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Preparing Brooklyn’s Kids with Special Needs for a Digital World

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

As with many great ideas, Beth Rosenberg conceived of Tech Kids Unlimited through equal parts necessity and chance.

The year was 2009, and Rosenberg was working as a special needs consultant at a school in Manhattan, building upon a career at the Guggenheim and in museum education writ large. Yet she was having difficulty finding resources for her own neurodiverse son, Jack, a then 10-year-old who loved technology. 

Taking matters into her own hands, Rosenberg put together one week of programming for 12 kids — a crash course in stop motion animation. As she recalls now, the response was both immediate and unambiguous: “The parents said, ‘Well, can we have more?’” There was a need, clearly, and Rosenberg set about meeting it through a fresh slate of classes. 

Today, Tech Kids Unlimited (TKU) — whose mission is to “empower neurodivergent youth through technology education and career preparation” — has grown to serve 542 students, encompassing not only New Yorkers but online participants from 12 additional states. Part of that expansion was made possible by a windfall in 2013, after Rosenberg started a job as an adjunct professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in Downtown Brooklyn. Her boss, curious about her workshops, asked whether she would bring the burgeoning program to the college. 

Until then, the scrappy prototype for TKU had largely been a function of Rosenberg’s force of will — for four years, she pulled together flyers and booked rooms wherever she had an affiliation, typically Pace University or the JCC. But that conversation at NYU changed the equation by offering a long-term space in which to scale, and it spurred Rosenberg to register TKU as a nonprofit in 2014. “From that point on, we had a home base,” she said. “I had access to classrooms in the summer and in the evening and on Fridays, so we could expand the program.”

TKU, still housed within NYU Tandon, now boasts a suite of options. Interested parents of children and young adults can choose from 14 distinct programs that fall within two general tracks: “tech knowledge” and “career ladder.” While the organization was formed around the former, Rosenberg said that the latter has become her main concern. “We’re graduating more and more students from high school and even community college,” she said. “But the work learning piece, the getting a job piece, is virtually not there.” 

TKU’s students come from a wide range of backgrounds, both in terms of age (7 to 21) and abilities. But to pick one example, a 2017 census by Drexel University of Americans with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) found that only 38% of respondents were engaged in paid jobs, whether full or part-time, highlighting the barriers those with learning disabilities face in finding employment.

For her part, Rosenberg believes this gap is exacerbated by disinvestment and stigma, and can be closed. “You don’t really see kids with special needs working unless they’re shelving vitamins at the grocery store or at Target,” she said. “I’m sick of it, because our kids are capable of so much more. But the world doesn’t see that.”

One of the nonprofit’s flagship programs is the TKU Digital Agency, which allows students to build skills by designing social media posts and other digital products for big-name partner companies. AMC, a recent client, used students’ creations to promote its show “Orphan Black: Echoes.“ Those posts received high praise: “It was nice to be able to share our knowledge with individuals who truly appreciate it,” AMC reps wrote, “and we were very impressed by all the ideas, work, and execution.”

Later this month, TKU students will be contributing to the fourth installment of the Marvels of Media Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, which runs from March 27 to March 29. The free event caps off a year-round initiative by the museum to “showcase, celebrate, and support autistic media-makers of all ages and skill sets,” and will feature VR experiences, video games, and film screenings followed by panel discussions.

Tonya Blazio was a graduate student at NYU when she found TKU through a newsletter. Her son Tate, who has IDD, had always been creative — to this day, he brings the objects he crafts into class to show everybody — but he fell in love with stop motion at a workshop, and has been obsessed ever since. More than that, Blazio said, her son discovered a safe space to learn alongside other kids: “Just seeing the improvement in my son’s work, his social skills, his ability to better communicate and understand how technology is available to help him — it’s been really tremendous.”

That sense of support and belonging extends beyond the students themselves, Blazio noted. “It takes a village to raise a child,” she said. “When parents realize, ‘Oh, I’m actually not in this all by myself,’ there’s all this information that you can share, and that’s been quite helpful for me.”

Though TKU’s pedagogy has evolved since 2009, it has kept its original emphasis on small class sizes. (“If it was good enough for the Queen of England,” Rosenberg said, referring to personalized tutors, “it should be good enough for our kids.”) Once the organization attained nonprofit status in 2014, it indexed heavily into project-based learning and design thinking, incorporating those principles throughout its curriculum. Another guiding paradigm is the special needs-oriented Universal Design for Learning, which encourages teachers to meet students where they are by “offering more than one way to access information.”

Nearly eight million students across America received services for disabilities in 2022-2023, the last school year for which data is available, accounting for roughly 15% of public schoolers. New York City alone is home to 200,000 students with special needs, though that label, which applies to 19% of the student population, casts a wide net; about 80,000 kids had learning disabilities, and just over 20,000 had ASD.

With April around the corner, Rosenberg and her team are spreading the word about their summer workshops. Each week is devoted to a different discipline, such as game design or video editing, and timing is flexible: parents can drop their kids off for either half or full days, and can sign up for whichever weeks they need.

“These kids are interesting, quirky, fabulous — they’re, you know, kids,” said Rosenberg, and the summer camps are designed to be just as fun as they are educational. Yet many parents, like Rosenberg herself, also witness their children develop valuable new skills. “[My son] went through TKU for 10 years: he learned time management, how to collaborate, how to take constructive criticism,” she said. “And he learned how to advocate for himself.”

