Mayor Bloomberg may be short in stature, but he's held in quite high regard in certain circles: he's been hailed as a visionary for programs such as PlaNYC2030, and "innovative" for his implementation of bike-lanes throughout the city. "In many ways he's the only mayor who's really thought long-term. He may be looking forward in directions that people aren't particularly happy about, but he's looking forward," said Doug Muzzio, a professor at CUNY and a frequent Bloomberg critic. And tomorrow, we'll all be graced with our visionary leader's next great step into the beyond!
Bloomberg will present “Vision 2020,” a 190-page blueprint for restoring NYC's waterfront, with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at a press conference in Brooklyn Bridge Park tomorrow. The $3.3 billion plan covers all five boroughs, and includes 130 projects over the next three years that’s being funded with $700 million from the city’s capital budget. It includes already announced projects such as ferries connecting Brooklyn and Queens to midtown and Lower Manhattan, and new projects like Metrocard transfers for ferries, movies at the 34th Street heliport in summer, an esplanade in the Charleston section of Staten Island to a possible boat launch at Hunts Point in the Bronx.
“We have more miles of waterfront than Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and Portland combined, but for decades New Yorkers have been blocked from it and it’s become less and less a part of our lives...We’re committed to making it a part of New Yorkers’ lives again by completely revitalizing the waterfront and waterways, or as we’re calling it, the sixth borough," the mayor said in a prepared statement. Hopefully this new plan will turn out to be one of his successful ideas, and not one of the turds in the punchbowl.
