New allies sought in effort to tear down Sheridan Expressway
By Daniel Allen
dantallen@gmail.com
Hunts Point activists created a miniature park in a parking space on Southern Boulevard to dramatize their campaign to transform the Sheridan Expressway into parkland, housing and commercial property. The event last September was part of the nationwide PARKing Day, designed to call attention to the need for more urban parks and public spaces.
A quest for allies citywide in the effort to persuade the state to tear down the Sheridan Expressway brought Hunts Point downtown this fall.
Speaking as part of a series on environmental issues at Solar One in Stuyvesant Cove Park, alongside the East River, Philip Silva, the Greenway Coordinator for Sustainable South Bronx, described the “Sheridan Swap,” a community plan to replace the 1.4 mile highway with parks, affordable housing, and room for eco-friendly businesses.
“We’re inviting New Yorkers from all five boroughs to support us,” Silva told a small group of Manhattan residents at Solar One, New York’s only stand-alone solar powered building.
“We’re at the point where any other plan than turning the Sheridan into a park would be ridiculous,”he added confidently.
The future of the Sheridan is under study by the State Department of Transportation, which has expressed its own preference for reconstructing the Sheridan, extending the expressway to Edgewater Road and adding new on-off ramps in an effort to get trucks in and out of Hunts Point more efficiently.
According to Silva, 20,000 trucks move through Hunts Point each week. Their emissions are a major contributor to the asthma epidemic in the neighborhood, he said, a conclusion backed by recent studies conducted by NYU and by Lehman College.
The Sheridan, Silva noted, was the brainchild of Robert Moses, whose bridge, tunnel and highway projects, including the Bruckner Expressway the Cross Bronx Expressway, transformed New York. He originally planned to link the Sheridan with I-95 by steamrolling through the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden. When opposition doomed that effort, he was left with the short stub of the Sheridan, dubbed by opponents “the road to nowhere.”It remains underused and unwanted, according to Silva.
Community groups are currently awaiting the DOT’s Environmental Impact Statement, which will include an assessment of the teardown alternative, Silva said. He criticized the DOT for not quantifying benefits of the community plan like opportunities for real estate development and new jobs.Some of those who attended the lecture were veterans of other battles to reclaim neighborhood green space.
“We had a similar situation and we were able to beat them,”said Joy Garland, executive director of the Stuyvesant Cove Park Association and a 35-year resident of Stuyvesant Town.
Garland and others successfully challenged Mayor Ed Koch’s plan to build five residential towers, a convention center and a hotel on platforms that would have extended into the East River and restricted community access to the waterfront. Today, bikers and pedestrians can travel a continuous string of parks and ball fields from 23rd Street to the Staten Island ferry terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan.Chris Neidl, outreach coordinator for Solar One, described Garland as a hero for fighting private development along the East River.
Garland asked Silva about the tactics being used to involve civic leaders with the Sheridan Swap. “Our elected officials have gotten off easy,” said Silva. “Until now, they’ve been able to say: study all alternatives. Now we are pushing them to support the community plan.”A coalition of organizations called the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance has also been working with the Spitzer administration in Albany. Silva said that State DOT commissioner Astrid C. Glynn has expressed interest in the Sheridan Swap.
After the presentation, Neidl said that inviting Silva to speak was a no-brainer. He said the talk offered an opportunity to collaborate with Sustainable South Bronx while spreading the word about the Sheridan to another borough. He encouraged members of the audience s to take petitions in support of the teardown alternative and reminded them to sample the organic cookies provided by a local bakery and no-sugar-added orange soda.