So how is Jack faring, more than a decade after his passion sparked Rosenberg’s early efforts to ensure kids with special needs flourish? “I went out to dinner with all my SPED mom friends in December,” she said proudly, “and he was the only kid who was working.” Her son received an associate’s degree from Pace, which has a disability program, and he now works part-time as an operations assistant at the Shirley Aninias School, a special ed school in downtown Manhattan. 

Blazio has seen a similar maturation in Tate, who she said became more independent thanks to TKU’s programs. “At one point, they don’t want you to leave them,” she said. “And then the next year or so, they’re like, “‘See you, mom!’”

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G Train Fleet Gets Younger and Older, Simultaneously

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

The gods of transportation taketh, but they giveth too.

Last December, the MTA was facing a strange problem: the wheels of one model of subway car, R160s, were wearing out over the course of a few weeks, rather than months, and had to be rapidly replaced.

These R160 cars run on the E, F, and R lines, so theoretically the G should have been unaffected. But when the defective cars were pulled from service, substitutes from the G took their place — and vintage models from the 1980s were dusted off to fill any vacancies. Those cars, R68s, are slated to be phased out this year (prompting passengers to preemptively eulogize their unique yellow-and-orange “lover’s seats,” which are arranged in a cramped L-shape.) The end result, at least for the moment, is that G riders have been left with mostly musty, outmoded trains. 

Yet efforts to modernize the G line, the sole subway that doesn’t enter Manhattan, are also underway. After a “summer of pain” — not the citywide transit Tartarus of 2017, but the G-specific woes of 2024, when the line was shut down for repairs — the route started up again in September with a new signal system installed, which will come online in 2027. 

A more palpable change has been the introduction this month of open gangway trains, R211Ts, to the G line. The MTA initially rolled out two R211Ts, which have no doors between cars, on the C line, before announcing that it would be repurposing half of those 20 cars for the shorter G, where the 10 compartments could, like mitosis, form two additional trains with 5 apiece.

The transit authority is bullish on the revamped models: last year it approved a plan to buy 80 more open gangway R211Ts, ostensibly funded by congestion pricing. And at a press conference on March 4, Brooklyn lawmakers were similarly ebullient, praising the rollout.

Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon called the open gangway trains “more comfortable;” state Senator Andrew Gounardes and AM Emily Gallagher both argued they would relieve crowding, while making it more accessible for riders using wheelchairs or strollers. Council Member Lincoln Restler simply said the update was “awesome.”

New York isn’t the first transit system to adopt the open gangway. From Paris to Delhi, “cities around the world have benefitted from this same design,” said Gounardes. In fact, until now it’s been a glaring gap between America and its peers — 6sqft writes that “75 percent of non-U.S. metros have adopted open gangway trains, whereas zero percent of U.S. metros have.”

But many Brooklynites are split on the design, largely over public safety concerns. Online, the chatter has fallen into two broad buckets: the people who think the open gangway is indeed safer, because you can move away from someone who’s bothering you more easily, and those who maintain it’s the opposite, since you can’t switch cars. Anecdotally, the divide seems gendered, with men largely feeling safer on the R211Ts and women expressing reservations. 

Sophie, from Windsor Terrace, fell into the latter camp — she had the sense that the long corridor would make it harder to escape, and she also worried that the trains were becoming too “screen-oriented,” with little to gain practically. “They play TikToks and moving ads on the new trains,” she said. “I don’t think we need that.”

That aside, she acknowledged that the trains have been in dire need of improvements, and that the system has lagged behind international analogs. If the open gangway moves the needle on repairs, she noted, that would be a win. 

A fresh wave of open gangway trains are on their way, so they may eventually become the norm in New York City rather than a shiny toy. But for the time being, commuters on the G line roll the dice each day — will I ride a holdover from the 80s, or the digitalized train of the future?

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Is Bushwick Inlet Park on Track at Last?

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

The year is 2021, and former Mayor Bill De Blasio is apologizing as he holds up a $75 million check, flanked by local leaders from Greenpoint and Williamsburg. “A promise was made to this community a long time ago for this park,” he says, pulling down his mask, “and the city of New York did not keep the promise.”

The promise referenced by De Blasio was made back in 2005 by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who included plans for the 27-acre Bushwick Inlet Park as part of a massive rezoning of the two neighborhoods that year that paved the way for the frenetic development currently reshaping the borough’s northern tip. The condos have come up, but the full stretch of green space — the announcement of which was already perceived as ‘a long time ago’ in 2021 — has yet to materialize.

Now, in 2025, real change seems to be afoot. The demolition of the enormous CitiStorage building on Kent Avenue wrapped last week, putting an end to a land struggle that had prevented the Parks Department from moving forward with construction. As with many other local sites, the grounds will still need to undergo a significant remediation process, but officials praised the progress nonetheless.

“This has been a long and drawn-out fight, but the Citi Storage facility is finally down, making way for our long promised Bushwick Inlet Park,” said Council Member Lincoln Restler. “Our community has waited for far too long to see this promised park space, and I’m thrilled that this milestone means we can finally realize the full potential of our waterfront.” 

The demolished CitiStorage building was one of two structures owned by the company that had posed problems for the park’s development. The other, a nearby warehouse, was damaged by a fire in 2015. Though it was earmarked for the park, CitiStorage attempted to sell the 7.5-acre property to private developers before the city swooped in to make a $160 million purchase. The promised park’s planners now have access to land spanning from the North 9th Street soccer field all the way across the Bushwick Inlet, leading community organizers to believe that the 2005 designs may be feasible at last. 

