The MTA broke ground Monday on a major milestone to advance the century-in-the-making effort to extend the Second Avenue subway into East Harlem, bringing three new stations to the neighborhood and connecting the Q line to the Metro-North and the Lexington Avenue subway lines at 125th Street.
Crews began excavating a hole at East 119th Street and Second Avenue, which will make way for one of two tunnel boring machines that will dig out the new subway tunnel.
For longtime residents of the neighborhood, it’s still unbelievable that the project is actually moving forward. New York officials have tried and failed to build the subway in the area since the 1920s. The MTA last began construction on an East Harlem Second Avenue subway in the 1970s, but abandoned the project in 1975 due to the city’s financial crisis.
“When it's done, everything will be beautiful, man. Everybody gets benefit,” said Said Aquel, 75, the owner of a 55-year old sheet metal business on Second Avenue.
The MTA's contractors are digging street right in front of his business, which he said has caused headaches for his shop. He has two other locations, but the East Harlem storefront is his first, and he expects the value of the property will skyrocket when the stations are complete.
“ The temptation of the money they (real estate buyers) want to give us … the value of the land will go crazy,” he said.
Said Aquel owns a sheet metal business right next to the construction site where crews are working on the Second Avenue subway.
Others, like Anthony McFarlane, 42, whose family is from East Harlem, and owns an apartment in West Harlem can’t wait for the project to be completed.
“I'm loving it, man. Property value, bring it on, man. Let's do it,” he said.
McFarlane said his family lives near the 96th Street stop on the Q line and suffered through years of construction when that project dragged on for years before being completed in 2017.
“My family was like, ‘Oh, this noise.’ Now they're like, ‘Oh, I can get all throughout the city now just blocks away,'” he said. “This Q line, you able to get all through downtown and Brooklyn, all the way to Coney Island. I mean, come on. Can't beat that, man.”
Standing next to the pit where elected officials marked Monday’s groundbreaking, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who helped secure $3.4 billion in federal funding for the project, heralded the moment before scooping a ceremonial gold plated shovel.
“This is not just a gift for today, it's a gift for future generations who say and understand this community matters," Hochul said. "This community has waited long enough."
President Donald Trump tried to halt the extension by withholding funding for the project, but the money was released earlier this year after the MTA won a lawsuit over the order.
Lydia Cora said she's worried the Second Avenue subway construciton's effect on her building.
Schumer said Republicans in Washington tried to claw back the congressionally approved funding for the project.
“They tried and tried and tried, but they couldn't do it, and here we are today. Trump, you lost, we won,” Schumer said.
Federal records show the project is expected to cost $7.7 billion. MTA officials said it will be completed by 2032.
Hochul said she’s committed to spend $25 million to study how to keep the tunnel boring machine digging across 125th Street to extend the Q all the way across Harlem to Broadway. MTA officials previously planned to extend the Second Avenue subway south into lower Manhattan, but that plan has been put on the backburner after Hochul announced she preferred the crosstown extension plan.
“What the governor set in motion is the ability to keep the tunnel boring machines moving to save time and money to accomplish the third phase,” MTA Chair Janno Lieber said. “ It would be like having the Grand Central-Times Square shuttle for Harlem.”
Not everyone in the neighborhood was celebrating on Monday. Around the corner from the groundbreaking, residents complained their building has been under scaffolding for a decade. Lydia Cora, who’s lived in the building for years, said her apartment shakes during the subway construction.
“My concern is this crack, sometimes when they working with the heavy machinery, that vibrates, and I got a panic attack,” Cora said.
Cora said she spends her days in the apartment caring for her daughter, who can’t leave, and her nephew who is autistic.
“Whenever he comes from school and they working, she gets nervous,” she said. “And I'm afraid that one day we will be in the news, because the building collapse, and nobody cares.”
