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Local Org Alleges Unfair Practices in National Grid Case

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

A small group of local climate advocates have been facing off against one of the biggest utility companies in the country, National Grid, in a case that could shape Greenpoint’s landscape for years to come — and make or break New York’s transition to renewables.  But with a key deadline approaching, the activists say they’ve been cut off from critical information.

The focal point of the case? There are two, and you can see them clearly from the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge: a pair of enormous white tanks. They rise from a spacious lot, imposing but nondescript compared to the chrome domes of the nearby Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The tanks are part of the Greenpoint Energy Center, the largest fossil fuel depot in the state by acreage. Owned by the UK-based corporation National Grid, the facility’s main function is to hold fracked gas, which is cooled below 200ºF to transform it into the easier-to-store liquified natural gas (LNG). And it has become the subject of a protracted legal proceeding that could set the tone for statewide efforts to realize New York’s ambitious climate goals. 

A local environmental advocacy group, Sane Energy Project, has long pushed to decommission the site, arguing that gas stored there isn’t utilized and that earmarking more funds to upgrade the facility would violate the timeline for decarbonization outlined in the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

“​​If we’re continuing to facilitate throwing money into the gas system,” said Kim Fraczek, founder of Sane Energy Project, “we’re just never going to reach our goals.”

National Grid, for its part, has campaigned for expansion: in recent years, it has repeatedly applied to build new vaporizers, which it says would “allow the facility to deliver its current annual capacity at a faster rate to meet demand.” It has also asserted that the gas is a contingency for extreme weather.

Sane Energy Project and National Grid are now locked in a fierce battle over the future of the Greenpoint Energy Center. The arena is a legal case within New York’s Public Service Commission, which regulates the state’s utilities.

The stakes are high. As Columbia University’s Alice Finno noted last November, “this regulatory proceeding with the Commission marks the first time National Grid has had to publicly outline in a long-term plan how it will meet New York’s energy demands and comply with safety standards and clean energy goals.”

In the wider view, the regulator’s decision regarding National Grid’s operations in Greenpoint “could set up a blueprint for the state’s energy system,” explained Finno, “and potentially become an example for gas utilities across the United States.”

The latest skirmish hinges upon PA Consulting Group, an independent monitor whose role in the proceeding is to verify National Grid’s claims — most importantly, whether it needs to maintain the Greenpoint Energy Center to satisfy energy demand. 

In a separate proceeding, the monitor had previously determined that the company’s proposal for vaporizers was not supported by adequate evidence. Yet its latest report backed the assertion that the LNG held in Greenpoint was necessary.

With the deadline for submitting comments on National Grid’s bid to expand its facility fast approaching, Sane Energy Project filed several information requests in early February to clarify the methodology behind PA Consulting’s findings. 

However, the monitor did not respond. Sane Energy’s latest motion alleges that “after months of open communication among National Grid, Sane and other stakeholders, and [New York Department of Public Service] Staff as well as its consultant, PA Consulting, Staff abruptly cut off information sharing at a critical part of the proceeding — one week before comments were due.”

A representative for National Grid could not be reached before this issue went to press, but the company has previously stated that the Greenpoint Energy Center “is a crucial part of our operations and indispensable to provide heat to nearly 2 million New York households.” 

You can read Sane Energy Project’s full motion here.

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After a Long Reprieve, NYC is Selling Tax Liens Again This May. How Will it Affect Greenpointers?

By JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com

In just over a month, the city is relaunching a program that will increase tax revenue, but may put some New Yorkers — especially older adults — at risk of losing their homes. Here’s what you need to know.

What is a tax lien sale? 

When the pandemic hit, the amount of overdue property taxes in New York City began to skyrocket. Last year, it reached an all-time high of over $880 million — more than doubling since 2019. That poses a major threat to the city budget, given that the property tax is its single largest source of revenue, but officials think they have a solution. They’ve pointed the finger at a practice that expired several years ago: the tax lien sale. 

A lien is a legal claim on an asset — essentially, it’s the right to collect a debt. Before 1996, homeowners who were significantly behind on their bills would deal directly with the city, which if not paid could eventually foreclose on a property. But managing those confiscated properties was a headache; by the early 90s, the city was spending millions of dollars repairing houses, and getting stuck with them for an average of 19 years. 

In 1993, the city stopped foreclosing on houses for unpaid taxes entirely. It still needed to collect them somehow, though, so then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani decided in 1996 to sell the liens to private investors — let them deal with it, the rationale went, and the city would reap at least a portion of the money owed without shouldering any burden.

The upside was clear, but tax liens sales also had a murky history. The practice emerged during the Great Depression, writes Margaret Newkirk of Bloomberg, and later spread to cities where speculators often targeted poor minority neighborhoods, stripping residents of their land or extorting them through exorbitant interest payments. 

