according to FDNY and Department of Buildings officials.
Workers told PIX 11 that the crane was loading steel beams into place at the site of the new apartment building when the load apparently became too heavy.
No one was hurt, officials said. The cause remains under investigation.
“We got a report that there [were] only two workers inside the building under construction. They were also removed,” FDNY Captain Carmine Calderaro said at the scene.
“We had an aerial view of all sides, and we were pretty confident we did our due diligence to make sure nobody was in the building right now.
“Apparently, they were doing some work. The crane was up and moving some equipment around. That’s all I can tell you at this time.”
The opening date of a number of schools undergoing construction in western Queens has been pushed back in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Philip Composto, Community Superintendent of District 30, provided Community Board 2 with an update Thursday on several schools in western Queens that are under construction—and many are opening later than initially planned.
There are two schools that are opening in September on time, which were of particular concern to parents in those areas who feared that there would be a shortage of school seats.
An elementary school in Long Island City, located on Parcel F of the Hunters Point South development, will open on time in September—despite doubts last summer by officials due to city budget constraints. Furthermore, a 180-seat addition planned for P.S. 2 at 75-10 21st Ave. is also on track to open in September—as planned.
There were concerns that these openings would be delayed, since the city put a halt on school construction last year when it faced cash flow problems at the beginning of the pandemic. The pause was later lifted and the School Construction Authority made these two schools a priority.
Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer called it a victory that the Long Island City school– PS-384, located at 1-35 57th Ave. on Parcel F — is opening on time. “We have fought alongside the parents and school community in Hunters Point for this building and despite the COVID-19 pause on construction this building is opening.”
In the second video, she found a hole behind her bathroom mirror leading to another room, which she compared to the secret room in the film Parasite. In the third video, she decided to go through the hole and explore this other room with a hammer in hand. And in the final video, she discovered trash bags filled with stuff and a bottle of Core drinking water inside the area, along with what appeared to be a lot of broken plywood and a toilet. “Made it out alive,” she declared at the end, after exiting her mirror. “My landlord’s getting a really fun phone call tomorrow.” We've reached out to Hartsoe to see what her landlord told her about the extra room inside her bathroom mirror, but assuming this building wasn't created by a Being John Malkovich superfan, there seems to be a logical explanation for it: as one person wrote on Twitter, "This is a refurbished project. Maintenance guys used to not want to stand in the hallway if the tenant wasn't there, so they had entrances thru the bathroom mirror. Candyman was inspired by a guy in Chicago who was getting in those and sexually assaulting women."WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCK pic.twitter.com/J4UdHAWCIz
— Great Value Sade (@CheyMillz) March 4, 2021
A crane operator fined $10,000 for using his cellphone while hoisting steel on a Bronx job site is also under investigation for his role in the death of a Manhattan construction worker in 2019, the Daily News has learned.
Michael Chichester was fined the $10,000 in January for the Bronx violation — as investigators continue to examine his role in the gruesome death of hardhat Gregory Echeverria during the construction of a luxury building at 570 Broome St. in SoHo on April 13, 2019.
“Mr. Chichester was one of the parties involved in the 2019 fatal crane incident,” Buildings Department spokesman Andrew Rudansky said Tuesday. “That incident is still under investigation by the Department of Buildings and our partners in law enforcement. Further enforcement actions related to that incident are pending the conclusion of that joint investigation.”
Sources familiar with the probe say Chichester was fiddling with his phone the day that Echeverria, 34, died.
When reached by The News Tuesday, Chichester initially denied being himself, referring to himself in the third person instead. “What kind of story do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“It was a tragic accident,” he eventually said of the SoHo death before hanging up. “I went through all the investigation. I’m a crane operator. I’ve been a crane operator for a long time. If I look away it’s on me, but I follow my signal guy. A tragic accident happened. You’re making a mountain out a molehill.”
The tragic sequence that led to Echeverria’s death began as a team of workers were assembling a mobile crane to lift mechanical equipment to the the roof of the Broome St. job, officials said.
A second crane was lifting counterweights into place to stabilize the mobile crane. After putting one counterweight on the back of the crane using two of the three ropes attached to the hook, the crane operator, believed to be Chichester, lifted the ropes away from the weight.
But the third rope caught the lifting attachment - known as a lug - and ripped the counterweight off the crane and into the air. Counterweights can run from 8 to 16.5 tons each.
“The man was split in half,” a distraught co-worker told the Daily News at the time.
A preliminary investigation found that a failure to remove excess rope contributed to Echeverria’s death. Officials said the probe, which the city’s Department of Investigations is involved in, is examining whether others besides Chichester had a role in Echeverria’s death.
In August 2019, city officials suspended work at job sites where work was being done by United Crane and Rigging, a firm linked to the Broome St. death and to an incident on the FDR Drive where an overloaded crane toppled. The company was slapped with $11,000 in fines amid the pending probe.
One of those job sites was for an affordable luxury public housing building.