“The CitiStorage building sat on some of the most beautiful land in our district, and that land was held hostage for a decade since the fire, while the community fought for this outcome. The fact that the building has finally been torn down, and the park design process can move forward, represents a tremendous victory for the community,” said Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, celebrating the demolition. “This didn’t just happen — it is the result of decades of tenacious organizing from the Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, past and present local representatives, and so many community members who came together to demand that the land be used for public good, not luxury condos that would drive up prices in our district.”

Greenpoint and Williamsburg continue to have among the lowest number of parks per capita in the city, leaders say, and that gap is becoming more urgent as thousands of new residents pour into freshly-unveiled apartment complexes. There’s a climate angle, too: “As New York City increasingly becomes hotter and more expensive,” Gallagher noted, “it is essential that we fight for parks as free spaces where our neighbors can gather, find shade, and build community.”

One of the main forces pushing for the 27-acre green space to be realized has been the organization Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park, which launched a campaign nearly two years ago called “Where’s Our Park?” to pressure the city into action. Its president, Katherine Conkling Thompson, said the sudden view of uninterrupted coastline afforded by the demolition was “astonishing,” and thanked her fellow organizers for their efforts.

“Over 150 years ago, the birth of the fossil fuel industry began here,” Thompson said in a statement. “As we begin to remediate this land, restore the riparian shoreline, plant native species to create precious public open space for all people to share, we can acknowledge that this is not only an investment in the future of our beloved Brooklyn but a symbol of the victory of the people coming together to demand environmental justice and [for] the city to fulfill its rezoning promises.”

You can watch a time-lapse of the demolition here, courtesy of Stephen McFadden.

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As BQE Deteriorates, Officials at Odds Over Fix

The triple cantilever was built in the 1940s, and experts say it is in dire need of repairs. Photo: Jack Delaney

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

“No more kicking the can,” said Mayor Eric Adams in 2023, as he announced two initiatives to fix the BQE Triple Cantilever, a distressed stretch of highway that runs underneath the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights.

Yet in a letter sent to Deputy Mayor Meera Joshi last Monday, five elected officials whose districts encompass the site are alleging that Adams has been doing just that: punting the issue.

At the heart of the matter is the question of whether to act sooner to repair the cantilever in a limited capacity, or to wait until a long-term solution — likely a complete redesign — can be implemented.

Endorsing the latter approach, the mayor’s office and Department of Transportation officials have argued that a short-term remedy would expend the political capital necessary for a lasting overhaul, stalling the project indefinitely.

But the recent letter, signed by Councilmember Lincoln Restler, Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, Senator Andrew Gounardes, and Congress Members Dan Goldman and Nydia Velazquez, argues that the process of determining a permanent fix has already stretched on too long, and a stopgap measure is badly needed to ensure the highway is safe.

“Considering the importance of federal funding for this project and the orientation of the incoming Trump administration toward New York City and the general uncertainty at City Hall,” Restler wrote in an email, “it is not clear that the Adams administration’s plans remain viable.”

“We need an alternative option that protects and preserves the safety of the highway and our community for the foreseeable future, while we work to craft longer term solutions for the whole BQE corridor,” he said. “Implementation of a stabilization plan to extend the lifespan of the Triple Cantilever would create time for city, state and federal governments to achieve new strategies to divert freight and reduce trucks and cars on this highway.”

The cantilever was constructed in the 1940s, and renovations were floated in 2006 during a planning workshop organized by state officials. In 2018, Mayor Bill De Blasio’s team pitched a temporary six-lane highway that would have run parallel to the Promenade, which would have been closed for up to six years. Needless to say, Brooklyn Heights residents weren’t pleased, and the proposal withered.

Mayor Adams has picked up where De Blasio left off, but has encountered roadblocks of his own: per amNewYork, in January the Biden administration rejected a request for $800 million to redo the cantilever. The deliberations over the correct design have plodded on regardless, with DOT holding forums to gather community input, the most recent of which occurred last week.

At this month’s Brooklyn Community Board 2 full board meeting, some members who had attended the latest info sessions were just as leery as Restler of DOT’s promises for a long-term solution.

“You heard the councilman mention the BQE — we learned last night that they’re starting the clock again on the two-year study to come up with a plan,” said Sidney Meyer, chairperson of CB2’s Transportation & Public Safety Committee. “Now, most of us have been involved with the same two-year plan, beginning in the year 2000. It’s the same two years, where they’ll study all the alternatives, at the end of which they’ll propose whatever they’re going to propose. I would urge you to be vigilant about what’s going to happen there.”

In 2020, a report by leading transportation experts concluded that the BQE was deteriorating faster than expected, in part due to the presence of overweight trucks. The triple cantilever was especially degraded, it noted, and needed repairs “immediately.”

While the report warned that sections of the road could become “unsafe and unable to carry existing levels of traffic within five years,” it also specifically rejected any proposals for a temporary highway near the Promenade, instead endorsing a refurbished four-lane structure.

Ultimately, almost all the stakeholders involved seem to agree that a major overhaul is needed, and soon. Why then, many residents like Meyer ask, has it taken more than 20 years to arrive at yet another impasse?

The fault for continual setbacks to the BQE project may not belong to DOT and Gracie Mansion alone. As Christopher Bonanos, New York Magazine’s city editor, wrote in June, “digging up half of Brooklyn for the once-in-a-century chance to finally fix the BQE and, in turn, build a better city, would require a level of misery tolerance that has come to seem unimaginable.” He noted that the best choice could be to demolish parts of the BQE and bury others, but the inconvenience to drivers and locals — and what he viewed as an overly cautious attitude on the city’s part — has made it politically infeasible.

As of now, the environmental review is slated to begin in 2025, and bona fide construction on the cantilever would start in 2029 at the earliest.

