Overnight Queensboro Bridge Construction Work Keeping Some Roosevelt Island Residents Awake
On August 2 a Roosevelt Island resident reported to RI 311 See Click Fix:
Every night this week (as well as between the 16 and the 20th of july), there has been extremely loud jack hammering on the queensboro bridge, between 10pm and 3-4am. The level of the noise is really unbearable. They also use huge projectors to give light to the workers.Earlier today, another Roosevelt Island resident told me that last night he could hear the loud noise of Queensboro Bridge construction work from his apartment at 455 Main Street - 4 buildings away from the bridge
Do you have any information of how much time this will last, or if they could stop working during the night, allowing everyone to sleep?
Hope you get a good night sleep tonight.
UPDATE 8/6 - More from Roosevelt Island Southtown residents on Queensboro Bridge construction noise:
Me too in Riverwalk Crossing. Because it's so humid out, we keep the windows closed and the AC on. Otherwise, it would keep us up. :(and:
I am going to buy earplugs tomorrow, it has been terrible in the past week, and who knows how long this construction will go on. I could not find any information about it online.UPDATE 8/9 - NYC Department of Transportation reports they will take steps to mitigate the problem. More here.
41 comments :
My apartment is literally as close to the construction as possible and I barely noticed the noise let alone did it keep me awake.
Wow all that in response to a two liner? BTW, those that are complaining, in this case, are actually frm the newer bldgs.
"It's that the rich, to the exclusion of the poor and the moderate-income, have simply made RI into just another gentrifying locale, instead of the bold and successful social experiment it once was."
For certain definitions of the word "rich". Besides that, I actually think you made a good point. Many here don't want to live in a "social experiment". We actually welcome the influx of more money and the changes it brings.
Here's an example of "the rich" in 405 Main Street:
http://rooseveltislandlistings.blogspot.com/2012/08/master-bedroom-in-405-main-st-couples.html
you should do your homework...there are affordable housing units in ST..a friend of mine lives there. HR has not trashed anything, they are required by law as the rest of the city to provide a certain amount of the units for affordable housing. This island has never been private property, I wish all the long time peeps would just relax and get their panites out of a wad and stop attacking those that live South of th Church. You are much too old to be acting like that. Where are your manners? Move if you are not happy here, but stop complaining and going on and on and rambling about nothing
thank you chesire for confirming my former post. Life will go on even after big bad Hudson Related takes over the island...just relax and enjoy the view of the city and the trees here and just think, you live here, not over the river :)
and? are you jealous? so what? Who cares and why obsess on what other people have on this island, or how much their rent is? NYC rents are all over the place, RI is no exception. Fill out an application and move in :) you might enjoy living there.
The "experiment" CheshireKitty refers to is: economic integration is a Good Idea. The 1960's had racial integration, but (oversimplifying in a 1960's frame) blacks and whites living in a rich neighborhood is not the same as blacks and whites living in a poor neighborhood. Roosevelt Island was trying something different: people living in different income levels is a Good Idea, racial diversity was a secondary issue. For the past 30+ years, we've been all affected by it ... we all know have friendships with people who poorer than ourselves, and people who are richer than ourselves. Largely, it has been a positive process.
I take CheshireKitty's point that with the newer developments, the income ranges are higher. Hopefully, we will continue to be a cohesive but diverse community.
CheshireKitty notes the soccer/ball field where 475 and 465 sit. Aside from residents having a special attachment for hand-building that field (with a little help from Tony Capobianco and a "borrowed" bulldozer), we felt that having the field in a centralized area would integrate Southtown and Northtown communities because (for kids) the field would be a short distance away. As it stands now, the field near the tram gets less use by Northtown users (farther away), and less use than the old field where 475 and 465 now sit.
katie, was not in response to the two liner, but just over all I have been reading how many are trying to keep going at Sal and are just going after him and his place of biz for some reason. My comment was from years of listening to and hearing all the complaining about ST and yadda, yadda, yadda, and the yuppies and the richies that have moved here. What a bunch of crap. Seems a lot that lived here for many years feel intitled to something now for living here so long. They can move into any of the newer buildings if they want to, instead of just complaining about HR and all the people that live in ST. It gets old after a while ... move on already to something more important
No, I am not jealous and I appreciate my lower rent. included utilities and larger rooms in Westview. I'm just pointing out to those who keep harping on "the rich" in Southtown, what "rich" really means.
