Column: One of the weirder NYCHA meetings I’ve ever been to, by George Fiala

Last night I went to a meeting at the Miccio Center that was about two very important things: 1 – Introducing the neighborhood to the GIANT block sized development that has sprung up on Lorraine Street between the chicken place on Duane and the bodega on Columbia, officially called 498 Columbia Street. That’s where the laundromat, bank and 99 cent store used to be. I think at one point the property was owned by the Food Bazaar people, who might have bought it thinking they would put their store there, but they never did. I also remember that the laundromat was run by people having to do with our former Councilmember Sara Gonzalez. I found that out when she opened up something that was supposed to pass for a campaign office when she ran for a second time against Menchaca, a race that Felix Ortiz also entered.

The second part of the meeting brought Joy Sinderbard back to the community to read a power point and answer a few questions about what’s going on with the FEMA reconstruction.

The meeting came from the office of our current councilmember Alexa Aviles. I tried hard to find out about it, as I happened to see a social media post about this meeting when it was first scheduled, which was about a month ago. That was the day of the heavy rain and the meeting was postponed, as I found out when I went to the Miccio and Ross Joy was there to tell me. It was only because of Ross that I knew about this meeting (he had a flyer at a different event last week to announce the new date). Otherwise I would have missed it, as there were no flyers up in Red Hook, as far as I could see, and nothing at all in social media (I searched), and no communication from Alexa’s office to me (I run Red Hook’s local paper and have done so since 2010).

I showed up a few minutes late (there was no parking for about 3 blocks), and Alexa was speaking to a moderately sized audience. Later on I asked Ross how the meeting was publicized, and he told me that some flyers were posted in the Red Hook Houses. Which reminds me about the closed nature of the recent PACT meetings in Red Hook West that we have written about, as well as the Red Hook West tenant association meetings, which instead of being informative meetings for all in the neighborhood, are now by “invitation only” and if you are on the exclusive invite list, please let me know. Funny about the relatively closed publicity of this meeting because I have heard skepticism from the Council office about the invitation only business of Red Hook West.

In any case, Alexa was introducing the meeting, but as the presentation began she quietly disappeared without saying goodbye and Ross took over the meeting.

This is not a news article, only a column reflecting my thoughts, so I am not going to go into details about the people presenting, except that it seems that a low income real estate development company from the Bronx builds these developments with I’m sure lots of help from the city who, along with the rest of the world, is a member of the new religious sect that has found out that rents are too high. (Like that hasn’t been the case since Adam and Eve were kicked out of their free rent situation and had to go East of Eden.)

In any case, the presenters included somebody from the real estate company and the head of the company they work with, Jericho, who supplies supportive services to their tenants, which includes seniors and formerly homeless people. The only dirt I have on them is that when Ingrid, the corrupt former deputy mayor for Eric Adams, was indicted the second time, one of the deals cited was with this company. Isn’t it amazing how one of the most corrupt mayors of the past 100 years is now spending the last few days of his disgraced term hanging out in Israel and Florida receiving awards for his work fighting anti-semitism.

In any case, the BIG THING about this part of the presentation, which was pointed out by some of the astute NYCHA residents across the street, was that there has been absolutely no outreach from anybody about jobs to create this 800 unit development. It seems that there is no work for anybody in the neighborhood. In the old days, when Nydia Velazquez represented us in the US Congress, she would fight for local jobs whenever there was any federal subsidies involved. Carlos Menchaca said he would do the same with City money, and Felix Ortiz with State money, but I’m not sure that anything came of that. I also do know that when Lillie Marshall headed the Red Hook West tenant association, she would also at least try to get some local jobs when the outside world came into Red Hook. I am not aware of any of the current people, which includes the cabal of Dan Goldman, Karen Blondel, Frances Brown, Dan Gounardes or Jessie Solomon made any such efforts, although if anybody reading this can tell me otherwise, I will do my duty with a follow-up article.

As I mentioned, I have been very surprised that such a large project could take place in our neighborhood without any outreach to the neighborhood, which includes the local paper (our job is to tell people what’s going on). I asked that question during the question and answer period, and we were told that the tenant associations were talked to, as well as a meeting a couple of years ago in Alexa Aviles’ office.

Am I the only person who was kept in the dark? No actually, because I had a conversation with our Assembly representative recently, and she knew nothing about it, and someone at the meeting said that not many people show up at the resident meetings anymore.

In the old days, these kinds of things would have caused an uproar. But except for a few excellent speakers in the audience, I detect no uproar. In the old days there would have been multiple community board meetings all through the development and building of the project, a robust Civic Association would let the one half of Red Hook be involved, and two robust Tenant Association’s would be informing the other half. And the local newspaper was welcomed at all three of these associations, making Red Hook a strong and somewhat unified neighborhood.

Questions were cut off, as the next half of this meeting began. Ross Joy introduced Joy, who is the local NYCHA spokesperson. She went through a summary of the NYCHA construction which is funded by FEMA money that Nydia got for Red Hook after hurricane Sandy. Here are the best parts:

1 – They have started planting bushes (which I noticed and took pictures of the other day).

2 – Trees are next, and the 457 trees that had to be removed after Sandy, either because work had to be done to redo the HVAC system, or the trees had died because of the salty Sandy water, 480 new trees will be planted and cared for. That has already started.

3 – The front entrances to all the buildings will be upgraded to fob locks and a new CCTV system.

4 – They are getting somewhat closer to finishing, and are now fixing up the basements, which has something to do with testing and finally using the new heating system that has been built, meaning that the temporary boilers which are now more than a decade old can finally be retired.

The funny part about this second half of the meeting was when people starting complaining about a new ramp system that has been installed to get into some of the buildings. Some of them are too steep for older people to comfortably navigate, there are no railings on many of them, icy conditions would make them really dangerous, and many are curved with no sightlines, providing great places for muggers to lie in wait.

These observations were shared very politely over and over again, and the response over and over again was that everything was built to code. Finally somebody invoked some common sense and told the NYCHA representative that when somebody gets needlessly hurt or killed, ‘code’ won’t be a good defense.

The whole purpose of these kinds of meetings should be for information to be exchanged, which is a two way street.  In these modern times, people are always asked to fill out annoying surveys after buying something online, which is because the companies want to see how they are doing. There is no reason for NYCHA to not do the same. The information shared from people who actually live in the Houses is the most valuable information that NYCHA has.

Anyway, those are my personal thoughts about last night. I met some nice locals and hopefully they will talk to me and a real news story will show up. If you want to get in touch with me, my number is 917 652-9128, and my email is [email protected]

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