Are DOT's plaza projects misguided?

From QNS:

Local businesses in Ridgewood are feeling the pain during a months-long project to make the 71st Avenue Plaza a permanent site.

Much like their Glendale counterparts — who are facing plaza construction issues of their own — several businesses that abut the ongoing construction site along Myrtle Avenue are seeing a decrease in customers, and in turn, a decrease in profits.

Although businesses are hurting right now, Ted Renz, executive director of the Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District (BID), asks business owners to look at the bright light at the end of the tunnel.

“Once the sewer project is complete, then work will be going on in the plaza itself,” Renz said. “Vincent Arcuri (chair of Community Board 5) and I met with the contractor with DDC (Department of Design and Construction) on [Feb. 16] and he expects the sewer project, with the big gray sewer connections, to be completed in three weeks. Then work will be commencing in the plaza itself and the visibility will be greatly improved.”

Renz also mentioned that once construction is completed — scheduled for September of this year, according to the contract — that the new permanent plaza will be a major boon to the same businesses that are suffering right now.

Car break-ins happening near Forest Park

From DNA Info:

An increase in car break-ins in Forest Park has prompted police to warn residents not to leave their valuables in their cars.

Thieves are cracking windows to steal wallets, purses and other valuables, police said.

Law enforcement officials said they have noticed an uptick in car break-ins in the area in the past three weeks, during which thieves stole valuables from approximately half dozen cars, after the drivers parked their vehicles around Myrtle Avenue and Freedom Drive.

Thieves break into vehicles by smashing cars' windows and usually target vehicles on Sundays, between 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m., authorities said.

Myrtle is for pigs

From the Times Newsweekly:

Public waste baskets along Myrtle Avenue in Ridgewood are being abused by area residents who dump their household trash in the receptacles, according to the executive director of a local merchants’ organization, who called on the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) to launch a crackdown.

Ted Renz of the Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District (BID) recently sent a letter to the DSNY’s Henry Ehrhardt asking for the agency to dispatch enforcement agents to the shopping strip between Cypress Avenue and 60th Lane to catch individuals who place household garbage into the public bins.

“Many of these corners are abused on a regular basis, generally between 6 and 8 a.m. (peak times of abuse), with a significant amount of household waste in each public receptacle,” Renz wrote in the letter, which was forwarded to the Times Newsweekly.

The illegal dumping complicates the efforts of the BID to keep the shopping strip clean, according to Renz. Crews are out on the sidewalk daily from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. to assist the DSNY in sweeping the streets and also removing and replacing garbage bags in the 65 receptacles on Myrtle Avenue between Fresh Pond Road and Wyckoff Avenue.