Plan for Parks Involves Capping BQE Trench
Those pretty renderings above show how a large swath of South Williamsburg might look if a proposal moves forward to cap the BQE trench running between South 3rd and 5th streets and create a park network that would serve local kids, according to a story in Architect’s Newspaper. The plan is the five-years-in-the-making brainchild of…
Those pretty renderings above show how a large swath of South Williamsburg might look if a proposal moves forward to cap the BQE trench running between South 3rd and 5th streets and create a park network that would serve local kids, according to a story in Architect’s Newspaper. The plan is the five-years-in-the-making brainchild of Councilwoman Diana Reyna; local firm dlandstudio is responsible for the design. More details: “This month, the firm will begin preparing cost-benefit and health analyses while creating a design model for public presentation. Existing park spaces flank the BQE from Broadway to Borinquen Place, and the plan’s conceptual drawings show these spaces united by a tree-lined lawn, a baseball diamond, and a soccer field. By enclosing the expressway between South 3rd and 5th streets, the team hopes to significantly reduce traffic pollution and noise, which is ten times that of Park Avenue.”
Park Panacea over BQE Trench [Architect’s Newspaper]
Renderings by dlandstudio via Architect’s Newspaper.
Turns out The Gobbler was in Wisconsin anyway; how quickly we forget.
If Reyna can pull this off, more power to her, but I’m not particularly optimistic.
altervoce –
I am really impressed by The Gobbler! Thanks mucho, and no, I’m not a Buckeye. A Terrapin by birth, for whatever that’s worth, and in BK since the 80’s.
This site is what – half a mile – from Flushing Ave, which is the boundary between community district 1 and both 2&3. Anyway I stand by the hundreds of thousands would benefit figure. They might not benefit immediately, but over time, millions would use a park like this one.
architect66, are you perhaps thinking about The Gobbler?
(http://www.lileks.com/institute/motel/roost/index.html)
Are you a Buckeye? Ohio is even further away, but this is not close to either CB2 or 3.
Where’s the quibbler? Do they taste good to eat, like a turkey?
The location borders CB’s 2 and 3 as well. I would argue that building a park over a heinous open trench roadway is a lot more beneficial than building a park on terra firma. If you include the social and environmental cost of maintaining the open cut on your balance sheet, then the value of a park like this is much greater.
And while I am quibbling with a quibbler, “hundreds of thousands of people” do not “live close by.” The entire population of Community Board 1 is less than 200,000.
A previous dream article about this subject gave an estimate of $20-40 million…The West side of the highway is used primarily by dog walkers and the homeless.Although maintenance seems to have improved in the past couple of years especially on the playground (East) side of the ditch, my toddler found a leather pouch containing a spoon, rubber hose, and 5 hypodermic needles in the leaves this past Autumn. Nice!
This project would be a total blessing to a park-deprived ghetto neighborhood. It will not happen in our lifetime.
66, fair enough; the cost of this proposal will be far less than the infamous “Big Dig.” But let’s face facts: it will be at least five times the cost of the same construction on terra firma.
Can’t resist noting that the cost of an infrastructure project like this that will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who live close by will be a manageable chunk of change. People like to say “big dig booga booga prohibitive cost” while conveniently forgetting that it would take about a thousand projects like this to add up to one big dig.
Too bad there’s no stimulus money left.