8 MARCH 9, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM City plans to build park below bridge BY ANGELA MATUA [email protected] @ANGELAMATUA Photo via DOT Offi cials are planning to build a park on the Queens side of the Kosciuszko Bridge. The new and improved Kosciuszko Bridge may come with a park for the community. According to Lisa Ann Deller, chair of the Land Use Committee of Community Board 2, the Parks Department and Department of Transportation are looking to transform two lots underneath the bridge on the Queens side in Maspeth. The lots are 24,000 square feet and 8,000 square feet and the agencies are looking for community input. The Queens and Brooklyn approaches to the bridge will be imploded in July to expedite the construction process, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced last week. So far, ideas include a skate park, a recreation court for industrial workers in the area so they can go out and exercise during lunch time or storage space for the Parks Department. Residents of the neighboring Blissville neighborhood of Long Island City have long been asking for green space, according to community board members. The closest green space in the area is First Calvary cemetery, board member Mary Torres joked. Dorothy Morehead, the chair for the board’s Environmental Committee, added that people bike and run along the water so she would like to see more infrastructure to promote those uses. To share suggestions about the park with Community Board 2, email them at [email protected]. Traffic agents missing from major work site A traffi c agent on duty at the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road BY ANTHONY GIUDICE [email protected] @A_GIUDICEREPORT Drivers need a helping hand to get around the ongoing bridge reconstruction project at Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road at the Ridgewood/Middle Village border, but that helping hand is invisible on weekends, according to local residents. Gary Giordano, district manager of Community Board 5 (CB 5), said that the board has received several complaints about Traffi c Enforcement Agents not being on site during the weekends, leading to confusion and Photo: Anthony Giudice/RIDGEWOOD TIMES congestion during a time when a lot of people are traveling around that area. “There has been trouble with the Traffi c Enforcement Agents being there, especially on the weekends,” Giordano said during the CB 5 Transportation and Public Transit Committees meeting on Feb. 28. “And my experience is that Saturday traffi c is a nightmare. It’s bad from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., maybe even beyond four. It’s people doing their errands on Saturday.” As part of the project, agents are supposed to be stationed 24/7 at six intersections in the area: the intersection of Fresh Pond Road and Metropolitan Avenue 60th Lane and Metropolitan Avenue; Eliot Avenue and 60th Lane; Eliot Avenue and Fresh Pond Road; Eliot Avenue and 69th Street; and 69th Street and Metropolitan Avenue. “I think it continues to be a problem on the weekend, especially at the Fresh Pond Road-Metropolitan intersection where on several weekends no one has been there for much of the weekend to direct traffi c,” Giordano said. “Most of the complaining has been that they haven’t been at Metropolitan and Fresh Pond; two main arteries narrowed down to one lane in both directions because of the work taking place.” This problem has become even more exasperated now that free shuttle buses will be moving commuters between Metropolitan Avenue and Bushwick with the M train being shut down for 10 more weekends due to preliminary track work for the full shut down later this year. With agents still not at the site the weekend of March 4-5, Giordano told QNS on March 7, he has been in touch with those in charge of the bridge project locally, as well as the Department of Transportation (DOT) Borough Commissioner’s Offi ce. According to Giordano, they indicated that they’ve had several meetings with agent supervisors over the past two weeks to emphasize the problem when the agents are absent. Ridgewood students raise over $3,000 for cancer research BY ANTHONY GIUDICE [email protected] @A_GiudiceReport The students at I.S. 77 in Ridgewood put their pennies together in January to raise over $3,850 for the Pennies for Patients fundraiser for leukemia research, with one class raising $540. In total, the sixth, seventh and eighth grade students raised $3,851.48, which will be donated to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, which funds research into curing both leukemia and lymphoma, and provides free information, education and support for not only patients, but survivors, families, and healthcare professionals as well. The Pennies for Patients fundraiser began on Friday, Jan. 6 and concluded on Tuesday, Jan. 31. During that time students would give their spare change, ask their family and friends to participate by donating, and raised money by selling paper pennies that were hung throughout the school, and red and yellow Pennies for Patients bracelets. “The whole school participated,” said Rose Kohlhagen, teacher at I.S. 77 and coordinator for the Pennies for Patients fundraiser. “It’s just amazing. The kids were just unbelievably generous. We’ve never raised so much money. It seems each year we beat the last year’s total. I have to thank my two co-coordinators Ladan Simani and Scott Horodyski.” Each year during the fundraiser the school holds a competition to see which class can raise the most money. This year, the 29 students in Ms. Taylor’s 808 class raised $540, earning them the honor of being top fundraisers in the entire school, and being the class that has raised the most money since I.S. 77 started the Pennies for Patients fundraiser 15 years ago. “We’ve never had a class raise over $300 before, so this is huge,” Kohlhagen said. Photo courtesy of I.S. 77 Class 808 raised $540 in I.S. 77’s Pennies for Patients fundraiser.
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