A lot of headlines have created a kind of confusion, I think, on whether the BQX is still being pursued at City Hall. Here is a short list:
De Blasio Administration May ditch planned streetcar along Brooklyn-Queens waterfront – New York Daily News, April 3
Future of de Blasio’s $2.5 billion BQX street car at risk – 6sqft, April 4
Is Mayor de Blasio’s Brooklyn-Queens Streetcar Dead? – New York Times, April 10
So Is the BQX Dead Yet or What? – Village Voice, April 10
There were mixed messages from City Hall. But we can say this: the next city budget won’t include funds for important criteria into getting the project underway. Crain’s New York Business reported this week that the Economic Development Corporation had of last month not earmarked funds that would move the project forward in its next budget. It would need at least $40 million for design and an environmental review but it only has a few million set aside to study an underground cable problem that’s become a road block.
“Leaving BQX expenditures out would suggest the city has no immediate plans to begin preliminary design work and an environmental study, which are big first steps needed to get the project in gear. Each would take a year, though their time lines could overlap, and would together cost at least $40 million. It is unclear whether the corporation would have to wait another fiscal year for the necessary cash, or if it could find the funds elsewhere in its budget at some point before then should it decide to move forward.”
More news below!
A few notes:
- Garbage trucks will no longer be parked outside the 21st Street garbage depot in Ravenswood beginning Monday, the Queens Courier reports.
- Someone leaped in front of a Manhattan-bound R train at the Steinway Street station last Sunday.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she collected almost five times the required amount of signatures to be on the ballot and is officially running for congress against Rep. Joe Crowley in the 14th New York congressional district.
- Permits have been filed for a six story hotel at 38-23 28th Street in Dutch Kills,New York YIMBY reports.
- Volunteers found a gun while cleaning up Astoria Park.
- A big, industrial art installation is going to fill the MoMa PS1 courtyard this summer.
- Rep. Carolyn Maloney introduced a bill to fund Holocaust education. She’s also been trying to pass a bill to establish a women’s history museum as part of the Smithsonian.
- Development has shifted inland from the waterfront to Jackson Avenue, catching high baller renters from Manhattan and Williamsburg, the New York Post explains.
- Indie Bookshop Day is this month so Queens Gazette reminds us that things are always happening at Astoria Bookshop.
- It’s not too late to vote in the participatory budgeting process.
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