By Mike Mclaughlin
In this case, the cover up is not worse than the crime.
The Bloomberg Administration officially issued a long-awaited call this week for engineers to minimize the pollution and unsightliness of the one-mile trench of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that ripped Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens from the Columbia Street Waterfront District and Red Hook 50 years ago.
To fix the so-called “Ditch,” the city is seeking “green planted buffers … new street light fixtures, new street furniture, such as decorative trash receptacles or seating, sidewalk repair and re-alignment, and, other special elements such as pedestrian/bicycle improvements,” the Economic Development Corporation said a statement.
The EDC’s dream of a spruced up BQE was first reported in The Brooklyn Paper last November, but this week’s call for proposals is far less ambitious than a prior dream of decking over the excavated interstate for new housing.
The new parameters also make it unlikely to implement a visionary design by local firm dlandstudio, which called for improved pedestrian crosswalks and new public parks on slabs above the highway.
