A cyclist crosses McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint.
Photo: Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
Today the Department of Transportation reversed a plan that it had already reversed last year — a redo of a redo of the future of Greenpoint’s McGuinness Boulevard. The four-lane cut-through has been the site of a squabble between Greenpointers who want walkable streets and car-reliant businesses with deep pockets.
The plan announced today takes out a lane of traffic in each direction between the BQE and Calyer Street, slowing cars and making room for a protected bike lane between a lane of parking and the sidewalk. It’s what activists with the group Make McGuinness Safe have been calling for for years, galvanized by the 2021 killing of a teacher who was hit by a speeding driver in a rented Rolls-Royce. Their movement pushed the DOT to study traffic in 2022. Last May, the agency agreed to a plan that looks just like the one the city unveiled today: a lane for cyclists, who would be protected from traffic by a parking lane that takes out a lane of travel. The mayor signed off. Then, two months later, Streetsblog reported that Adams was taking a second look. A new plan, known as the “compromise plan,” was put in place along part of the road and planned for the rest. It meant keeping a lane for cars — a demand of opponents who organized as Keep McGuinness Moving, who were backed by the politically connected Argento family that runs Broadway Stages, a film complex nearby.
At a community board meeting last month, locals seethed over plans to extend the compromise plan and politicians knew where to point the finger. “This was decided by Mayor Adams,” said Lincoln Restler. “This was his decision.” But The City reported that the change had actually come from the mayor’s top aide, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who on a Zoom call last July with DOT staffers had reportedly said the hoped-for protected bike lane wasn’t backed by local businesses, only “outsiders.” (A source called that “laughable.”)
Ingrid Lewis-Martin
Photo: Peter K. Afriyie/AP
Of course, things have recently changed for the administration. On Friday, officers met Lewis-Martin at JFK and seized her phone, then raided her house. Her lawyer says she was served a subpoena by the Southern District, which is investigating Adams, and that her devices were given to the Manhattan district attorney, which may be working on a separate investigation. (Lewis-Martin has said she is innocent and is not the target of the investigation.) Only eight days earlier, a separate federal investigation, run out of the Eastern District, reportedly subpoenaed a nearby church — Our Lady of Mount Carmel-Annunciation — and its priest, Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello.
Gigantiello is best known to New Yorkers these days as the priest who was demoted over allowing Sabrina Carpenter to shoot a video at the altar. But he also appeared at protests against the bike lane. And incidentally, the Argento family helped fund a scholarship program that Gigantiello works for, and he calls them a “community partner” on their company website. (His lawyer also said he is not the target of the investigation.)
Less than two weeks after the church and Gigantiello were subpoenaed and only three business days after Lewis-Martin’s phones were seized, the original plan was put back in place. Make McGuinness Safe, which learned about the move this morning, shared a statement celebrating the move that ended on a list of names of the New Yorkers who had been killed on the road since 1956. “For all of them. And for all of us.”
Bronwyn Breitner, a local architect who helped organize the group, said that members don’t know what “caused the change of heart now,” but that the compromise plan probably seemed “more and more ridiculous when it’s obviously such a failure by all measures.” The DOT didn’t share why the change happened now; instead, they shared a quote from the city’s deputy mayor for operations who said “this administration is committed to making our streets safer for all New Yorkers.”
