STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST NEWS AT BROOKLYNPAPER.COM
BROOKLYNPAPER.COM
Since 1978 • (718) 260–2500 • Brooklyn, NY • ©2020 16 pages • Vol.Serving Brownstone Brooklyn, Sunset Park, Williamsburg & Greenpoint 43, No. 4 • January 24–30, 2020
BATTERING TRAM
Civic gurus cast doubt on revived streetcar proposal
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
They’re BQ-exasperated!
Downtown civic gurus are questioning
the sanity of Mayor Bill
de Blasio’s recently-resurrected
pet project to build a $2.73 billion
trolley along the Brooklyn
and Queens waterfront, arguing
that dedicated bus lanes would be
more efficient and cost about $800
million less.
“Why are we moving forward
with something like this when we
could cover the entire city with a
network of busways for roughly
the same amount of money or a
lot less,” said Brian Howald at
Community Board 2’s Transportation
committee meeting on
Thursday.
If de Blasio has his way, the
so-called Brooklyn Queens Connector
— a joint project between
the Department of Transportation
and the Economic Development
Corporation also known as the
BQX— would run on a rail line
above ground from Red Hook to
Queens.
But while bus lanes may be
cheaper, a senior city transit honcho
argued that bus lanes would
fail to qualify for the federal New
Starts grant — which officials hope
would could foot half the cost of
the scheme at $1.4 billion.
“We’re looking to get New
Starts funding, but we couldn’t
necessarily apply that to this sort
of smaller-scale bus priority,” said
Christopher Hrones, who heads
up the project for the city transit
agency. “A lot of times people
sort of say, ‘do this instead
of this.’ I think to a certain extent
we can do both.”
The light rail project was originally
supposed to pay for itself
through tax revenue from an estimated
rise in property value rose
along the tram line, which officials
euphemistically called “value
capture” — but its projected costs
later grew, and planners shortened
its route from 14 to 11 miles, forcing
de Blasio to concede that his
big idea would need to go halfsies
with Uncle Sam.
Kings County Congress members
have previously warned that
Conceptual renderings show the Brooklyn Queens Connector running down Berry
Street in Williamsburg.
the city shouldn’t hold its breath
for a federal windfall — and another
community board member
echoed similar sentiments at
Thursday’s meeting.
“I really doubt that the Federal
Transit Authority or the Trump
Administration is going to pay 50
percent of the course,” said Ernest
Augustus.
The project seemed to derail
after a contentious City Council
hearing last May — but the
tram reared its head again with
a snazzy new website at the beginning
of the year, along with a
new timeline.
Officials plan to go to all community
boards along the route —
including boards 1 and 6 in Brooklyn
— over the next several weeks,
before holding public sessions in
February and March.
The two agencies want to finish
an environmental impact study by
fall of 2021, but they don’t expect to
break ground until 2024 and wrap
the project by 2029 — eight years
after de Blasio leaves office.
Floyd Hayes shows off his certificate for his emotional support beer, which he hopes to
bring on public transit.
Man’s best friend
Beer registered as emotional support animal
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
Talk about a cold comfort!
A Clinton Hill man registered
his beer as an emotional support
animal last month, hoping the certification
will allow him to access
public transit in possession
of his favorite beverage.
“I travel from upstate to Brooklyn
a lot, and on the bus they say
its a federal crime to smoke or
have an alcoholic beverage unless
by prior written consent, and I always
wondered where you get that
consent,” said Floyd Hayes.
“Not that I’m an alcoholic,”
he added.
As first reported by Ale Street
News, Hayes registered his beer
as an emotional support dog with
USA Service Dog Registration,
which promptly emailed him a
registration code, “1085780890,”
that can be plugged into the Nevada
based business’s website
to reveal additional information
about him and his faithful
brew.
According to the site, Hayes’
support dog, which is listed as
“beer,” does not require any additional
training and helps the
Clinton Hill resident to manage
his social anxiety disorder.
“I don’t mean it in a heady
mental health manner,” he said.
