What If...
What if you were a wealthy philanthropist who could write a $100 million check to fund any infrastructure or public project in Brooklyn? What would it be? A selective high school to rival Stuyvesant in Manhattan? Hundreds more patrol officers on the police force? A monorail above Atlantic Avenue? Let your imagination run wild.
What if you were a wealthy philanthropist who could write a $100 million check to fund any infrastructure or public project in Brooklyn? What would it be? A selective high school to rival Stuyvesant in Manhattan? Hundreds more patrol officers on the police force? A monorail above Atlantic Avenue? Let your imagination run wild.
bury as many elevated subway lines as possible! [though that amount of money would only get you a couple of miles probably]
Um, I hate to break it to you people, but Brooklyn Tech is a selective High School that rivals Stuy. I guess the student body at Tech is too ethnic for Brownstoner to realize its one of the four best high schools in the city, along with Stuy, Bronx Science and Midwood High. Maybe we can build another school just like Tech in the parking lot @ LIU and designate it Whites only.
deck over the BQE trench from Hamilton Avenue to Atlantic Avenue and turn it into open space with lots of trees!
Affordable housing…
Idea 1:
Bike Lanes. When I was biking everywhere on a trip in Amsterdam, I was thinking why doesn’t NYC have bike lanes. I’m afraid for life and limb, so I don’t bike in Brooklyn. If there were dedicated bike lanes for all the major point “A” to point “B” AND high tech racks to lock the bike once there, I would, for sure, bike places.
And increase the water taxi availability at major dock points in Brooklyn and make it easy to bring you bike on the water taxi, so you can bike from Bklyn to Manhattan.
Idea 2:
Reliable safe and inexpensive transportation to/from JFK and LaGuardia for Brooklyn residents. It’s cheaper and easier for people to get to Manhattan from the airports then to get to residences and destinations in Brooklyn. Countless thousands of taxi, car service and personal cars take one Brooklyn person to/from the airport every year because there is not a good mass transit or inexpensive share ride system in place. The waste of money, gas and increased pollution must be enormous.
Idea 3:
Create a think tank of Architects, Urban Planners, etc. to come up with a plan for a cost effective, environmentally friendly, low density, contextual and visually pleasing plans for new residential constructions in Brooklyn. Then if your tearing down a non land marked building you just pick from an assortment of plans for row/townhouse, semi detached house, detached house (depending on the lot and surrounding buildings). Provide the plans for free to developers so they don’t slap up more frugly fedders.
I’d develop a series of neighborhood community centers, each housing one or more pre-schools.
Buy off Ratner and make AY go away. I have lived in PH 25 years through some ugly times and now have to look forward to the destruction of our neighborhood by developers.
A large parking lot for BH, PS, CH so I can shop there easily. (I know this is evil.)
I would build out a complete trasportation system for the southeastern portion of the borough, complete with a high-speed rail line that would run parallel to the Belt Parkway from Queens, around the outer portion of the borough last stop in Sunset Park and then straight into lower Manhattan. Perhaps even a second Manhattan stop at Grand Central? Of course this would cost billions so my $100mm would be just a drop in the bucket, but that’s for folks like Shelly and Elliot to work out.
Mass transit in southeastern Brooklyn = Saving brownstone Brooklyn