CK - that was such a great post. It expresses my, and I'm certain, many original islanders viewpoint of the last twenty years of scammy, bait and switch real estate games played on RI. At the end of the day, it's such a lost opportunity, RI could have led the way to a committed, mixed income enclave in the midst of the insanity of NYC real estate. Instead it was given up to the highest bidders. I actually never fully understood how ST got away with no affordable housing element - now it's as clear as day. Outrageous. So, gone are the middle income families that put down roots, made lifelong friends (of all income levels & races), raised their kids and created an innovative, vibrant community. In it's place, we have RI, the three mile dorm.
You wrote-- For the last 30+years we`ve been all affected by it....we all know have friendships with people who are poorer than ourselves and people who are richer than ourselves.What kind of sentence is that? In the future please write like someone who is educated. Secondly who made you an authority on what people know? Do you know what you are talking about? There may be rich and poor people who never had friendships with each other. Do you make assumptions without checking the facts? I get the feeling that you do.
A. There are very few "affordable" units at Southtown. B. The market-rate units at Southtown are much more expensive than the units in Northtown - and unaffordable to yours truly. C. I do not "go at" Sal. To the contrary, I have regularly applauded Sal's success; even if I do not - cannot afford, to dine at his establishments, I enjoy the life and enjoyment his restaurants bring to others and to the island. I am not in a position to actually review the food at Sal's places, but judging from the crowds there, the food must be good!
Bridge work is ongoing, as on all the major bridges, because of the ongoing rust/deterioration process. The work is done at night to minimize the inconvenience to commuters and business traffic. Even if a/c is not used, you can minimize the noise by simply turning the a/c unit onto fan only - the neutral a/c fan noise will serve to mask the construction noise. Alternatively, ear plugs can block out the noise.
Yes, I agree. That portion of Frank's post is opaque. Maybe he meant that they were positively affected by the racial diversity over the past 30 years of living on RI. But, as you say, if that is the case, i.e. that is what Frank is claiming, the question is how does Frank know that?
Ever wonder if developers will one day "pounce" on the soccer field up by the Community Garden - claiming because it isn't constantly used, it should instead be developed into more apartments? I hope Cornell will take the side of those who advocate for balanced development on RI. If and when Coler goes, let's hope that land isn't also saturated with new development the way Southtown was.
In certain respects, notably the recent transformation of the decaying pier into PierNYC, that is true. This is an example of privatizing or partial privatizing having a positive effect. My question is: When H-R or private initiative "show up" RIOC's efforts to maintain for example the arcade or the pier, why doesn't this spur RIOC into action to match what private money and effort can do? If Sal's money and effort transformed the pier, why can't RIOC transform the prow for example? And why didn't RIOC keep the arcade up all these years? RIOC cries the blues about lack of money but a fresh coat of paint on the concrete portion and even the ceiling panels of the arcade wouldn't have been all that expensive; RIOC could have cleaned up and kept up the pier, but never did. The pier was depressing and disgusting for years. I salute Sal for "rescuing" the pier, and challenge RIOC to match Sal's effort on all the other areas of the promenade!
Yes, Westview may represent the best value on the island - also, possibly the best units of the non-Rivercross WIRE buildings. Perhaps I over-interpreted your remarks to Sal about taking many commenters' comments with a grain of salt - I would hate to think you could be a TeaPartier.. Having said that though, our views diverge on ST because ST diverged from the master plan in that a scant number of affordable units were included (as at Octagon). This is the general problem of the Bloomberg era, as played out on RI: Luxury or market rate development is encouraged, and construction of low or middle-income developments is shortchanged. Let us hope that in 2014, after the next Mayor is elected, the development climate in the City again swings back to building more affordable housing. Luxury housing will always be built since it's the most profitable. The role of the City or State is to encourage, uphold, or enforce formulas - such as the RI master plan - that spell out exact ratios of affordable units that must be built in developments, along with more expensive units. In this way, the City or State stands up for the very large portion of the population - 99% is it? - that is not able to afford luxury housing.