“More if you go to a party, and
want to break the ice.”
The site doesn’t list the type
of beer, but Hayes said he enjoys
sessional IPAs and likes to
drink local, preferring Brooklyn
breweries such as Six Point and
Coney Island Brewery, although
the latter was purchased by Samuel
Adams brewer Boston Beer
Company in 2013.
Hayes hasn’t tried bringing
his beer on a bus yet — he is
ironically observing Dry January
— but an employee at USA
Service Dog Registration, who
declined to give her name, was
not amused by the Clinton Hill
man’s shenanigans, and said that
registering his beer with the company
would not provide him with
any benefits.
“He can register his beer all
day long, it’s not going to get him
anywhere,” she said.
The worker said that, while
landlords who don’t typically
allow pets in the buildings will
sometimes refer to their registry,
it has no legal merit, and that
anyone wishing to bring an emotional
support animal on a plane,
or place of business requires written
medical approval from a doctor
under the Americans with Disabilities
Act.
“This will not get you into Walmart,
it will not get you into Denny’s,
it will only protect you where
you’re renting,” she said.
As things stand, there are
thankfully no laws preventing
tenants from living with their
emotional support beers.
Photo by Caroline Ourso
HELLO, TROLLEY!
THE STREETCAR PLAN
Photo by NYCEDC
What we know about
BQX’s street design
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
Officials with the Department
of Transportation and the
Economic Development Corporation
presented new details
regarding the mayor’s $2.73 billion
trolly project, the Brooklyn
Queens Connector, at a meeting
of Community Board 2’s
Transportation Committee on
Jan. 16, including changes to
the proposed route and how the
city would rejigger streets to accommodate
hizzoner’s widely
criticized transit scheme.
The BQX would have its own
tracks separate from traffic on
90 percent of its 11-mile route,
running in both directions on
the same streets.
Berry Street in Williamsburg
and Court Street Downtown,
would share at least one
of the two tracks with regular
traffic.
The tram will run along
the center of Atlantic Avenue,
taking over two driving
lanes between Columbia and
Court streets.
DOT would ban cars from
Willoughby Street between Adams
and Bridge streets by converting
it into a “transit-only”
thoroughfare for the BQX.
A stretch of the route along
Flushing Avenue from Navy
Street through to the Clinton
Avenue gate of the Navy Yard,
including the entrance to the recently
opened Wegmans grocery
emporium, will be converted
into a one-way traffic
lane westbound.
The agency plans to install
substations about the size of
shipping containers along approximately
every mile of the
route, to convert electricity from
the grid into the tram’s overhead
wires.
See BQX on page 11
Beep assails Midwesterners in incendiary speech
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
Borough President Eric Adams
has stuck his foot in it yet
again, this time after accusing Midwesterners
of “hijacking” apartments
and demanding they return
to wherever they came from.
“Go back to Iowa, go back to
Ohio, New York belongs to New
Yorkers,” Adams said at a Martin
Luther King day event at Rev. Al
Sharpton’s National Action Network
in Harlem.
“You were here before others
came, who decided they wanted
to be part of the city, those hijacking
your apartments and displacing
your living arrangements,” Adams
said.
While Adams’ comments drew
applause from the crowd, they also
spared outrage on Twitter, with
some accusing the mayoral wannabe
of adopting a Trumpian rhetoric
of shunning outsiders.
“Cool potential mayor of a city
that has historically refused people
from other places,” wrote Twitter
use Travis R. Eby. “There is
no context where this sentiment
is okay.”
The beep immediately walked
his comments back, saying he was
only criticizing newcomers who
make no effort to connect with
their adopted communities.
“Anyone can be a New Yorker,
but not everyone comes to our city
with the spirit of being part of our
city,” he tweeted.
But it wasn’t all bad for the beep,
and some Twitter users flocked to
defend his comments.
“I wholeheartedly agree with
you. Almost all of the responses
in this thread are gentrifiers that
don’t have the slightest idea of the
harassment lifelong residents have
to go through forced to leave their
house to make way for a condominium
with tax breaks,” tweeted Fabio
Bardales.
