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Police Blotter ..........................8
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COURIER L 2 IFE, JANUARY 1-7, 2021
2020 (and look back
on some of our biggest
stories of the year), Brooklyn
Paper is also looking ahead at
some of the biggest stories to
watch in 2021.
Here they are, in no particular
order:
Borough Jails
The Brooklyn House of Detention
on Atlantic Avenue
closed its doors exactly one
year ago in January of 2020 in
anticipation of a new and improved
jail that would take its
place under the city’s plan to
close Rikers Island and move
detainees to four boroughbased
lockups. The city’s plans
stalled as the COVID-19 pandemic
hit two months later,
but offi cials had planned to
demolish the old facility at the
corner of Smith Street by mid-
2021 and wrap construction
on the new building by 2026.
It will remain to be seen when
and how the city will proceed
with this project.
Bike lanes, bike lanes,
bike lanes
In January, then-Department
of Transportation Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg
announced the agency would
paint 10 miles of protected
bike lanes in Brooklyn in 2020,
following a bloody 2019 during
which more cyclists died on
Kings County streets than in
the four other boroughs combined.
The pandemic stalled
progress on those plans and
Trottenberg departed the Department
in November, but
offi cials have made strides on
9.1 miles of the green-painted
paths, including on Fourth
Avenue, Smith Street, and
Franklin Street. Other lanes
are now slated to come online
in 2021, such as Meeker Avenue
below the north Brooklyn
section of the Brooklyn-
Queens Expressway and Fort
Hamilton Parkway in Windsor
Terrace.
However, the city scrapped
Borough President Eric Adams will be running for mayor of New York City, while several Kings County politicians
are looking to replace him at Borough Hall. File photo
a 1.3-mile bike lane on Remsen
Avenue in Canarsie entirely
after pushback by local
leaders, including local community
board district manager
Dottie Turano, who said
it would “serve no function.”
DOT also dropped a hint at a
June community board meeting
that offi cials are thinking
about turning a lane on
the Brooklyn Bridge roadway
into a bike lane, before quickly
walking that proposal back.
Nevertheless, bike advocacy
group Transportation Alternatives
has launched the campaign
Bridges4People, calling
on the city to repurpose car
lanes for bikes on all three
East River crossings in Brooklyn.
More busways?
The city opened the fi rst
busway on Brooklyn’s streets
in decades on Jay Street at the
end of August, limiting private
vehicle access to 0.4-miles
of the downtown thoroughfare
during weekdays to speed
up local buses. Downtown
Brooklyn is already home to
the decades-old Fulton Mall
and transit advocates have
identifi ed many other borough
streets that would serve
as good candidates for more
busways.
Gowanus rezoning
The city plans to launch
the public review for the
Gowanus rezoning on Jan.
19, kicking off a seven-nine
month process for public input
on the proposal. The last
major rezoning under Mayor
Bill de Blasio — known offi -
cially as the Gowanus Neighborhood
Plan — proposes to
add some 8,000 new housing
units to the neighborhood by
2035, about 3,000 of which will
be earmarked as “affordable”
units tied to residents’ income
levels. The land use changes
will allow for buildings to rise
up to 22-30 stories in different
parts of the low-strung neighborhood
along the noxious
Gowanus Canal and include
special districts for a waterfront
esplanade, artist spaces,
and retail.
Gowanus Superfund
cleanup
The fi rst phase of the federally
overseen Gowanus
Canal Superfund Cleanup
started in November and will
continue through 2021 with
excavators scooping out the
polluted viscous canal bed
sediment known locally as
“Black Mayonnaise” north of
the Third Street Bridge until
mid-2023 at a cost of $125 million.
The Environmental Protection
Agency plans to continue
dredging further south
of the 1.8 mile channel in the
following years. The city is
still on the hook to build two
four million and eight million
gallon retention tanks to reduce
stormwater and sewage
overfl ows from re-polluting
the canal. EPA and the city
will likely hash out a timeline
in early 2021 after months of
back and forth and Big Apple
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