By Helen Klein
The good news is that the heavily-used stretch of Church Avenue between Rogers Avenue and Flatbush Avenue is due for a complete reconstruction. The bad news, however, is that the heavily-used thoroughfare will have to wait until 2009 for work to commence. At the January meeting of Community Board 17, which was held at Meyer Levin Intermediate School, I.S. 285, 5909 Beverley Road, Terry Hinds, the chairperson of the board’s Transportation Committee, told board members that, as part of the reconstruction planned by the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT), “They are going to rip up the trolley tracks and start over.” The proposed roadway work is something to look forward to, Hinds acknowledged, but, he stressed, “Church Avenue needs help right now.” But, he said, a DOT representative, Dalila Hall, a Brooklyn borough planner who had attended the Transportation Committee meeting, had, “Expressed to us that a great deal of money had been set aside to do the reconstruction. They can’t take money and use it and do a re-paving, because money has already been allotted for the complete reconstruction. They can’t dip into money to do a temporary fix when a complete fix is on the way. “So we have to wait to get a lot of the issues addressed,” Hinds went on. “The committee was very concerned about that, and expressed that to her, and she said she would go back to DOT and express our concerns, and see whether there was something that could be done to alleviate the problems until the complete reconstruction.” According to Craig Chin, a spokesperson for DOT, an allocation of $3 million has been set aside for the Church Avenue project. “In September,” he added, “the design went to DDC (the city’s Department of Design and Construction, which coordinates such projects). Our involvement is the roadways. Other agencies may jump in. Right now, we are just in the planning and design stages.” No interim work has yet been decided upon, according to Chin. “We are looking at trying to do things, but nothing has been determined yet,” he stated.
