New York’s Staten Island –Later this year, a long-awaited Staten Island improvement project is scheduled to get underway, but some residents are worried about the news.
Updated plans for the nearly ten-year-old Arthur Kill Road expansion project were recently presented by the Department of Design and Construction (DDC).
A 1.5-mile section of Arthur Kill Road between Clarke Avenue and Richmond Avenue would be redesigned as part of the road-widening project.
Eight components, each designed to meet particular problems and available space, would make up the work.
In general, the proposal would increase Arthur Kill’s current number of travel lanes in both directions. In addition, it would replace almost 100-year-old cast iron water mains, manage roadway floods, and install sidewalks for bicyclists and pedestrians to share.
City Councilman Joe Borelli (R-South Shore) stated that it would take a crazy person to not see the significance of this expansion. We will cooperate with the DOT [Department of Transportation] to make sure traffic signals are positioned where they are required, as this project is long overdue.
Community concerns
During the DDC presentation, which was recently held at a meeting of the Richmondtown and Clarke Avenue Civic Association at St. Patrick’s School in Richmond, some residents reportedly objected to the project, even though these changes might seem welcome to anyone who frequently travels down Arthur Kill Road.
According to Carol Donovan, president of the Richmondtown and Clarke Avenue Civic Association, the auditorium was packed [that] evening with locals who were deeply troubled by the proposal.
This suggestion was met with the universal answer that it would not benefit us and would instead increase traffic congestion and risk, she added.
Donovan clarified that the attendees had a number of reservations about the suggested approach.
Some people believe that enlarging Arthur Kill Road in residential areas could make pre-existing problems worse, even though it might be beneficial to do so closer to Richmond Avenue and the shopping malls. Specifically, that it would be harder to cross Arthur Kill Road, particularly close to the Colonial Square development.
According to some, the four-lane expansion would reduce traffic to one lane in each direction beyond the crossroads of Arthur Kill Road and Clarke Avenue, which could result in a traffic bottleneck.
The meeting also covered two historical issues.
First, because Brookfield Park was once a landfill, excavation there may release long-dormant contaminants.
Second, the Richmond Town Loop plan, a contentious concept to avoid traffic close to Historic Richmond Town, might be revived by this project.
However, DOT Borough Commissioner Roseann Caruana put a stop to this, stating that The Loop was no longer relevant and that her office will work with the agency’s legal and land use departments to formally de-map that plan.
The main worry, though, is that in order to enlarge the road, the city would need to seize some land from landowners along Arthur Kill.
Despite the fact that these residences have a road widening line on their property, which permits the city to occupy a specific amount of land, some homeowners said they were never made aware of this when they bought their house.
A DDC spokeswoman responded as follows when questioned about the necessity of purchasing land from homeowners:
In order to properly notify property owners of affects to their individual properties, the City goes through a legal process. DDC also provides virtual or in-person meetings for individual residents to ask questions and talk about the effects of the project. All impacted property owners within the acquisition limits participated in two community outreach sessions in November 2023 for this project, and a public hearing was held in August 2024.
Throughout construction, a designated Community Construction Liaison and DDC’s Office of Community Outreach and Notification will continue to interact with local residents on the ground and address their inquiries and worries about the project.
Work on this project is expected to start this fall, according to the DDC.
A project long in the works
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio first proposed the proposal to enlarge Arthur Kill Road in 2015, but a number of circumstances delayed the project’s launch.
The project’s close proximity to vulnerable wetlands, which necessitates the submission of an Environmental Assessment statement—a process that typically takes two years to complete—is one factor contributing to the protracted timeframe, the DDC previously told the Advance/SILive.com.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation, the city Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the Parks Department, and other agencies at various levels of government must also cooperate and approve the project.
In order to reduce the amount of private land the city has to purchase in order to finish the project, the DDC and the DOT must also collaborate to examine the roadway plans.
Additional storm sewer and water main work from Richmond Avenue to Cortelyou Avenue was added to the project by the DEP in 2018. This caused the entire procedure to be delayed and necessitated a partial redesign.
The epidemic also caused the consultant in charge of project design to cease all work from March to December 2020, which further delayed the project.
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