Posts Tagged ‘sunnyside’
A Short History of the Sunnyside Yards
A little video action for you, in today’s post.
– photos by Mitch Waxman
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festoons of green
A St. Pat’s one shot today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I fully realize that you’ve seen this shot before, but god help me, I just love it so. Big time fancy dancy post coming tomorrow, have your seatbelts on for Wednesday and happy St. Pat’s.
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not permitted
A line in the sand, at the Sunnyside Yards, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Examinations of the plans elicited by the Mayor of New York City, a self professed “progressive” who has puzzlingly embraced the dream of Michael Bloomberg’s right hand man Dan Doctoroff to deck over the Sunnyside Yards, are disturbing. The scale of the project is frankly Federal in size, and the amount of debt which would be absorbed by the municipality in pursuit of it… conservative estimates would place the cost of the deck – just the deck – at around 200 billion dollars. That’s based on the $20 billion it’s costing to deck the relatively tiny 26.17 Hudson Yards. According to documents obtained from official sources, the Sunnyside Yards project would encompass some 200 acres. Do the math.
Remember, that number you just calculated is only for the deck.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Sunnyside Yards are not connected to the City’s sewer grid. The Sunnyside Yards are not connected to the electrical, gas, or water delivery systems. The 11.2 thousand “affordable” apartments which the Mayor is using to sell this project are part of an 80/20 project. As City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer recently stated, and as reported at sunnysidepost.com,
Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer told members of the Hunters Point Civic Association on Tuesday that 70,000 to 80,000 units might need to be built in order to attract developers to construct the affordable units.
“To get to the 11,200-odd…the number of units could be as high as 70,000 to 80,000 on Sunnyside Yards,” Van Bramer said, since developers typically require market rate apartments to offset the cost of constructing affordable units.
This would result in “a massive, massive development on the scale we have never seen before in western Queens that will affect Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside and Woodside,” he said.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The thing that no one seems to be discussing, however, is infrastructure. $200 billion would build you around 175 Kosciuszko Bridges. It could also build you around 20 sewer plants. What we’re not talking about are hospital beds, nor Police, Fire, Sanitation, School desks, and all the other municipal services that would accompany a build out of this scale. City Planning works off of a formula which speculates that the lifetime of any new residential building is 35 years. Does NYC have the budget to support the municipal services for this new population over the next 35 years, and shouldn’t we be calculating that as part of the cost of this project?
80,000 apartments would bring 150-200,000 new people into our community. The population of Albany, for instance is 98,424 (as of 2013).
Governor Andrew Cuomo has stated that he’s against the Mayor’s plan. That’s because Andrew Cuomo is from Queens. Talk to anyone in Queens, and they’ll agree with him. This plan is entirely about Manhattan, and the singular question which I’m continually asking is:
How, in any way, would this be good for Queens?
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bleak plateau
In the Cold Wastes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The sporadic intervals during which one has been “out and about” in February have been infrequent, but somewhat entertaining. Just last weekend, when a short period of warmth occurred, the ice pack retreated and released several examples of Queens’s native art form – illegal dumping – for inspection. Above, a series of flash frozen berries and a small bottle of perhaps wine was observed in Sunnyside reemerging into the open air.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The streets have been noticeably quiet around Astoria’s Steinway Street, which is normally a tumult of the old vibrant diversity and the caterwaul of honking automotive horns. It’s an “Astoria thing” incidentally, honking your car’s horn. Should another driver dare to slow down to let a passenger exit the vehicle, the custom hereabouts is to activate the horn and keep it operating until the offending vehicle clears a path for you. “How dare you slow me down, incrementally” seems to be the thought process at work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another unusually inactive point of view at Queens Blvd., nearby Aviation High School. The Boulevard of Death normally teems with traffic heading east and west, and it is somewhat disconcerting to see it abandoned by all but a few autos and the Q32 bus. Did everyone else get invited to a party that I wasn’t invited to? Such is the lot of a humble narrator, always a bride’s main, never the bride.
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been traversing
I hate Mondays.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The short intervals of time when torrential rain was not falling in the last week have been quite productive for a humble narrator, as my post vacation energy levels have remained rather high. Unfortunately, the aforementioned inclement weather has been a bit of a drag. Saturday found me out and about, and by the time that a return to HQ was accomplished both my filthy black raincoat and camera bag had become thoroughly saturated with precipitants. A short visit to my beloved Newtown Creek confirmed that the CSO’s (combined sewer outfalls) had been barking into the waterway. E’au de Creek, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another brief moment between the storms found me on Broadway, here in almond eyed Astoria. A fellow decided that he could beat a Skaggs Walsh oil truck to the corner, both were attempting to turn right, when he discovered that his calculations of velocity and mass were skewed. The oil truck was unscathed, as it is literally and figuratively a tank. The fellow in the car, however, required the services of a tow truck and body shop after the encounter. Another “accidental.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Over at my Brownstoner column, the latest attempt to deck over the Sunnyside Yards is discussed in a post called “NIMBY.” For all of us who live here in Queens, the renewed interest in decking over the yards by the elites of Manhattan is a shot across the bow. The development plans currently approved and underway – Hunters Point South, Flushing Common, Astoria Point, Hallets Cove – will be bringing us close to 40,000 new neighbors in the next decade. Decking over the Yards to allow Manhattan its long desired jettisoning of the Javitz Center from midtown, and exporting it to Queens just stinks. Another example of an ugly something that the City people don’t want which they want to stick Queens with, just like their garbage. If at all possible, please click through to the NIMBY post and share it to your twitter and or Facebook accounts, as we Queensicans need to get mobilized on this topic.
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The Newtown Pentacle 