NYC NOW - March 15, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

MTA Chair Janno Lieber says the city needs to keep getting guns off the street after Thursday’s subway shooting, where a man was shot in the head with his own weapon. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of New Yorkers insured through Aetna could soon lose access to New York Presbyterian’s vast network of hospitals and doctors. Plus, residents of a Lower East Side community say they’re fed up with years of delays on an MTA project on the M line. Finally, Willets Point, Queens, is poised for a transformation, including a new soccer stadium, a school, and thousands of affordable housing units. WNYC’s Arun Venugopal has the latest on the project.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, March 15th. Here's the midday news for Michael Hill. MTA Chair General Lieber says the city needs to keep getting guns off the street after yesterday's subway shooting where a man suffered a gunshot to his head with his own weapon. The victims here, as the chief said, appears to be the aggressor. but the real victims are the people I saw in those videos

who are having a harrowing time because they're on a train with somebody with a gun. The shooting happened on board a northbound A train where two men fought. A video leading up to the shooting shows the aggressor threatening to beat up the younger man fighting and then getting his gun. Police say the younger man took the gun in a struggle

and shot the aggressor in the head. He's in critical condition. The shooter is in police custody as the Brooklyn DA. investigates. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers insured through Aetna soon could lose access to New York Presbyterian's vast network of hospitals and doctors. The two health care giants are trying to reach an agreement on a new contract by the end of the month, but they say things are not going well. If talks break down, ETA members would lose coverage for medical centers like Wild Cornell and the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital on April 1st. Coverage would end in June. This is the second time

this year that a dispute between a major insurance company and a New York hospital network has threatened patient coverage. The other one being Mount Sinai and United Healthcare. Stay close. There's more after the break. Presidents of a Lower East Side community say they're fed up with years of delays on an MTA project on the M-Line. WNYC's Ramsey-C-Ramsey-Kalief reports on how the construction adds to long-standing concerns about conditions in a nearby park. Ben Wisquita is standing on his fifth floor balcony facing Forsyth Street. He points to beeping bulldozers and construction workers shoveling gravel below his apartment. A friend of mine called it the gateway to hell.

This was for at least two years an 80-foot-deep pit that took up two-thirds to three-quarters of the block. The MTA says the $92 million project would build a new ventilation system to ensure air circulation on the and prevent fires. A sign at the site used to say it would be complete in 2022. That's now covered with duct tape bearing 2023, scrawled in Sharpie. That deadline has come and gone. The MTA says the new end date is June, but residents like Wosquita say they're skeptical and out of patience.

It's drilling, it's jackhammering, it's screaming over the drilling and jack hammering, it's cars backing up, it's beeping. The MTA says the delay is due to convaling. complications replacing trees that were cut down during construction. That sounds simple, but the project requires the MTA to coordinate with Con Edison and the Parks Department. Five stories below, Wiskita's apartment, is Sarah D. Roosevelt Park. It's a linear park stretching from the foot of the Manhattan Bridge to Houston Street,

where there's been two murders since 2021. For years, residents have urged the city to do more to improve the park. They say the MTA project has only exacerbated those issues by, creating nooks where people sleep and do drugs. We've lived with that for a long time. That's Tessa Huxley, president of an affordable housing co-op on Forsyth Street. She's pointing to one corner that she says makes her feel unsafe, even though her co-op added new lights.

These are frequently used despite our lights as toilets and places to shoot up. The MTA says it routinely sends project updates to residents, but despite the new deadline for work to wrap up in early. early summer. Residents I talked with say they don't believe a thing. Remzi Helifé, WNYC News. For decades, Willard's Point, Queens has been synonymous with urban neglect, but the area now appears headed for a radical transformation with plans for a new soccer stadium, a school, and thousands of units of affordable housing, all heading for final approvals. W.N.I.C. Zerun Van Gogh, senior reporter with the Race and Justice Unit, says the massive project seems almost

certain to move forward and he joins us now to discuss the project as well as the concerns among some in the community. Arun, what does this project promise to bring to Queens? Well, there's a lot, Michael. There's a 25,000 seat soccer stadium that's planned, a school for 650 kids, 250 room, hotel, lots of jobs they're promising 14,000 construction jobs. The big part, I guess, when he comes to housing, is a total of 2,500 affordable housing units, 1,100 of which, already been approved. City officials say this is going to be the largest affordable housing project in the city since the 1970s. Now, this is an area many of us may be familiar with, but even if we are, we've never been there. Tell us about Willits Point and its history. Yeah, a little backstory. The area

takes its name for a man by the name of Charles Willits. He bought the area in 1829. Eventually, he was used as a staging ground for troops up north who are, you know, preparing for their deployment in the Civil War. But then by the early 20th century, it's become a dumping site for the city's coal ash. And this is where we see it start to become immortalized

by none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald. He refers to it as the Valley of Ashes in the Great Gaspi. He writes, quote, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. And by the 21st century, it's an area defined by all these

auto repair shops and this air of neglect, as you refer to it. And it's Mayor Bloomberg who called Willits Point another euphemism for Blight. And it's during his term, his first administration, that we see the transformation of the area begin to take shape. But the pieces really only come together during the Adams administration, Michael. And in part due to the efforts of elected officials in Queens. Tell us about that. Yeah, I mean, Queensboro president, Donovan Richards is really back this project, but it's been particularly championed by Francisco Moia, who is a member of the city council, and he was born and raised in Corona. Learn how to play soccer with my dad in the shadows of Willits Point in Flushing Meadows,

Corona Park. I always dream that I'd be playing for the greatest football club in all of the world, FC Barcelona. Instead, Michael, he goes into politics, and he has been championing this permanent home for the New York City Football Club. The plan is that would be privately financed and built with union labor. And all signs point to other members of city council sort of backing him. It's called member deference. So it's really expected to pass in the coming weeks. For the most part, it's gotten strong support in the community, but environmentalists and others have raised some red flags, haven't they? Yeah, there are some fiscal watchdogs who say, you know, there's no property taxes on the stadium. There was an IBO report that came out a little over a year ago,

as much as $516 million in unpaid property taxes, lost property taxes. The stadium is being leased in city officials, you know, that's more than offset by around $6 billion in economic activity, including all those construction jobs. Queens Community Board 7 voted overwhelmingly to approve the project. But there's an environmentalist by name of Cody Herman. She says, this area really is by nature, it's wetland and that we had to prepare for storms. and the unpredictability of what could happen there. Marginalized people, which I guess is what affordable housing is supposed to be for.

You know, these lower income more vulnerable populations, you put them in the most vulnerable land, kind of in these very flood-prone coastal areas that have these long histories of pollution. We're talking, though, about a huge housing crisis. So the city is saying we have to move forward on this project. The project has cleared a number of hurdles, including approval by the city's planning commission. So what's next, Arroo? Well, there's sort of a 50-day clock after that planning commission vote. The Philips City Council is going to vote on this in the coming weeks.

And they really expected to pass after which it goes to the desk of Mayor Adams. And he calls it a once-in-generation project. So he's probably going to sign it. WNIC's Arun Van Gogh Pau, bringing us the latest on the future of Willett's Point. Arun, thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC.

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