The tirade is only the latest example
of the beep drawing fire for his
off-the-cuff speeches. At a Dec. 17
ribbon-cutting for an LGBT friendly
affordable housing development in
Brooklyn, Adams assailed the development
as exclusionary to local
public housing residents.
“I can’t celebrate a building that
is not inclusive,” he said in comments
that were caught on tape. “I
don’t want to see beautiful floors
like this and lead paint over there, I
don’t want to see rodents over there
and comfort over here.”
And in August, Adams came under
fire for comparing a Twitter user
to the KKK after the critic called
out the beep for his weak stance
on placard parking abuse.
In the wake of his most recent
gaffe, one Twitter use questioned
the electability of a mayoral candidate
who seems determined to
court needless controversy.
“I’ve been off Twitter all day and
now than I’m back, I gotta ask: what
the f–k is wrong with Eric Adams?”
tweeted user Rich Mintz.
Adams has historically banged
the drum for development in the
borough, and as recently as last
week was one of the few elected
officials to show his face at the
Real Estate Board of New York
gala.
Borough President Eric Adams
told white gentrifiers to
go back to Iowa at an event
in Harlem on Jan. 20.
Photo by Derrick Watterson
Residents fume over pipeline project
National Grid takes northern Brooklyn nabes by surprise
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
They’re piping hot!
Northern Brooklynites blasted National
Grid reps for beginning construction
on a seven-mile pipeline slated for
installation under the streets of Williamsburg
and Bushwick — without telling
locals about their scheme.
“Almost no one knew you were doing
this work,” said Greenpoint resident
Kevin LaCherra at Community Board
1’s general meeting on Tuesday. “You
are here telling this community that you
are doing the work — and the work has
already begun, the ground is trenched,
the pipe is laid.”
The company is currently tearing up
the streets around the neighborhoods to
install a seven-mile stretch of natural
gas pipeline, which would connect its
system in Brownsville to its Maspeth
Avenue depot at Newtown Creek — a
plan designed to relieve pressure on its
network and support economic growth
in the area, company officials said.
The state’s Public Service Commission
signed off on the project’s route in
2017, and split the tube into five phases
— starting in Brownsville and snaking
its way north to Bedford-Stuyvesant,
before heading west through Bushwick
in 2019.
Some 4.9 miles of the new pipe are
already in the ground and the scheme’s
fourth phase started last October.
Workers are currently laying down
the pipe around Flushing and Bushwick
avenues fronting the Bushwick Houses
public housing development, along with
Montrose Avenue between Manhattan
Avenue and Leonard Street, according
to its Jan. 13 newsletter.
The final stretch will extend to Maspeth
Avenue, which officials expect to
wrap construction in 2021.
Phases 4 and 5 (shown in blue and light
blue) of the new pipe extension in north
Brooklyn.Courtesy of National Grid
One nearby resident slammed the company,
saying no one in her building complex
knew anything about the pipeline
— until they had to move their cars out
of the way for construction work!
“How can you say you communicated
anything to this community,” said Antonia
Ortiz. “No one knew about this
Workers install the new pipe along Bushwick Avenue.
Courtesy of National Grid
until they had to get their car because
they were digging a hole.”
A rep for the firm said they have staff
on the ground notifying locals and that
they post weekly progress updates on
the project’s website.
In addition to the nearby residents upset
by the construction, the project has
also drawn vocal opposition from environmentalists
with the advocacy group
Sane Energy Project, who raised concerns
that the new pipe could be dangerous
by rupturing and sending explosions
through the neighborhoods — as
has been the case with more rural gas
pipelines across the country.
Reps for the utility company assured
attendants that the new pipe will be safe,
and that it could not rupture because
pipes running through cities carry far
less gas at lower pressure than the larger
See PIPE on page 11
ADAMS LEADING IN
FUNDRAISING
SEE PAGE 5
/BROOKLYNPAPER.COM
/BROOKLYNPAPER.COM
/Vol.Se