Monday Blogwrap
Paradise in Bushwick. Photo by Several seconds from the Brownstoner Flickr Pool. It’s Official: Fares Rise to $2.25 [Urbanite] Sign the Petition: Keep McCarren Pool’s Name! [Greenpointers] Businesses Near Myrtle Collapse Hurting [The Local – Fort-Greene] Tom Martinez, Witness: “We Want Our Liberty Back” [OTBKB] Atlantic Yards Tottering [No Land Grab]
Paradise in Bushwick. Photo by Several seconds from the Brownstoner Flickr Pool.
It’s Official: Fares Rise to $2.25 [Urbanite]
Sign the Petition: Keep McCarren Pool’s Name! [Greenpointers]
Businesses Near Myrtle Collapse Hurting [The Local – Fort-Greene]
Tom Martinez, Witness: “We Want Our Liberty Back” [OTBKB]
Atlantic Yards Tottering [No Land Grab]
itest
Heather: I think so, although as Williamsburg “improves” I’m sure there’ll be pressure for Lindsay Park to go fair market, as so many Mitchell Lamas have done in Manhattan after their 25-year tax abatement wears off. NOP
Wow, NOP that’s really cool. I always thought those were projects… although I agree, they do seem to be pretty nice. So are they still Mitchell Llama?
Subway fares are a relative bargain…what’s sickening is the idiotic way this state is run. What sense does it make to fund the MTA from the mortgage tax? This state is in tough times and we have a broken state government, an accidental governor, bloated organizations like the MTA, per capita health care costs that dwarf other states. We need some talented people to run for office and reform the process.
Brownstoner:
Actually, the caption should read “Paradise in Williamsburg” or, to be more exact, “Paradise in Lindsay Park.”
Lindsay Park Apartments, pictured above and located in Williamsburg at Broadway and Lorimer Street, was one of the big Mitchell-Lama developments built for the middle-class in the early 1960s. As a boy, I knew people who lived there.
Their apartment had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a terrace overlooking the Manhattan skyline and — get this! — a swimming pool! (There were three in the “project.”) The rooms were big and included a dining alcove large enough for a family to sit at a formal table, a kitchen with a window and a little breakfast nook, and two bedrooms roomy enough for four kids. (Today’s condos are small in comparison — and cheaply made. Lindsay Park had real plaster walls, not wallboard!) This was a place built to try to keep in the city people who might otherwise move to the suburbs. And the price? Something like $20 per room per month!
As seen on a recent drive-through, the trees have grown tall, the grounds look to be in reasonable shape, and the population is an interesting mix of Latinos and Asians.
Unglamorous, yes. Uncool, yes. But one of those places where working people lived and helped stabilize Williamsburg until it was discovered by “hipsters.” (And others who are buying condos down the block.)
Nostalgic on Park Avenue
Never said the MTA hasn’t misused dollars…I’m sure they have and I’m sure they continue to do so.
But to say that the fares were raised to “line Bruce Ratner’s pockets” is sheer nonsense.
Subway and bus fares are a bargain because they’re very heavily subsidized by tax payers and especially by bridge and tunnel tolls. One can argue that toll-paying drivers benefit from affordable mass transit because otherwise the roads would be even more congested, but the $89 monthly metrocard isn’t because the MTA is such a paragon of management. It’s because they own a series of cash cows crossing the East River and the Narrows.
ps, I left another misspelling in that last one for you to correct too.
Sorry about my misspelling 11217.
So as I understand it, because you think the subway is cheap then it’s alright for the MTA to mususe public dollars?
Sell the land to the highest bidder, and I will stop complaining, and if the MTA sells that land for the right price then their tax revenue will go up to. There are absolutely no excuses here.