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Judge Holds NYC in Contempt for Not Closing Rikers, Paving Way for Fed Takeover

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

In 2019, lawmakers gave one of the largest jails on earth until 2026 to shut down completely. Five years later, officials are still dragging their feet on reforms — so the federal government is poised to wrest control of the facility from New York City officials to ensure the closure actually happens.

On November 27, Manhattan federal judge Laura Swain held the city in contempt on 18 counts for its handling of Rikers Island, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in Nunez v. the City of New York, a case first brought in 2012 that alleges “a pattern and practice of using unnecessary and excessive force against incarcerated individuals.” The decision paves the way for a federal receivership, which would strip local agencies of jurisdiction over Rikers.

The case was settled in 2015, with the stipulation that the Department of Correction (DOC) take concrete steps to fix what critics have described as a culture of impunity for officers within the jail. As part of the deal, a monitoring team was created to track compliance with the plan.

But in a 65-page decision, Swain observed that the monitors had consistently found DOC unwilling or unable to implement changes. “Progress will likely not be achieved,” they wrote in December 2021, “no matter how many remedial orders or other potential sanctions may be imposed,” because of “foundational” problems within the department.

If anything, Swain noted, progress has trended backward. “The use of force rate and other rates of violence, self-harm, and deaths in custody are demonstrably worse than when the Consent Judgment went into effect in 2015,” she wrote, with cases in which corrections officers used force against inmates climbing from around 4,500 incidents in 2016 (or a rate of 4 per 100 people) to nearly 7,000 (more than 9 per 100 people) in 2023.

These issues have been compounded by DOC’s unreliable record-keeping. Last year, the New York Daily News reported that the monitor had “no confidence” in the department’s in-house data on violence at Rikers and cited six attacks made with blades that had not been classified as slashings or stabbings.

At two recent hearings in September and October, City Council members pressed DOC leadership to explain why reforms recommended by watchdogs had not been fully implemented, and why a track record of abuses appeared to be continuing unabated.

At the October hearing, several formerly incarcerated women testified to what they said was a decades-long system that abetted sexual abuse of inmates by corrections officers at Rikers. Over 700 sexual lawsuits have been filed to date against the DOC through the 2022 Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which amended state law to allow sexual assault victims to file civil cases even if the statute of limitations had lapsed, for a one-year window.

Representatives for the corrections officers union argued that the federal judge’s concerns were mislaid.

“Seventy percent of our inmate population is facing violent felony charges,” said Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association. “That same population is driving the hundreds of assaults on our officers, including sexual assaults, as well as inmate on inmate attacks, which requires necessary, not excessive force, to keep everyone in our jails safe. Outsourcing control of Rikers Island to a federal receiver will not be a silver bullet and will not solve any of these problems. Giving correction officers the manpower and resources to enforce law and order in our jails will.”

Historically, the union has wielded significant power over any changes within city jails. As The CITY reports, it has previously stonewalled reforms that would have introduced stab-resistant vests and reduced cases in which solitary confinement can be used to punish inmates.

Even when fixes are implemented, many do not last long. Federal monitors argued for years that body cameras were necessary to keep corrections officers accountable, and it eventually won out: by 2020, nearly every officer in city jails was required to wear one. But in 2024, the 3,500 devices were recalled by DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie after a camera caught fire. According to Vital City, the review was slated to take at most two weeks; months later, the body cameras are still out of circulation.

While the initial target date for closure was delayed by a year until 2027, the city has maintained it is on track to close Rikers. Yet the federal judge’s decision reinforces broader skepticism that the DOC’s plan to redirect the island’s inmates to four borough-based jails will be feasible.

Per Swain’s order, the next step will now be for the Legal Aid Society, which filed the initial case back in 2012, to negotiate the terms of the receivership—including who will helm the effort—with city and federal officials. The relevant parties have until mid-January to do so.

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Malt Drive Park Opens: Once a Sugar Factory and Beer Depot, Now a Waterfront Green Space

By NICHOLAS GORDON | ng639@georgetown.edu

If the beautiful, new sweeping waterfront space of Malt Drive Park wasn’t enough to entice locals for its grand opening block party on Saturday, November 16, the heaps of free oysters, caprese salad, tiramisu, chocolate fondue, and an endless well of craft beer and Prosecco were thrown in to sweeten the deal. Upwards of 300 attendees mingled over their drinks and snacks, shimmied to the live music, and explored the new park all afternoon. 

“Celebrating the ribbon-cutting here at Malt Drive Park shows the power of our community,” said Julie Won, a New York City council member for District 26, which covers the western Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside. “This is also a celebration of the development of the entire Hunter’s Point South Park where we have new public amenities to enjoy,” Won added.

Located on a brand new block in Hunter’s Point South, Malt Drive Park features spacious sidewalks and winding waterfront paths with seating areas, a playground and a dog park, and an open lawn with picnic spaces and views of the water. Malt Drive Park was created by the real estate development company TF Cornerstone (TFC), which has its two newest luxury residential buildings, 2-20 and 2-21 Malt Drive, flanking the space. 

“As someone who was born and raised in Queens, I’m really proud to be here with you today for the opening of Malt Drive Park,” said New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, addressing the crowd. “I’ve seen this neighborhood grow and thrive, and I think it represents the best of us in New York City, showing that through public and private partnerships we can have greenspace and public amenities, and a high quality of life.”

Featured Speakers at the Malt Drive Park opening party, from left to right: Edjo Wheeler, Executive Director of CultureLab; Julie Won, New York City council member for District 26; John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning; Kristen Gonzalez, New York State Senator; Kate Orff, founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE / Credit: Nicholas Gordon

John McMillan, TFC Senior Vice President and Director of Planning, echoed the praise for the public and private partnership, noting that Malt Drive Park is unique for East River waterfront parks in being developed by a private company on private land.

