Justin Mclennan, who lives about eight blocks away from 73rd Street and Edsall Avenue, got back from an eight-day trip this week to discover a parking miracle had happened in his absence.
When he went to park his van for street cleaning on the stretch Edsall Avenue known for swampy puddles caused by poor street drainage, he found it to be freshly paved, neatly landscaped and dry.
“They did it really fast and it looks really great. I love how they put the stones down. It was just a mess with garbage everywhere,” said Mclennan. He added that with the pools of water gone, there are more parking spots up for grabs.
Residents are starting to reap the benefits of the Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection’s collaborative project to install a catch basin and repave the road surface and put down a curb with a stone embankment along the train-facing side of the street.
The improvements stretch over three blocks of Edsall between 71st and 73rd Place.
Though the major changes seem to have been completed, according to the DOT, the project is still ongoing. “DOT and DEP are collaborating on a project that is still underway. We expect to have an update in the coming weeks,” said a spokesperson.
While the changes seemed to Mclennan to have happened quickly, local electeds have been advocating for this outcome for years according to Councilman Robert Holden.
Holden stopped by the stretch late last week to check out the completed work, and said he was very pleased with it.
“I’m very happy to have contributed to solving this decades-old problem that caused so many headaches for the residents of Edsall Avenue,” Holden said. “I’d like to thank the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Transportation for collaborating on this project, and my fellow elected officials, Assemblyman Mike Miller and Senator Joe Addabbo, for their advocacy on this issue over the past several years.”
