Politics

GET READY FOR PACKED SUBWAY CARS LIC

March 16, 2016 by editor 2 Comments

Prepping for March Madness at John Brown's — Prepping for March Madness at John Brown’s

The Mayor and the City Council reached an agreement to increase building size allowances in a number of zones in NYC, one of which is in the Court Square/Queens Plaza neighborhood. In return for this increased density, developers will set aside a portion of the new apartments for affordable housing. I’m not going to delve deep into this story as I have already done so recently here and here. The distillation of it then and now continues to be: [Read more…] about GET READY FOR PACKED SUBWAY CARS LIC

SOCCER STADIUM TO ANCHOR SUNNYSIDE YARDS PROJECT?

December 18, 2015 by editor Leave a Comment

The sole hint this year that Christmas is near

A new article written in a soccer publication, makes a well-thought-out case that Sunnyside Yards could be the optimal location to build a stadium for the NYCFC. That would be the NYC Football Club for the bulk of us not familiar with the acronym, but don’t let this new professional soccer team’s relative obscurity make you relegate the stadium idea as a lark.

That is because [Read more…] about SOCCER STADIUM TO ANCHOR SUNNYSIDE YARDS PROJECT?

JVB SPEAK(ER)S & MIGHT WE SEE TWO HIGH LINES IN LIC?

December 3, 2015 by editor Leave a Comment

Well we finally get some real local news late in the week. Best of all, I didn’t create it. Jimmy Van Bramer was interviewed in Crain’s on Tuesday and he revealed the following: [Read more…] about JVB SPEAK(ER)S & MIGHT WE SEE TWO HIGH LINES IN LIC?

PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING IS COMING: TWO SUGGESTIONS FOR LIC

September 15, 2015 by editor Leave a Comment

What the...? — Or maybe we can choose another one of these?

Next Tuesday, September 22, at 6pm there will be a Participatory Budgeting (PB) neighborhood assembly in the auditorium at PS78Q.1 PB is where our local councilman lets you decide how to spend $1 million on community improvements to parks, schools, libraries, streets, and more. It’s not quite that simple, there’s a whole process in place to make sure it doesn’t end up in your Uncle Lou the contractor’s pocket, but it’s the starting point for ideas. So here are two suggestions for LIC. [Read more…] about PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING IS COMING: TWO SUGGESTIONS FOR LIC

the one on 5th Street [↩]

GROWTH AT WHAT PRICE?

August 12, 2015 by editor 9 Comments

Maybe we think before doing when it comes to Queens?

For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, agriculture and vineyards.

But now a punishing drought — and the unprecedented measures the state announced last week to compel people to reduce water consumption — is forcing a reconsideration of whether the aspiration of untrammeled growth that has for so long been this state’s driving engine has run against the limits of nature.

– The New York Times April 4, 2015

Recent travails with the 7-train and school-gate lead me to ask: should everyone be living here? In a reversal of the entropic forces that overcome an abandoned jungle city, have we instead built over every square inch and then gone, and continue to go, too far upwards? Most importantly, does densification diminish the quality of life for all?

Probably not if you’re taking the seaplane to your 20-acre spread in the Hamptons every weekend and living in a 5,000 square foot apartment or townhouse Monday to Friday. As for the rest of us, I will posit that the answer is ‘yes.’ Because as exciting as it is to live in a city that never sleeps, at some point the reality of [Read more…] about GROWTH AT WHAT PRICE?