(Two Bridges resident Trever Holland speaking at the rally in front of the Department of City Planning)
In another installment of “the rent is too damn high,” Two Bridges residents are demanding that the city increase its oversight of the mega-towers coming to the Lower East Side waterfront, which are set to add thousands of luxury units to the lower-income and working-class community.
Mayor de Blasio and council member Chin at the well-attended town hall meeting in the Lower East Side © Kasper van Laarhoven
Over 300 residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown gathered in a Bowery gym for Mayor de Blasio’s 27th town hall Wednesday, and we probably don’t have to tell you what the theme of the evening was. You guessed it: gentrification, particularly with regard to the 60-plus-story towers rising over Two Bridges.
When we last checked in with the Bushwick Community Plan that stakeholders are formulating for the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, Antonio Reynoso and Rafael Espinal were hoping to introduce it to the City Council sometime this year. But it now looks like it won’t happen until the end of 2018, Reynoso said in an interview with City Limits.
“Through negotiations and the work that they’re doing, we’ve noticed that we’ve had to push the timeline back a year,” Reynoso told the site’s publisher, Jarrett Murphy.