Well, 2.3K per mo is a lot - I'm not surprised they have to split the rent. This is exactly my point, that folks throughout the City split the rent, and people are packed into units, because of excessive rents. The blog post is an example of a couple taking in a roomate(s) in order to afford the rent - a situation that so many are in, whether they want it or not, because of excessive rents. It is not indicative of the money the poster is or is not making, although in order to have the unit leased to them in the first place, they must have been making enough money to qualify for the expensive rental. Perhaps their circumstances changed, or perhaps the unit was always leased to 2 couples from the beginning.
There are very few affordable units at ST and I also know someone in one of them. H-R certainly trashed the master plan by claiming the hospital buildings were the affordable buildings. I am not attacking the residents of ST - I think they are being taken for a ride by H-R, just as residents of many other new luxury developments are. The hype about the wonderful new developments on the shore of the E. River, or Hudson River - in order to sell these expensive units - which are overpriced no matter who is leasing them, is shameful. No matter how old I get, I will always attack economic exploitation. I have been doing so since about the age of 10 and will continue to do so no doubt until I, along with my smile, vanish. I have the same kind of manners H-R or any developer has, which doesn't exactly ask by-your-leave when it aggressively markets its units. You think H-R has manners when it hypes its apartments and asks for outrageous rents? I am actively searching for affordable housing (like, the projects - if they will take me) elsewhere in NYC FYR - which I'm sure is music to the ears of many who can't stand to hear anything but the jingle of money being made, because even the so-called affordable housing in NT is slowly becoming less and less affordable.
Siscoeb, it's called a typo, which happens when one types fast and the commenting system takes a while to echo one's keystrokes. If you remove the typo "know", it becomes: "we all have friendships with people who poorer than ourselves, and people who are richer than ourselves". While not the most elegant statement (who cares), it captures the experience of the thousands of residents I've met over the past 32 years. I've never met anyone who did not know people both richer and poorer.
It's a general statement, which doesn't preclude the possibility that some person lived here and met no one. And if you really want to pick it apart in a mathematical sense, there is a maximal element The Richest Person On Roosevelt Island who only knew poorer residents, but no richer residents.
Really, if you were playing a piano piece for me, would I nitpick on a mistaken note, or would I listen for the performance you intended to convey? (Weren't we supposed to play together?)
CheshireKitty, you say "Maybe he meant that they were positively affected by the racial diversity", which is not what I said. I was speaking about economic diversity, and I stated "Largely, it has been a positive process", i.e., not always true, but mostly true ... which has been my experience. Another way you know this is: if it weren't true, you'd have huge churning in rentals/owners who where unhappy with economic diversity (a mostly transient population) and/or Island activities largely segregated by economic status. But we don't have a (largely) transient population, and our community activities are (largely) broad-based in terms of economic status.
I don't disagree with you about the City's role in providing affordable housing, but I recognize that "affordable" is a moving target. How did "tea party" come into this conversation?"
Westviewgirl, according to the General Development Plan (GDP), Southtown requires:
- 10-20% at 50% AMI (area median income) or below
- 30-40% at 120% AMI or below (not sure if it's 120% or 148%)
- 40-60% at market rate
Southtown 1 and 2 meet this criteria of affordable housing (first two bullets above) because they are hospital employees in that income range. Yes, we might have expected affordable housing to be available to the general public, but that isn't so in this GDP. Also, one of Southtown 7-9 was supposed to be senior housing, but since those are the least profitable units, they get built last (or possibly never at all as affordable housing). There are a sprinkling of affordable apartments in Southtown 3-6, and I've heard a number around 10%, maybe someone can get the actual number.
Ditto for Octagon, there are some affordable apartments, I think the number is around 10-20%.
The non-WIRE buildings are 90/10 or 80/20. For the WIRE buildings, they were 100% affordable housing (because of Michell-Lama), and Eastwood now has a significant share of market rate apartments since exiting M-L.
It's been a long time since I looked at these message boards. Nice to see the regulars are still going at it. What a weird, bitter corner of the world this is.