“The park shows what good zoning can inspire a private developer to do,” McMillan said. “We like to think we’ve been part of the growth and evolution of this community and of the astonishing civic and public character that has taken root in this part of Long Island City.”

Also astonishing is the transformation of the real estate along Newtown Creek in Long Island City.

“When we talk about Newtown Creek, on both sides, Brooklyn and Queens, what we’re doing is taking a legacy of barren land and polluted spaces, or inaccessible waterfront, and creating something new and beautiful to give us the better life that we here in Queens deserve,” Senator Gonzalez said.

While there seemed to be little doubt about the beauty and usefulness of the new park, some attendees expressed skepticism about the nature of Long Island City’s rapid growth.

“The so-called affordable apartments being presented here, to me it’s baffling,” said a member of a local community group and a long-time resident of Long Island City who asked to remain anonymous. “If I lost my current living situation, I’d be priced-out of Long Island City, which is unfortunate because we moved here many years ago because it was so affordable.”

On the TFC website, the new Malt Drive studios are listed at $3,760.

Malt Drive’s 1,386 new residences brings TFC’s total in Hunter’s Point South to over 5,000 units across several properties. 

Lisa Goren, a member of the Long Island City Coalition and a board member of the Hunter’s Point Community Coalition, questioned whether Long Island City’s unfettered growth has preceded a comprehensive management and services plan. 

“All of the things that should come with upzoning where you have a tremendous number of new units built are being dealt with after the fact,” Goren said in a phone interview, acknowledging that she and her coalitions have had some difficult conversations with the developers. “When you build, it needs to be part of a comprehensive resiliency plan in the face of climate risk, so that the neighborhood is sustainable, not just a plan protecting particular buildings.” 

Goren said that through community engagement events and ideas-sharing sessions with locals she and her teams have come up with vision plans for equitable development, resiliency, and sustainability. Their vision plan for Hunter’s Point North is available at hunterspoint-north.com.

Malt Drive Park features a dog park, playground, paths with seating and waterfront views, and a lawn with picnic areas / Credit: Nicholas Gordon

Named after the site’s history as a sugar cane processing plant turned beer distribution facility, Malt Drive Park expands park space from Hunter’s Point South Park by over three acres, adding roughly 700 feet of public access along the shoreline.

Kate Orff, the founder of the landscape architecture firm SCAPE which collaborated with TFC for Malt Drive Park, said that the ecology and legacy of the waterfront’s importance as the site where the East River meets the mouth of Newtown Creek was at the forefront of their design.

“With a focus on resilience, we created a sloping grade, sculpting the ground plane in a way that protects the building and brings you down closer to the water,” Orff said. “We wanted the idea of a living shoreline pulling all the way up to the buildings’ edge, and then carving pockets of open space out of that so you could really experience the feeling of being on the edge of the natural creek system.”

In their collaboration with SCAPE, TFC also prioritized the development of a greener waterfront by taking measures to stabilize the shoreline from erosion and protect marine life, as reported by the New York Real Estate Journal. 

The Moving Dance Company performing at the Malt Drive Park opening party, from left to right: Payton, Jaylon, and Nika Credit: Nicholas Gordon

Young couples, families with strollers, and people walking their dogs passed through the new park as the last musical act finished up and the sun began to set. Earlier in the day, Council Member Won had made an appeal to them.

“All of this development continues to create an infrastructure and an entire knit community, so what we’re saying to you is that we want you to stay and we want to see your family start here and grow here,” Won said. “We want this to be a place that you call home long-term.”

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‘Mother of All D.I.Y. Fairs’ Will Make Winter Stop in Brooklyn This Weekend

By Jack Delaney | jdelaney@queensledger.com

One of the most influential craft markets in the country is returning to Brooklyn this weekend, drawing over 150 creators from the borough and beyond.

The Renegade Craft fair will be setting up shop in ZeroSpace, a venue that straddles Gowanus and downtown Brooklyn, for December 7 and 8. It will run from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both days.

Renegade was founded in 2003 by Susie Daly, an aspiring therapist who began making jewelry after college and created the event’s initial edition in Chicago as a means to sell her work. The first time the market came to Brooklyn, in 2005, it took place in the drained-out pool at McCarren Park in Williamsburg, where customers descended the sloped sides to peer at handmade offerings.

Now in its twenty-first year, and dozens of installments later, Renegade has grown from its humble roots to become an institution — in 2008, Brooklyn Paper was already dubbing it the “preeminent D.I.Y. fair in the world.” And as of this year, casting a historian’s eye on the now-ubiquitous genre of small creators, SFGate described it as “arguably the mother of all contemporary craft fairs.”

Today, Renegade throws events in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, along with summer and winter bonanzas in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. The company expanded to London and Portland, Oregon, but the former proved too logistical because of the distance and the latter simply didn’t catch on as fervently as it did elsewhere. Austin, Texas and Boston were cut due to the pandemic.

Part of what makes the fair such a draw no matter the locale is the careful vetting process for vendors. Renegade’s art director, Madelon Juliano, and her team combed over 600 applications for the upcoming winter fair at ZeroSpace. She said they juried based on quality alone, and had no hesitation including early-career artists alongside seasoned veterans, like long-time Etsy darling Wren Handmade.

The backgrounds of organizers like Daly — accomplished artists in their own rights, but ones who may have taken winding paths — speak to the grit of the participating vendors, many of whom seemed to have conjured a creative livelihood for themselves out of sheer force of will.