Today’s tax lien system has grown even larger, but it’s also more regulated than its earlier incarnations. While investors buy up to $5 billion worth of tax liens across thirty states each year, typically through a trust, less than 1% of those liens now lead to foreclosure. Lawmakers have been actively tweaking the specifics, too. When New York folded water bills into the program in 2007, it also included a range of reforms to improve outreach and minimize impacts on low-income residents, and it has added new protections every few years, including its latest bill.

The bottom line: on May 20, the city will be auctioning off property tax liens to private investors for the first time since 2021, along with the rights to unpaid water and sewage bills. (During deliberations in 2024, the City Council considered permanently scrapping the sale, but anxieties over the recent trend of unpaid property taxes won out.) However, there’s still time for New Yorkers to find out whether their debt is being sold, and to take preventative measures if so.

Who is at risk? 

In technical terms, commercial properties, larger residential rentals, and other vacant land are eligible for a lien if bills are 1 year overdue; for Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFCs), a class of affordable housing co-ops, that number is 2 years; and for smaller properties, the liens becomes possible for debts older than 3 years.

For the average New Yorker, the good news is that many buildings won’t be included in the tax lien sale. Homeowners with mortgages generally have escrow accounts which preclude overdue payments, for example. And even if you’re behind on your bills amid an affordability crisis of staggering proportions, applying for a property tax exemption could remove you from the auction. 

The city offers four main types of exemptions: the Senior Citizen Homeowners’ Exemption (SCHE), the Disabled Homeowners’ Exemption (DHE), a range of Veterans Exemptions, and the Not-for-Profit Exemption. While the deadline has technically passed to receive discounts for next year, the Department of Finance will work with eligible residents who reach out now. To learn more, visit nyc.gov/site/finance/property/property-lien-sales.page# — each exemption expires at a different rate, so it’s important to keep abreast of the details.

But the fact that the exemptions exist doesn’t necessarily mean that administrators will guide homeowners to them without prompting. Rachel Geballe, deputy director for the Brooklyn office of Legal Services NYC, recalls one horror story in particular.

“I had a client who was elderly and blind, so she was guided by her daughter, and she was definitely eligible for both a senior citizen and a disability exemption. She got up to the desk and she said, ‘I’m on the lien sale.’ And they said, ‘Okay, well, sign this payment plan.’ So they put her right away into a payment plan that she actually couldn’t afford, whereas they could have given her the exception that would have also gotten her off the lien. Instead, she defaulted on the payment plan and her lien was sold.”

For seniors without support, the story might end there. Thankfully, Geballe’s team was able to secure a retroactive exemption for that client, which has been a focus of recent reforms. 

“While we have made significant reforms to the lien sale, there will still be those owners who fall into arrears when they could and should be benefiting from property tax exemptions,” said City Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, introducing a bill at a hearing this January. “By allowing eligible homeowners to have these exemptions applied retroactively, we can bring at-risk households into compliance, save people’s homes, and stabilize neighborhoods.”

As with any situation involving both an information gap and large sums of money, scams abound. “Because the list of people who are subject to the tax lien sale is public,” said Geballe, “we do see scammers just go down the list.” Those named are “nervous that their liens are going to be sold, they’re in distress, and they are vulnerable,” she noted. “Many of them are elderly or disabled. And heirs are particularly vulnerable because there might be 20 heirs [to a property], ultimately, and you can scam one or two of them.”

Lastly, the tax lien sale doesn’t only affect homeowners. “In any given year more than 85% of residential units in lien sale properties with residential units are rental units,” a 2024 report by East New York Community Land Trust found, and “the vast majority of these properties are owned by absentee landlords.” The report cited a case in which dozens of Queens residents were evicted from their apartments without advance notice, after the owner of the lien arrived to claim the property — the landlord had been deep in debt, but none of the tenants had realized the building was on the lien sale list. 

What should I do? 

The first step is to get informed. Under the latest iteration of the program, if you are at risk of being included in the lien sale, you will receive warning notices in the mail 90, 60, 30, and 10 days before the sale. You can also read the full list on the Department of Finance website (see above). 

If you receive a warning notice, you will have to either (1) apply for one of the various exemptions, (2) enter into a payment plan, which could entail reduced interest rates, or (3) simply pay the bills, if you’re able.

Although this process can be confusing and stressful, there are systems in place to help. “There are free legal services available,” stressed Geballe. “The number one thing [to remember] if somebody is calling or door-knocking you, is, ‘Hey, that’s not the person to trust.’ You can call 311 and be connected to nonprofits that have been vetted and funded for this purpose, and they will never charge you. And they’ll help you navigate it all.”

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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.