This Week in Other News: New Playgrounds, Faster Transit, Public Charge Education, and Drugs

Here’s what else has been happening this week:

• F Train officially went express – which would be fantastic if it was not just two trains during rush hours. Predictably, Southern Brooklyn celebrated, as Carroll Gardens/ Cobble Hill grumbled.

• Utica Avenue subway extension plan missing in action, The City reports: “a $5 million study looking at the possibility of extending subway service along Utica Avenue in Brooklyn — included in the MTA’s current five-year financial plan at the behest of Mayor Bill de Blasio — didn’t earn so much as a mention when transit officials outlined the proposed 2020-2024 Capital Program earlier this week.”

Here’s the study area – maybe we all need to make a bit more noise about how much this is needed:

PARKS:

• Today, Prospect Park broke ground on the new entrances along Flatbush Avenue, in hopes of making access to the park easier for those living on the east side of it.

These are the first new entrances to the park since the 1940s. Prospect Park Alliance received funding from NYC Parks for this project through its Parks Without Borders initiative, and it is part of a larger restoration of the Flatbush Avenue side of the park. “The design includes beautiful new plantings and trees, as well as a small public plaza with boulders donated from the construction site of NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, which will serve as informal seating as well as a place for children to climb and play,” Prospect Park Alliance Vice President Deborah Kirschner emailed.

• On Monday, the ground was broken for a new playground for PS152/PS315 in Midwood.

• Tomorrow is the official opening of the new P.S. 156/ I.S. 392 student-designed playground.

Both playgrounds are being built by The Trust for Public Land in partnership with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “Vital Brooklyn” initiative, it will be open to the community when the school is not in session. Enjoy!

• Bensonhurst Park’s renovations are finally moving ahead. The price tag is $7,861,000, and expected opening next September.

DRUGS:

• Flavored Juuls became illegal in New York this week, in response to a vaping-related lung illness that has sickened hundreds across the country and killed seven. According to the NYS Health Department’s Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, nearly 40% of high school seniors used e-cigarettes, and the popularity of vaping has erased 18 years of anti-tobacco work in the state.
• Rosa Goldensohn at The City looks at the numbers: Turns out the number of city’s aging black residents dying of cocaine-related overdoses is rising, almost tripling since 2016.

• NYC preschools are training teachers what to do if immigration authorities come knocking
• Ahead of public charge rule, City Council tasks schools with providing resources to immigrant families – it may or may not take effect in October, pending litigation, but the impact has been dramatic on folks accessing services so schools will be sending home fact sheets. “In order to help address the fear and concern that communities may have,” Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Bitta Mostofi told Chalkbeat, her office is creating materials that direct people to a free, city-funded hotline called ActionNYC — 1-800-354-0365 — where they can receive “safe immigration legal help” in 200 languages.
• That 10,000 word Atlantic essay on culture wars and whether NYC schools are too progressive, and the primer on why that may not be so.

IN MEMORIAM:

• Dimitrios (Jimmy) Kaloidis, owner of the Bridgeview Diner in Bay Ridge, died at 86 in Greece on Sept. 16. He had a generous heart, and the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church named its parochial school after him, which will host a memorial service for the Bay Ridge elder on Friday, Sept. 20.