News blog DNAInfo NYC picked up Jorale-Man’s opening comment in the New Year’s Open Thread Wednesday:
At the risk of sounding a (mildly) negative note to start the year, it would be nice if 2014 is the year that the city fixes the crumbling sidewalks around Borough Hall. I noticed yesterday while lugging my rollerboard suitcase from the Jay Street station that they’re in a pretty sorry state of disrepair. Perhaps the next borough president can make this more of a cause.
The article also quotes BHB’s own T.K. Small on how hard it is to traverse the broken bluestone in his motorized wheelchair, as well as Brooklyn Heights Association Executive Director Judy Stanton and Community Board 2 Executive Director Rob Perris about their efforts to get the Parks Department, which has jurisdiction over the plaza, to repair it, all to no avail. It quotes Parks Department representative Meghan Lalor as saying “We are working on a plan to restore the plaza,” but said “[s]he was “unable to give details of any repairs planned.”
Still, the attention this problem is getting may spur the bureaucracy to action. Are you with us, new Borough President Eric Adams?
Update: Reader “moni” gives us some interesting background in her comment in OTW:
The so-called ‘restoration” of the quaint flagstones was the ruse used by the powers that be to eliminate our lovely garden area so they would have a place to park their SUVs. Thus the gardens gave way to an expanse of ugly paving, with a minimum of landscaping to make it look authentic (i.e., a little less like a parking lot). The delicate bluestone could not survive the tonnage rolling over it; it chipped and eventually crumbled. Now theire is talk of yet another “renovation”.