Attendees examine patterned tote bags earlier this year, at Renegade’s first of two bi-annual markets in Brooklyn. Photo: Renegade Craft

The Monday before the fair, Kelsie McNair spent the morning making stained-glass martini glasses. “[As Brooklynites,] we live in a place where there aren’t as many windows [being commissioned] as there might be in other parts of the country,” she explained, “because we’re mostly renting apartments.” So as an artist working with glass, she’s had to branch out: other items include languidly colorful forks, frames for mirrors, and even album art for the singer Jake Wesley Rogers.

McNair, originally from Virginia, started a vintage store out of college, at age 22. “I learned so much about small business, and about trying to be creative when you’re also trying to pay the bills. How do I find my joyful experience in the vast landscape of all the minutiae that the processing of owning a store brings?” After four years, she closed the shop and embarked on a range of other creative endeavors — photography, a job at a florist — before a friend recommended a glass residency program.

At first, it was “just something to do.” McNair had just wrapped her time as a shop owner, which she felt was “the best thing I was ever going to do,” and was feeling burnt out. But this residency, and the medium of glass, offered a way forward. “It sharpened my understanding of what kind of work I want to always have in my life,” she reflected.

McNair eventually landed a gig as a social media manager for Renegade, and began vending her own pieces in 2021.

The experience has been “wonderful” so far, she said. But she was sober about the acrobatics that creators must perform to remain marketable without compromising their personal style or message.

“We’re all in our own different challenging bubbles,” she said, “because we’re creating a path for ourselves that are uniquely ours. We are all looking for our own objects that work within the dialogue of the buyer or of the consumer or the customer, and we’re also constantly having to work to stay true to ourselves and to our brand.”

Similar themes resonated with illustrator Daili Shang, though her route to Renegade differed wildly from that of McNair.

Shang left China to study physics in a PhD program at UCLA, specializing in cancer treatment — much of her work centered on CAT scans and MRIs, she said. But she’d never thought of herself as a science person, and “didn’t really feel passion for it.”

When the pandemic struck, Shang found herself coding all day from home. It was miserable, yet it also offered a chance to reconsider her career. “I was just wondering about what I liked to do before [science],” she said, “what would bring me joy? And drawing is one of those things.”

The only issue? The last time Shang had picked up art supplies was in elementary school. Undeterred, she began to teach herself to draw — in her 30s, she wryly observed — by taking every online class she could find. Despite the difficulty of finding her own style, the pressure was manageable, because she had taken the leap and left physics for a new job, as a store manager for the high-end biking company Specialized.

Her first Renegade market was in Los Angeles in the spring of 2022, while still working at the bike shop. Initially, she focused on selling small stickers, which often incorporated the motifs of cats, bicycles, and self-help adjacent puns. But the margins were too slim when she decided to switch to art full-time, and she also began to have qualms about the stickers’ environmental footprint.

Serendipitously, Shang stumbled across linocut printing, her current medium of choice, though she is beginning to shift again towards acrylic painting. The cats are still there, but they’ve grown more whimsical, and the colors are bolder. And though cancer research, bikes, and illustration may seem impossibly disparate, Shang was adamant that the twists and turns were part of her work’s appeal.

A vendor from Renegade’s fair at McCarren Park in 2006, its second year in the borough. Photo: Renegade Craft

“What I want to offer the public is not just my art,” she said. “I want to offer them my story. Then they can also prioritize happiness and reflect on what they really want in life, and then live a happy life. Not everyone has to live a life they don’t want to be because they’re supposed to live a certain way.”

Juliano emphasized that the possibility of forming personal connections with the artists is one reason why Renegade has been so successful, enduring for over two decades.

In that vein, she was thoughtful about the unavoidable context for the fair, given its timing: Black Friday. On the one hand, she noted that many of the vendors were relying on the event to make their yearly budgets even out, and was candid about the imperative to sell items. On the other, she viewed the economy of independent creators that Renegade has fostered as an alternative to a more wasteful commercialism.

“Because of how long I’ve been working at Renegade, buying from small businesses has become a habit,” Juliano explained. “And I think something so cool about continuing to support things like Renegade and artists that participate in them is that once you keep doing it, you really can’t go back to buying stuff that you know is going right to the landfill, or you know isn’t going to last, or is so trendy that you feel like it’s not going to stick around your closet anymore.”

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Brooklyn Football Club Raises Awareness for Breast Cancer Survivors, Loses Home Match to DC Power FC

By NICHOLAS GORDON | news@queensledger.com

In a hard fought, physical match that appeared to be ending in a stalemate, DC Power FC eked out a 1-0 victory in the 98th minute of stoppage time on a BKFC own goal. It wasn’t the prettiest victory, but DC Power FC got the job done for their first win of the inaugural USL Super League season. In a league of eight clubs, BKFC (3-1-2) is currently in third place, and DC Power FC (1-3-4) is ranked seventh. Approximately 300 hundred fans attended the match on Friday, October 11, at Rocco B. Commisso Soccer Stadium.

The match served a higher purpose as the “Pink Game for Breast Cancer Awareness,” a partnership between Brooklyn Football Club and the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. As stated in the press release, “Making Strides is a nationwide movement that unites communities to end breast cancer by celebrating courage and hope.” BKFC had the signature pink of Making Strides added to their jerseys for the match in a show of solidarity with the breast cancer survivors in attendance who were also wearing the pink t-shirts of the partnership.

