By Matt Chaban 12/04/12 12:12pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Blue steel! (MTA)

Male Model Joe Lhota Sports an H Train Hoody to Support Rockaways Recovery

The “I Survived the Frankenstorm” shirts had already hit street corners and Etsy shops within days of the hurricane battering New York. But here’s some Sandy swag that actually goes toward a good cause. The MTA has created a limited edition line of H train memorabilia, including T-shirts, hoodies, pins and magnets, and all proceeds go to the Graybeards, a Rockaways charity that has been helping out with the superstorm recovery. And who better to model the new line than MTA chief Joe Lhota, hero of the storm. Read More

By Kim Velsey 11/30/12 6:40pm

Selling New York

streeteasy

Streeteasy Adds Storm Zones To Building Pages

Hurricane Sandy has made at least one indelible mark on the New York real estate market. Streeteasy has added storm zones to their building pages, allowing buyers and renters to easily determine what zone a property is in.

The company decided to start posting the information in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The move is consistent with the company’s interest in promoting transparency in real estate, manager Jared Kleinstein told The Observer. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/30/12 2:35pm

recovery mode

We're gonna need more than just sandbags next time. (Getty_

How Would You Spend $9 B. to Protect New York From the Next Superstorm?

That was the question The Observer put to a group of planning and infrastructure experts yesterday, after Senator Chuck Schumer announced that he expected the state to receive about $9 billion for storm mitigation measures, as part of its request to Congress for Sandy aid. After all, that is far from enough money to build some of those vaunted sea gates, though there is nothing to suggest more money might not be on the horizon in the future.

For now, though, here are their recommendations on what to do with $9 billion in new storm-securing infrastructure investments. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/28/12 1:38pm

recovery mode

Never again. (Governor's Office/Flickr)

The Rebuilders: Governor Cuomo Names Three Commissions to Assess Storm Preparedness

Hurricane Sandy was a moment of reckoning for the city, and that reckoning has begun. The general consensus is that the city and the state must build back better, stronger and quite likely differently than before. Are sea walls appropriate? Should we let people live on barrier islands? What kind of improvements should be made to our transportation infrastructure, and how?

These are among the questions our leaders will be grappling with, and to help answer them, Gov. Cuomo has just announced three new commissions, NYS 2100, NYS Respond and NYS Ready. The commissioners are a who’s who of business, infrastructure, environmental, planning, utilities and emergency preparedness professionals and experts. As Gov. Cuomo made clear, their job is neither simple nor easy. Read More

By Kit Dillon 11/26/12 5:47pm

After Sandy

The One57 crane.

Vicarious Vertigo: Up Close and Personal with the Collapsed One57 Crane

It’s a time-honored tradition for men doing ballsy, ridiculous and risky things to photograph their exploits.  Thankfully the steel workers over at One57 are no exception. They recently yielded to this impulse, taking a series of shots of their work  securing the now- famous crane destroyed during Hurricane Sandy.  The removal of which is, according to Curbed, slated to begin the week of December 3rd.  It’s a difficult job. A new crane has to be built to lower the old one down to the ground and there are legal actions to be settled, of course. But in the meantime we can all look at these pictures the workers took and feel relief that’s it’s not us out there. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/21/12 1:50pm

on the waterfront

Battered and broken. (Mayor's Office/Flickr)

Zone A Zoning: Independent Budget Office Critical of Bloomberg’s Two-Faced Waterfront Developments

While the Bloomberg administration has largely come in for praise for its Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts, questions remain over whether City Hall made things worse by encouraging waterfront development. The Independent Budget Office certainly believes so in a critical analysis it has issued looking at the seemingly hypocritical policy initiatives Mayor Bloomberg had championed.

On the one hand, the city had taken pains to reduce its carbon footprint as it acknowledges the dangers posed by rising sea levels and superstorms. At the same time, the administration continues to encourage new residential and commercial projects in the very areas it is wringing its hands over. Read More

By Kit Dillon 11/20/12 2:31pm

recovery mode

A freak show of another sort. (Getty)

Coney Island Is Still Devastated, From the Boardwalk to the Neighborhood Parks

We have all had that moment, post-Sandy, where the breadth of the storm’s damage has finally sunk in.  For New Yorkers for Parks, that moment came on Nov. 9, when the group was asked by the Coney Island Development Corporation to do a survey of the neighborhood’s public spaces. What its staff found shocked them.

“The open spaces of Coney Island felt forlorn and forgotten when the staff of New Yorkers for Parks arrived,” wrote the group in an account on its site. “Scenes were eerie as we began our assessment. The neighborhood seemed frozen in a moment of shock. Formerly flooded cars were parked hopelessly with open hoods. Residents waited on corners below broken traffic lights, asking when food would arrive. Some lingered by waterlogged couches, chairs and dining room sets waiting for garbage pickup. Boxes of rotted bananas, once slated for delivery, stretched half a block near the Haber Houses. There was little moving, other than the occasional utility truck or emergency vehicle. The next day, several hundred volunteers would arrive, eager to help. But that Friday provided a tragic post-Sandy snapshot.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/20/12 1:40pm

Planes Trains & Automobiles

Zoom, zoom.

Staten Island Gets Ferried Away: City Preparing New Shuttle Service for Hard-Hit South Shore

One of the more unusual sides of the city’s response to Superstorm Sandy has been the ingenuity of the transportation and planning wonks that help us get around this giant metropolis. It is not only the speed with which the MTA recovered, but also what it and the city’s Department of Transportation did in between. Creating bus bridges to replace flooded subways, launching new ferry lines, creating special subway shuttles.

Today, Mayor Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced yet another innovation, a second ferry for Staten Island. The Rockaways already has one, and now the city is looking for an operator to serve the hardest-hit sections of Staten Island’s south shore. With widespread destruction, many locals’ lives have been interrupted, forcing them to leave behind their homes and cars. The new ferry service is seen as a lifeline between Great Kills and Manhattan, for those struggling to get to work and beyond. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/20/12 12:26pm

Kimmelmania

London has had barriers on the Thames since 1984. (Getty)

Four Out of Five New Yorkers, Including Michael Kimmelman, Want Billions Spent on Storm Infrastructure

It’s starting to seem like Mayor Bloomberg is the only one who doesn’t think storm barriers are a worthwhile investment. Not only do Governor Cuomo, MTA chief Joe Lhota and both Jerry Nadler and Chuck Schumer think it’s a good idea, but so do 80 percent of New York City voters, according to a new Quinnipiac poll out today.

They were asked, specifically, if it was worth spending billions—no exact amount, or source of funds beyond the federal and state governments was given—on new waterfront infrastructure. Only 14 percent thought it was not worth the cost. Support was even higher when the pollsters asked if the cost was justified it if the storm protections could “reduce the cost of disruption and restoration.” Then, 88 percent supported the new infrastructure, compared to 6 percent who did not support. Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/19/12 8:14pm

recovery mode

Sea Box village. (Sea Box)

Home, Sweet Shipping Container: NYC’s Secret Plans for the Perfect Disaster Apartments

If another Sandy hits a year or three from now, few New Yorkers should have to call tent cities and high school gymnasiums home.

Instead, they will be living inside shipping containers.

For the past five years, the Bloomberg administration has been quietly developing a first-of-its-kind disaster housing program, creating modular apartments uniquely designed for the challenges of urban living. Carved out of shipping containers, these LEGO-like, stackable apartments offer all the amenities of home. Or more, since they are bigger, and brighter, than the typical Manhattan studio. It’s the FEMA trailer of the future, built with the Dwell reader in mind.

“It’s nicer than my apartment,” David Burney, commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction, said in a phone interview last week. Read More