Call it a chance to rock the boat!
Coney Islanders who want to weigh in on the city’s plans to add a ferry stop in the People’s Playground can attend an “information session and community workshop” with city officials at 7 p.m. tonight at the Coney Island YMCA.
The hour-and-a-half-long event, at the W. 29th Street community center between Surf and Mermaid avenues, will feature planning and engineering reps from the Economic Development Corporation — the quasi-governmental agency tasked with growing the city’s economy that operates the ferry system— who will discuss the pros and cons of different possible dock locations, according to information from senior project manager Wil Fisher.
Mayor Bill de Blasio first announced plans for the boat stop in Sodom by the Sea in January after years of advocacy by locals calling for a ferry stop in the transit-starved neighborhood. Ferries originating in Coney Island will stop in Bay Ridge before sailing to Wall Street’s Pier 11 in trips that honchos predict will take less than 40 minutes, according to Economic Development Corporation spokeswoman Stephanie Baez, who previously told this paper that service is expected to begin in the neighborhood by 2021.
But the location of the dock has become a point of contention among locals, some of whom argued that the city’s tentative initial plan to put the dock near the mouth of Coney Island Creek, around W. 31st Street and Bayview Ave., was not logistically or environmentally sound.
In February, reps from the economic development agency clarified at a community meeting that they were in fact studying a 10-block stretch of Kaiser Park, from W. 23rd to W. 33rd streets, in determining where to drop the dock, while many locals charged that a docking site deeper in the creek would be preferable than one near the mouth of the waterway, which they alleged would disturb locals who live on Bayview Avenue and contribute to even more traffic on that roadway.
Locals who plan to attend the Monday night event should RSVP to rmiranda@edc.nyc.
NYC Ferry information session and community workshop at the Coney Island YMCA (2980 W 29th St. between Surf and Mermaid avenues). May 6 at 7 p.m.