“We’re really grateful to be able to honor these women who have survived breast cancer,” said BKFC midfielder Mackenzie “Mack” Pluck. “We want to thank everyone who came out tonight. We’re really blessed to have our fan base here in New York.”

Local breast cancer survivors Charmaine Deshong, Judith Hinds, and Naita Semaj-Williams attended the match together and with their family members. 

Hinds said she enjoyed the match and appreciated the cause. “It’s women supporting women,” Hinds said. “We value their support in helping raise awareness in the fight against breast cancer, and it’s great to support a women’s soccer team from Brooklyn.” 

Semaj-Williams brought her 7-year old daughter, Adara, who’s also a soccer player, to the match to witness the level of grit and skill in the women’s pro game.

“People are always telling little girls to be nice and gentle, but they can be athletic and tough too. You can see that with this women’s soccer team,” Semaj-Williams said. 

BKFC midfielder Mackenzie “Mack” Pluck controls the ball against DC Power FC Credit: Azra Sheikh

If the teams on the pitch had comparable possession of the ball throughout the match, it was BKFC who delivered the more exhilarating goal-scoring chances, particularly in the closing minutes of both halves.

In the 43rd minute, BKFC midfielder Sam Kroeger found forward Isabel Cox on the far post with a cross from the left corner of the box. Cox connected on a volley that went just wide of goal.

A minute later Pluck fed forward Mackenzie George with a nice pass through traffic into the box. George dribbled past her defender and created space for a solid strike that sailed just over the crossbar.

With a new squad and a new coach in a new league, BKFC is still experimenting with player rotations in the young season. BKFC head coach Jessica Silva noted that pre-match plans for player substitutions often shift based on the flow of the game. 

“We have a deep squad, and we have a lot of ladies that are capable of stepping in,” Silva said. “We saw it today. Players stepped in and made a difference. Sam Rosette came in on a position she hasn’t trained at once and made a difference there. So I’m very comfortable rotating my players.”

If Rosette was playing a new position up front for BKFC, she did well to position herself for quality scoring opportunities as a substitute in the second half. 

In the 88th minute, BKFC full-back Leah Scarpelli lofted a deep cross from the left wing perfectly placed in the box for an on-the-run Rosette who volleyed a shot in mid-stride that got past the keeper but knocked off the far post.

In BKFC’s last best chance, Rosette carried the ball into the box on the right side and faced a 50/50 conundrum that every attacking player confronts at some point: to take the shot one’s self from a good look albeit a reduced angle, or lay the ball off across the box for an oncoming teammate to have the open shot. Rosette opted for the latter on this occasion and the score remained 0-0.

The trouble came for BKFC on a DC Power corner kick, when what appeared to be mixed signals between players on a clearance at the near post led to the own goal.

“That’s just football, sometimes,” Rosette said, on the gut-wrenching loss. “We created some great opportunities, but sometimes that’s just how the game lands. We’re going to regroup for the next match and go in with confidence, knowing that we played well today and just didn’t put the ball in the back of the net.”

Players from BKFC and DC Power FC go airborne challenging for the ball on a corner kick Credit: Nicholas Gordon

Silva said the disappointing loss is salvaged by the strong overall effort she saw from her club. 

“I felt like we deserved better today. Our ladies definitely put in quite the performance,” Silva said. “I’m really proud of them, and we’re going to build off of this.” Silva added that it was a great start for the team’s run of seven matches to come. 

DC Power FC will also look to build on their first win in what has been a frustrating string of draws and losses to start the season.

“It means everything for us to get our first win tonight,” said Claire Constant, center-back for DC Power FC. “We’ve been working so hard for months and our coach has given us the plan. Now we have the belief that we can win.”

Despite the losing effort, the game meant everything to BKFC too in helping raise awareness for the cause.

“This game was so important to us as women,” said Allison Pantuso, BKFC center-back. “You know so many women that have been through breast cancer and fought against it, so we’re always really proud to be able to wear pink.”

Christian Orellana, the development manager of Making Strides of Brooklyn, said the “Pink Game for Breast Cancer Awareness” was a great lead up to the annual 3-mile walk on the Coney Island boardwalk to honor breast cancer survivors on Sunday, October 27 at 8a.m. 

“Every year we get about ten thousand people who come out for the walk to support breast cancer survivors,” Orellana said, noting that Making Strides has a “natural relationship” with BKFC and the local minor league baseball club, the Brooklyn Cyclones, as their post-walk festival area is located in the parking lot of Maimonides Park, the teams’ home field.

“Hearing so many stories of breast cancer survivors over the years inspires me to do what I can to support them,” Orellana said.

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Domino Square Opens With a Blast

By Annabelle Underwood

Thousands of people gathered on Tuesday evening, Oct. 1 to celebrate the opening of Domino Square, the newest addition to Domino Park in Williamsburg. The event was free to attend and featured a live DJ, food from Roberta’s Pizza, empanadas from Melanio, ice cream from Oddfellows, and drinks from Other Half Brewery. There was also a selection of activities for children from A Rosie Day. “I know it was a long work in progress and to finally see it become reality is really a wonderful thing,” said Senator Julia Salazar about the new space. “I am privileged to get to represent this beautiful place in the 18th Senate District.”

The public plaza has an egg-shaped concrete center featuring tiered seating along one side with space for vendors underneath. There is additional seating in the opposite corner surrounded by raised garden beds. Above the central area is a canopy for shade during the day and hanging lights for the evening.

