By Mark Hallum
City officials and Gov. Andrew Cuomo led a ribbon-cutting for the new Kosciuszko Bridge linking Queens to Brooklyn over Newtown Creek Thursday.
Cuomo, a lover of classic cars, cruised into the celebration behind the wheel of a ‘32 Packard owned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also served as governor of New York.
The $55 million project will keep the regional economy going while making improvements to the crossing, such as an increased daily capacity to support the approximately 100,000 cars that use bridge everyday.
The towers on the new bridge rival the Statue of Liberty at 180 feet.
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz expressed gratitude to Cuomo, a native of Queens, by claiming that he was not one to overlook the borough in terms of its needs or when seeking input.
“Every step of the way, the community has been involved in this project and our concerns have been taken into account step-by-step,” Katz said.
Growing up in Queens, Cuomo became familiar with the old bridge, built in the 1950s, in a peculiar way. The governor said the first time he had ever heard his father, Mario, use expletives was when crossing the old bridge.
“I believe that Queens and Brooklyn deserve a beautiful bridge and a bridge that graces the Queens and Brooklyn skyline, and that’s exactly what this bridge is going to do,” Cuomo said.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) issued a statement praising the effort to replace old infrastructure and explaining how federal investment made it possible, taking explicit aim at the Trump administration for the recently blocked executive order to withhold funds to sanctuary cities.
“The bottom line is that the achievement we are touting today, one that will help keep our regional and national economy buzzing, is exactly the kind of critical construction project that would still be sitting on the shelf without federal investment,” Schumer said. “The Kosciuszko bridge is a prime example of what can be accomplished with direct and substantial federal investment in infrastructure, and the Senate Democrats’ infrastructure plan that we sent to the president over three months ago would energize thousands more projects like this to be built across the United States of America creating 15 million new jobs.”
The bridge was named for Polish American Revolutionary War hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko and in honor of the Polish community in nearby Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Reach reporter Mark Hallum by e-mail at mhall