I respect your concern over affordable housing but if it does not come about what are you going to do about it instead of yapping all the time.
Well done, you've gotten CheshireKitty to give a benchmark for who qualifies as rich. To "qualify for the expensive rental," the couple would have each had to make about $40,000 or $50,000 per year, roughly equal to the salary of a first-year public school teacher in NYC. I, for one, am not going to be bossed around by a couple of fat cat teachers!
Knowing the way you write that`s all you do is nitpic. If you play piano the way you write you should quit. Do yourself a favor take up piano tuning It will help you develop your ear. This way you will listen when people talk to you instead of yapping all the time. Try not to make any more typos. Also learn how to put a sentence together.
Frank - How can you be so sure that the hospital employees are in that income range? Those buildings are leased to hospital employees at the hospitals' discretion. I personally know that quite rich - yes R-I-C-H - doctors are leased apartments in those buildings, and get the subsidy as an added perk. R-I-C-H as in full attending drs making alot more than you and me. The hospital can lease those apartments as they wish - they are absolutely beholden to no-one re income guidelines and so forth. I'm surprised you can defend the indefensible position that the hosp buildings satisfy the affordable housing requirement at ST. If the GDP doesn't specify that the housing has to be public, what of it? A dorm could qualify as affordable if students are housed therein? Get real, Frank! Affordable housing means affordable housing for the general public - not doctors or students (although hospitals and institutions of higher education should feel free to also construct housing for their students and staff). The expectation is affordable housing is housing open to the general public. If additional dorms, hospital housing, or what have you, is also built, that is fine - but the fully public, affordable housing must come first, and then the "private" (i.e. hosp/dorm/etc) housing.
Oh yes, that is the miracle of the free market - we are promised one thing and get another, as long as it's profitable for the developer. You, sisco, Frank, and myself - can all thank our elected officials these past 20 or 30 years: They all had their hands out for campaign donations from the real estate interests and kept absolutely mum about how the community was shafted. Their motto: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil - as long as the campaign cash keeps flowing.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha --- good one! Maybe a couple of teachers, or better yet, 2 couples who all work. Where did you pick that number from? After taxes, exactly how much does someone earning 50K a year bring home? You really think a teacher earning 50K/year can afford to fork over 2.3K per mo to H-R for the privilege of living at 405 Main St? If so, how much do they have left over to live on after paying the rent??
Oops - my bad! It was Westviewgirl whose comments hearkened back to the early Colonial era (and recently echoed by the ultra -conservative Tea Party). Sorry!
Nifty general put-down, but, in saying so, you're implying that most other corners of the world are sweet, or sweet-tempered. Is that so? If so, tell me what is the one corner of the world that is not beset with exactly the same problems we have on RI, or most usually, worse problems. You can imagine the world beyond RI is a world with no problems.. That's got to be the imaginings of someone smoking a very fine grade of an illegal substance IMO..
"Maybe a couple of teachers"
Yes, it would have to be a couple of teachers, which is why I wrote that the couple would "each" have to make that much.
"Where did you pick that number from?"
Annual income 40 to 50 times monthly rent, a standard yardstick for rental applications. Then divide by 2.
"You really think a teacher earning 50K/year can afford to fork over 2.3K"
No, which is why it would have to be a "couple" of teachers.
"how much do they have left over to live on after paying the rent??"
Gobs, of course, because they're rich, because they live in a $2,300/month apartment, right?
I disagree - even with both making 50 thou. How much do they have to pay in taxes - then they have to pay the rent - plus you pay utilities, cable, possibly monthly parking, internet/cell ph & so forth. With a sizable rent to begin with,I wonder if they really have "gobs" of money left at the end of the month. You are trying to get me to say that ST is middle-income. I disagree. Luxury is not middle-income. Certainly, the million-dollar luxury condos would not be affordable to the couple, unless they came up with quite a substantial down payment so as to make their monthly mortgage payments affordable. Like I said in an earlier post, there was nothing wrong with ST except that the developer did not hew to the requirement as set forth in the GDP to provide low- and affordable middle-income apartments. The developer claimed the hosp buildings were the affordable housing since he hospitals subsidize the apartments for their employees. Yet those apartments are not available to the general public - thus cannot be counted affordable housing, they are more in the nature of company housing, or even, dormitories for researchers, post-docs etc. If Cornell builds housing for its students and faculty on RI, would that count as affordable housing? Absolutely not - it's university student and staff housing.