It also features a scenic overlook with views of the Manhattan skyline and Williamsburg Bridge. “The only downside is I know there’s going to be less parking, but it’s fine,” said Crystal Ramirez, a Williamsburg resident. “It’s a nice, walkable neighborhood, so I enjoy it.” The space is now open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and will host a variety of events like farmer’s markets, outdoor movie screenings, and graduation ceremonies for local schools. The concrete center will be converted into an ice-skating rink in November. Also, a salsa night with over 800 attendees was already hosted in September, according to a published report.

Some residents of Williamsburg who attended the opening celebration said they look forward to more family-oriented, community-building, and cultural events at the venue.

The acre of land is located next to The Refinery at Domino Sugar Factory, a historic building that was reopened as office spaces last fall and constructed by the same developers, Two Trees Management. The developers also constructed the rest of Domino Park, a six-acre waterfront esplanade, and a neighboring residential building, One Domino Square. “There was a big fight over many years over the future of this site,” said the 33rd District City Council Member Lincoln Restler. “We are really lucky that Two Trees came in and for such a bold and visionary plan for this space.” Domino Square was designed by Field Operations, the same architecture firm that worked on the High Line. The company also collaborated with another architecture firm, Studio Cadena.

Two Trees Management purchased the entire Domino site in 2012 for $180 million. The final part of their project to redevelop the area will be another residential building on Kent Avenue. The newest development was initially going to be a 45-story residential building.

“More and more condominiums are not something I like,” said Avi Friedman, a Williamsburg resident. “But it’s nice to see that they can incorporate public spaces.”

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Greenpoint Board Says EPA Creek Plan Still ‘Kind of Stinks’

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

Little detail given to environmental committee members, worries Newtown Creek advocates

At a meeting last week, community leaders raised a flurry of questions about the EPA’s proposal for cleaning up the East Branch of Newtown Creek. Members of the Community Board No. 1 Environmental Protection Committee met at Swinging Sixties Senior Center in North Williamsburg on September 30 to draft a comment to submit to the EPA as part of the plan’s public review period, which was recently extended. While the committee was enthusiastic that work might begin as soon as next year, those present voiced two main concerns: frustration over a lack of details around technical aspects of the proposal, and a desire for more community input going forward.

Efforts to clean the 3.8-mile Newtown Creek are relatively recent, given its long history of pollution. It was a hotspot for heavy industry during the 19th century, housing over 50 factories and processing plants along its banks. In 1856, the city began dumping raw sewage into the estuary, and contamination worsened as commercial boat traffic steadily increased, reaching a fever pitch with World War II.

Prefer Action Over Waiting

The waterway was named a Superfund site in 2010, and plans for remediation began in 2011. The Record of Decision, which is the final stage before full-scale work on the creek can

proceed, was originally due to be completed by 2023, but was later pushed to 2028. The proposal up for debate on Monday was an early action plan for the East Branch, one of Newtown Creek’s five tributaries. While limited in scope, members of the Environmental Protection Committee praised the concept of beginning now, rather than waiting for a plan encompassing the entire creek. “That part is kind of exciting,” said board member Katie D. Horowitz. “That there could actually be something started in 6 months to clean up.” Board chair Stephen Chesler agreed. “This could act as a study for treating the rest of the creek. That’s one of the key things here.”

The East Branch proposal outlines several possible approaches, ranging from no action to a $500 million, 7-year plan to dredge the entire tributary. The EPA’s preferred alternative is a compromise of dredging deep enough to place a cap over the sediment, a $250 million, 3-year improvement. But at Swinging Sixties, the consensus was that the EPA’s presentation of this option at a public meeting on September 18 had left much to be desired. “You walked out of the meeting, and you don’t really know what’s going to happen,” said committee member Christine Holowacz.

Community Board 1 members Eric M. Bruzaitis, left, and Stephen Chesler spar over the finer points of the EPA’s Early Action cleanup plan for the East Branch of the Newtown Creek. Photo by Jack Delaney.

This Description Is A Red Flag

In drafting the public comment, the EPC Committee honed in on several specifications they believed had been omitted. “By now, [the EPA] should be able to at least discuss the composition of the cap,” member Laura Hofmann remarked. For his part, Chesler wanted to know more about why the proposed bulkheads were only temporary. “This description is a red flag for me,” he said, pointing to a bullet point on the projector screen. “I asked this at the [September 18] meeting — what’s the permanent solution, then?”

Yet another debate erupted over the plan’s decision to add six inches of biota, a layer of living organisms reintroduced after dredging, rather than the state standard of two feet. Zooming out, Horowitz called for a clearer sense of how the EPA will monitor results after implementation.

Boats on creek?

The three members also on the Newtown Creek Community Advisory Group (CAG) — Chesler, Holowacz, and Hofmann —were just as focused on the issue of navigability. If the East Branch were designated for commercial use by boats, the plan would need deeper dredging, and discussions about replacing nearby structures such as the aging Grand St. Bridge would have to accommodate this status. Chesler worried about what he saw as a disconnect between governmental agencies involved in the cleanup. The Army Corps of Engineers released a report in January 2024 designating the East Branch as non-navigable, he noted, but the city was continuing with discussions of a movable bridge, under the assumption that it would be navigable. Was the EPA taking this into account? “We should wait for the bridge design,” he said, “because that would change the game.” “If you have to dredge navigable water,” seconded Hofmann, “forget it.” 

Amidst all the minutiae, the main point everyone on the committee agreed upon was that active dialogue with the public should continue. “We just need to make sure that this is a robust plan that will give us what we need,” said Holowacz.

The EPA will accept written comments on the Proposed Plan during the public comment period, which now ends on October 28. Written comments should be addressed to Caroline Kwan, Remedial Project Manager, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 290 Broadway, 18th Floor New York, NY 10007.