Keeping the Gowanus Expressway!

It seems there is a lot of buzz about the $12.8 billion proposal by the American Institute of Architects to tear down our beloved Gowanus Expressway and replace it with a greenway. There is an abundance of comment on Curbed.com, Brownstoner, The Gothamist and the Gowanus Lounge.

A few comments from someone who lives here where they want to pull this off. I am willing to bet that not one of the architects that dreamed this whole thing up lives in the neighborhood. Are they going to move into the neighborhood to supervise construction for the ten or fifteen years it will take to build? How long will it take to build? This in a city that gets fleeced by corrupt contractors who milk a job for all it's worth and take ten years to fix a pothole. Will it really cost 12.8 billion or will it go severely over budget as all things do when the taxpayer is footing the bill? Where will the money come from? Do you think taxpayers in flyover country are going to like financing a bottomless pit in Sunset Park? And what about us residents who will be displaced from here to make this dream come true? And what about the factories and warehouses that provide New Yorkers with Jobs? Will they all leave for places like New Jersey or South Carolina? Why don't they let decisions like this in the hands of the people who live here instead? Why do we have to be the victims of pipedreams and greedy contractors who see manna from heaven in government contracts and the blank checks of taxpayers.

And when we tear it down, where will all the scrap steel go? Will it be sold to the Chinese so they can build aircraft carriers to bomb us with? Heck, why not? The Japanese built their aircraft carriers with surplus US steel too.

I say give the Gowanus a paint job, fix the potholes and leave it and us the heck alone.

[where: 11232]
[where: 11220]