Press Conference on reopening Park Row
Friday, Jan. 23, 12:15
Park Row at Worth Street
Our new state senator Danny Squadron is holding this press conference on the city's unwillingness to reopen Park Row, a crucial route connecting Chinatown to downtown. Please attend if you can.
The closing of Park Row following 9/11 has been a problem for Chinatown ever since, impeding traffic, slowing business and endangering pedestrians trying to negotiate the tortuous traffic detours.
Park Row was closed in order to protect Police Headquarters at 1 Police Plaza from terrorist attack. The transfer of this putative terrorist target away from the immediate vicinity of one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city -- in the world -- does not seem to be a concern for this administration.
Rather, the neighborhood remains under attack by the city administration itself, as residents are evicted from their homes by the Department of Buildings following years of neglect by landlords and city agencies whose responsibility it was to have ensured proper living conditions. Soon the city plans to dig up Chatham Square in a traffic-rerouting construction mayhem, spread over years, that will bury yet more Chinatown businesses in the midst of this recession when businesses will be most vulnerable.
The city's priorities are clear. They do not include the residents and businesses of Chinatown.
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