Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Willets Point: Raw Sewage

The NY Daily News is reporting that any one who wants to develop Willets Point must pay for an entire sewer system and waste water infrastructure for the area in question: "To support the vision of turning Willets Point into a modern community of new housing, gleaming office buildings, a school and a convention center, the city is also requiring the developer to overhaul what lies beneath the pothole-strewn streets. This includes storm sewers, water mains, sanitary sewers and utility lines - many of the services that local businesses have been pining for."

Isn't this peachy! After seven decades of neglect the area will finally get the services the current businesses have been pining for-posthumously. And we can always count on a placeholder like Toby Stavisky to add insult to injury: "State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky (D-Whitestone) said Willets Point, as it is now, is an embarrassment. The development will not only sprout housing but will also spark a fiscal boom, she said."

No Toby, it is you, your late husband, the embalmed Claire Shulman and the rest of the Queens political establishment that is an embarrassment and an eyesore to anyone with 20/20 vision. Depriving an area's property owners of basic services and then turning around and calling that very same area an embarrassment is real chutzpah. These sewers, if this ever gets built, will prove useful in discharging the bilge that comes from the lips of pols like Stavisky.

But the News fails to consider the other pressing infrastructure problem that the city is turning a blind eye towards: the road and mass transit network that won't be able to accommodate all of this development, and the additional 20 million square feet that has been built or is in the process of being developed in and around Willets Point.

If all of this comes to pass we suggest that they rename the Van Wyck-as they did the 59th Bridge-but this time in honor of Toby Stavisky. This way when Queens motorists are gridlocked on the highway they can pay homage-with the honorific middle finger-to someone whose accomplishments (we got stuck on this) may well be limited to the back upped highway she has championed for the ramps leading to the development she has slavishly championed.