The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

To catch you up, a humble narrator was visiting home recently, discovered that his long held environmental adaptations to NYC had faded away and could thereby fully smell and hear literally everything, and it was a particularly hot and humid day when these shots were gathered.

One was scuttling about in Long Island City, and standing on Borden Avenue’s eponymous bridge, which is found along the 1870’s vintage roadway. That’s the Queens Midtown Expressway section of the larger Long Island Expressway pictured above, as seen from Borden Avenue.

Formerly, the highway truss was the largest structure you’d find along the Dutch Kills tributary of the Newtown Creek, spanned by both the LIE and the very same Borden Avenue Bridge (amongst others) that I was standing upon.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Across the water, an enormous construction project has been undertaken, a ‘last mile warehouse’ operation dubbed as the ‘Review Avenue Complex’ by its developer, which promises thirty six loading bays for semi trucks, and one hundred and eighteen parking spots for other semis waiting to deliver their cargo. While you’ve all been fighting about bike lanes, this is what the powers that be snuck past you. It’s almost as if the bike lanes are a distraction…

This is a massive cargo depot, basically, built next to a freight rail line and an industrial canal, and which is entirely truck based. Big trucks will drive through your neighborhood to get here and deliver their cargo, and then little trucks will then drive through your neighborhood to deliver the ‘stuff.’ If the project is successful, heavy truck traffic will thereby increase in the residential neighborhoods surrounding Newtown Creek..

Congratulations, Queens. You’ve done it again. Think bike lanes, instead. It’s because of the bike lanes… the traffic… those pesky bike lanes.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One of the more annoying parts of the EPA Superfund team’s ’modus operandi’ at Newtown Creek is that they claim that land usage decisions are completely out of their jurisdiction, even if what gets built is going to affect their remediation efforts down the line.

Fascinating how you can base the very definition of a polluting industry here, at a Federal Superfund site, and receive zero regulatory attention. Why not open that factory which burns truck tires that I always joke about, or just open up an asphalt recycling plant downwind from a dense residential population? What could go wrong?

This is the part of today’s post where I say it: ‘Bah!’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This shot is out of sequence, and was gathered on the day after the particular walk that took me to Dutch Kills. while walking over the Kosciuszcko Bridge (we’ll talk about that leg later on). The shocking scale of the Review Avenue Complex (the one on the right) is softened only slightly by a similarly gigantic project (left) that has also risen from Borden Avenue and is on the former site of the FreshDirect outfit. That project is for theatrical production, I’m told.

Neither structure existed before I left NYC at the end of 2022.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A concrete pumping truck which adjures passerby to get ‘All aboard the Gravy Train’ on its side kind of sums up what I think about all of this. Good to see that the shit flies of the real estate industry still swarm and flock, here in the world’s borough.

The good news is that hundreds of construction workers are collecting a check, but seriously – where is the City and the EDC here? Green roof? Connections to bulk cargo shipping opportunities of rail or barge? Any sort of environmental anything? How’s about a place to sit down, at least? A bus shelter? Anything?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Not my problem anymore, thought a humble narrator.

I turned a corner, and walked past the former campus of Irving Subway Grate, which has been converted over into a waterfront facing concrete factory, after sitting fallow for decades. The water on the other side of the factory is Dutch Kills, if you’re curious. Literally the worst thing to site near a waterway is a concrete factory, especially if they’re not using their docks to move feed stocks in. Weather inevitably scrapes the piles of feed stocks and carries them into the water, where they coat the bottom of the waterway.

Ok, one more time: Bah!

Back tomorrow.

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“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.