Federal stimulus money is rolling towards the city, and Mayor Bloomberg wants to use the cash to put 11 Brooklyn infrastructure projects in motion.
With $261 million of federal transportation funding from the so-called “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” headed to New York City, Hizzoner said on Monday that he intends to complete major shovel-ready projects — including long-planned renovations of the Brooklyn Bridge — while redeploying the city money that had been allotted for the jobs to other infrastructure projects.
“The federal stimulus dollars mean that we can [do] projects that would have been on the chopping block — putting thousands of people to work and rebuilding our infrastructure,” the mayor said at a March 30 press conference at the foot of the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, which is on track to receive $6 million from the stimulus package for renovations.
The federal money will also go towards Brooklyn projects including the $47.2-million renovation and repainting of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg hopes to direct some of the unused city money that would have funded the Brooklyn Bridge, Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, and other projects towards a 25-project wish list that might have been shelved due to the economy:
• The $23-million Flatbush Avenue streetscape improvement, which will add new lights, pedestrian crosswalk refuges, a landscaped median, and sewer upgrades between Tillary Street and Hanson Place.
• The $15-million reconstruction of deteriorated roadways and sidewalks in Greenpoint on Nassau Avenue from Bedford Avenue to Apollo Street and Monitor Street from Greenpoint Avenue to Nassau Avenue.
• The $15-million fix of the crumbling Coney Island Boardwalk.
• The $12-million reconstruction of Eastern Parkway between Grand Army Plaza and Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights.
• The $7.1-rehab of Fulton Street from Classon Avenue to Lewis Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant with new sidewalks, curbs and street lights.
“Some of [these projects], actually, would not have gotten done” without the federal stimulus package, Bloomberg said.
Also on hand — and looking surprisingly cozy with the mayor — at the press conference was former (and future?) challenger, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D–Sheepshead Bay).
