54 years later, city seeks contractor to fix "temporary" structure

From AMNY:

Recent years have brought a resurgence of sorts for the structure, titled a “Modern Ruin,” in a 2014 documentary. City officials and preservationists have rallied together and secured $14 million for vital structural repairs and ambient lighting for the pavilion.

But finding a firm that is ready — and able — to take on the project has proved to be its own challenge, causing even more delays.

Only two construction companies responded to a bid that went out earlier this year. Neither were deemed viable by the Parks Department.

The city will again solicit bids later this summer, and are hoping for a better response.

“We certainly knew it was a complicated project, especially with the lighting element,” said Janice Melnick, administrator for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. “We would have loved to have more bids come in. It’s such an important job and we want to make sure we get the right contractor to do it.”

Overdevelopment leads to shitty beaches

From the NY Post:

The waters at three beaches in southeast Brooklyn were festering with so much fecal bacteria, they were deemed unsafe for swimming on 101 days over the past two summers, according to city Health Department records.

The filthy surf plagued the roughly mile-long stretch covered by Kiddie, Manhattan and Kingsborough Community College beaches, which are concentrated around Rockaway Inlet.

They accrued more than triple the total bacteria warnings issued at the city’s seven other public beaches. Ocean beaches have less stagnant water than inlet beaches.

The Health Department attributed the bacteria uptick to “increased rainfall.”

A clean-water advocate explained that the city has 460 points along its shoreline where about 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and storm water are dumped into New York Harbor every year when combined sanitary-storm sewers overflow during heavy storms.

“That’s the product of hundreds of years of overdevelopment in the city,” said Dan Shapley, the water-quality program director for Riverkeeper. He explained that certain city sewer designs date back to “when people were dying of cholera and the goal was to get [the sewage] out and away from the neighborhood as fast as possible.”

"With liberty and freedom to build crap"

"This corner on Albert Road and Hawtree Street by the Aqueduct Train Station has been vacant for over four decades. (Hell, maybe more, I am going by how long I have been alive.) Anyway, suddenly this regal looking monstrosity has sprouted on that corner.

I cannot fathom any rationale why someone would build and some moron bureaucrat in the DOB approve building something on this corner which contains a very busy traffic corridor with the Belt Parkway exit that's maybe 30 yards away and an overpass from Howard Beach where the only direction is towards this properties path, much less build something this massive and garish.

This may be the holy grail of Queens Crap and may be the last straw when it comes to the issue of over-development and in the case of this neighborhood, incongruous and ludicrous house building."

JQ LLC, Impunity City (Your City)

It's all so convenient

From the NY Post:

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $300,000 debt to his outside law firm is starting to cast a huge shadow over his staff’s decisions.

As The Post reports Tuesday, opponents of plans to expand the Frick Museum have gone to court, claiming in part that the Frick’s use of the firm — Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel — to represent it before the city creates a conflict of interest.

They’re right: Frick hired Kramer Levin to push its plans before the Board of Standards and Appeals and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. But the mayor chooses their members, and they’re all surely aware that he owes the firm 300 grand.

The BSA will also decide Tuesday whether to OK a 64-story East Side apartment tower. Who’s repping its developer, Jonathan Kalikow? Yep: Kramer Levin.

The firm reportedly lobbied two key mayoral aides, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and City Planning Commissioner Marisa Lago, to let the building reach its planned 64-story height — and the planning commission obliged.

The City Council later nixed that decision, but the BSA will now decide whether enough of the tower was built by then to shield it from the council’s action.

Even if de Blasio hasn’t tried to pay off his debt with political favors, his debt creates an appearance that the firm will be treated well by the city. What company lets a client not pay a bill (or even work out a payment plan, as de Blasio has yet to do) unless it’s getting something in return?

28,000 kids poisoned by lead - and no one seems to care

From the Daily News:

He had to be backed into a corner by this newspaper and the Department of Justice, but Mayor de Blasio is now correctly having the city use standards set by federal health experts to protect children from lead-paint poisoning.

City Hall’s assurances that only 19 children living in the Housing Authority have been poisoned by lead was devastatingly misleading. Health Department records obtained by the Daily News show 820 NYCHA kids since 2012 ingested quantities of lead sufficient to cause neurological damage. Citywide, nearly 28,000 children did.

They and their families have to live evermore with the tragic reality: lead poisoning in NYCHA, and beyond, is a far greater public health menace than the mayor has been willing to admit or act on, leaving it to special ed teachers to administer to minds forever stunted.

The coverup consists of two sins, one in the headlines and one behind the scenes.

Shouldn't this be a criminal investigation at this point? The FBI has been investigating a payment made to a porn star for more than a year but no one is sinking their teeth into this?