H-R has made his bucks at ST. The investment paid off. Now is the time for H-R to do the right thing and give back - to the community, and to the people that made it possible for him to succeed. A dollar invested in decent affordable housing pays back immeasurably in generations to come, with the dividend of less social chaos, and greater community cohesion.
Cuomo should lean on him to do so, if he can focus for a moment on his role as a champion of all the people he is supposed to represent, and not just his rather wealthy donors.
H-R should build low-income housing according to the GDP ratio at the remaining ST building sites. If he is smart, he will make sure less expensive apartments affordable are built side-by-side with more expensive affordable apartments so as to continue to build the mixed income community.
CheshireKitty, I am not asserting the actual salaries of doctors in 465-475, I am reporting what it says in the GDP and the rationale for the developer's claim for the buildings being in compliance. I have the same concern as you do about *public* affordable housing but, unfortunately, it is not further specified in the GDP and it was *RIOC* that felt the current situation satisfied the GDP.
Also, I am not defending the GDP. Many of us residents have been unhappy about the loss of open spaces, and the poor enforcement of the GDP (e.g., Eastwood has changed to market rate, which will be out of compliance with GDP at some point). However, a residents' lawsuit made clear a dozen years ago: the residents don't have standing in GDP enforcement because we are neither of the parties of the contract (RIOC, City).
The problem is threefold: RIOC made many bad real estate deals (bad for long-term finances of Island), RIOC and the City are the two parties of the GDP, and the City doesn't care too much about the GDP or its enforcement.
In summary, I agree with most of your points. My main point was responding to westviewgirl's statement "HR has not trashed anything, they are required by law as the rest of the
city to provide a certain amount of the units for affordable housing", which is not true.
HR is not required by City law to provide specific kinds of housing, HR is required by the GDP and their ground lease to provide a mix of housing, and I provided the excerpt from the GDP.
Let's all give a round of applause to whoever the s____k was that was presiding over RIOC who OK'd the H-R plan for ST. Would that have been Berman? Whoever it was, of course they were a Pataki appointee. You can thank them for Eastwood exiting without a real affordability plan, for Octagon having a "seasoning" of so-called affordable apartments and the same for ST, along with ST's creative interpretation of the GDP -- claiming that the hosp housing counts as affordable. Hah. Cuomo should make H-R build affordable units at 7, 8, 9 or at least at one of those buildings. I don't see Cuomo riding to the rescue of the GDP, though. Another sell-out..
I thought I was too harsh joking about your typo but after reading what you wrote I couldn`t stop laughing. You wrote-- "Siscoeb it`s a typo which happens when one types fast and the commenting system takes a while to echo one`s keystrokes"--You can`t even take responsibility for your mistake. It seems the commenting system is in error not you. Also who writes crap like " to echo one`s keystrokes"--What are you writing from a canyon?
"With a sizable rent to begin with,I wonder if they really have 'gobs' of money left at the end of the month."
You know, I never thought of it like that. You're right. It's almost as if paying high rent in Southtown makes someone *less* "rich" than they'd be if they had *your* apartment. As if people's wealth *decreases* as their rent *increases*. Thanks, this is interesting stuff!
Well, that is one way of looking at it... although it is not exactly how I would formulate the concept. You can easily say the same thing about taxes, or any other overhead. The point is, housing cost is usually the #1 most expensive item. So, if a moderately wealthy renter is paying a large monthly rent, how much do they have left to spend on anything else, much less save - for example, for their retirement, or even save to pass on to their descendants?
Is it any wonder that something like 46% of Americans die with literally no money - living on Social Security? Is it possible in our society to say that we *have* money if most of it was paid out to rent? In the end, after being put through the financial wringer of paying an extortionate rent - what do we have to show for it? For almost half of Americans today, the answer is - nothing!
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