That new Broadway pedestrian plaza, which reduced Broadway to two lanes to make room for tables, chairs, and new bike lanes, are "making city drivers miserable," the Post contends. But though two reporters were assigned to the story, they were hard-pressed get any comments from the allegedly miserable drivers in question. Oh, there is one Jason Silitsky, a New Jersey "commuter" (we bet he takes the PATH) who declares the esplanade "completely useless." On the......

The DOT's $700,000 transformation of a seven block stretch of Broadway into a pedestrian esplanade with tables, chairs and planters is complete, and the Times has taken the anxious pulse of local workers lounging on their lunchbreaks. The consensus? A nice gesture, but it's only a matter of time before a cab swerves into the tables and turns the urban oasis into a scene of unspeakable carnage. Some choice observations from the men and women......

Surprise! Without a formal public announcement, the city has been moving ahead with a $700,000 plan to shrink part of Broadway in midtown from a four-lane to a two-lane street and use the rest of the space for a public esplanade, which the DOT is calling “Broadway Boulevard.” The change will be complete on August 15th, when the east side of Broadway between 42nd Street and Herald Square is turned over to a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway, teeming with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and flower-filled planters....

Six of the twenty-two acres of land that Ikea occupies in Red Hook have been turned into a park and waterfront esplanade, built by the big box retailer as a deal-sweetener for their wary neighbors. You don’t need to buy any Swedish meatballs to hang out by the water, and the free Water Taxi service arranged by Ikea might make it an appealing weekend destination in its own right. But shoppers should be aware that......

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy held a public meeting in Carroll Gardens this week to unveil renderings for a park and esplanade that would run along the Gowanus canal. The project’s dubbed Sponge Park because planners hope it will help absorb some of the raw sewage that currently contaminates the canal during heavy rainfall. (Brownstoner believes oily runoff from the nearby Gowanus Expressway is another big problem.) The idea is that when the canal is finally......

Brownstoner has done the math and concluded that there are a ridiculous number of hotels going up near Brooklyn’s lovely Gowanus Canal. The latest new development will be a nine story Fairfield Inn on Third Avenue between Douglass and Butler streets; construction will begin once existing buildings are torn down. So that makes a future grand total of 7 hotels in the Gowanus neighborhood; three already built and four more on the way. With a......

Rendering of proposed Public Place development by The Hudson Companies. Earlier in the week, the department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] revealed renderings for a proposed housing development and park on 5.8 acres of heavily polluted land by the toxic Gowanus canal. Located on the site of a former manufactured gas plant, the city has owned the land, which stretches from Smith Street to the canal, for two decades. National Grid, who took over......