New York’s Staten Island. On Staten Island, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will break bread for part of their Thanksgiving week.
During the president and his wife’s visit to the borough on Monday evening, Father Capodanno Boulevard will be closed for many hours, resulting in traffic closures, detours, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness a motorcade ride.
The Bidens will attend a Friendsgiving dinner at the U.S. Coast Guard Sector New York at Fort Wadsworth with service members and their families.
The Staten Island Advance/SILive asked locals along the lengthy East Shore route about their opinions of the stopover and whether the closure will cause a major nuisance before they arrived.
“It’s really fascinating; I never imagined that a presidential motorcade would pass my house,” Donna Curatola said. It’s still the president, regardless of your opinion, and it’s not something you see every day.
Curatola acknowledged that because of the numerous events that take place all year long, temporary closures of the roadway are typical. She also mentioned that it’s a fact of life, even if she would have like additional notice of the closing.
In reference to that area, Borough President Vito Fossella said in a statement on Saturday that we have been notified that Father Capodanno Boulevard will be blocked on Monday, Nov. 25, from 4 p.m. until roughly 8 p.m. [The municipal Parks Department] has also informed us that the Park N Rides on Father Capodanno Boulevard will be closed from Sunday night and should reopen on Tuesday morning.
Other locals were less excited about the Bidens arrival; one woman said she thought her nightly bus travel home from Manhattan would be extended by several hours. As one neighbor clarified, she was a little concerned that the street closure would interfere with her intended trip to the airport.
On both sides of Capodanno Boulevard, hundreds of metal NYPD barricades were visible, and utility poles bore signs warning locals that parking was prohibited in numerous locations on Sunday and Monday. How buses might be redirected on Monday during the stoppage is unknown.
Capodanno Boulevard is lined with police barricades and has no parking signs.DiCostanzo, Toniann
Dennis Holm, a resident, expressed his satisfaction that Biden would be meeting with military personnel, saying he didn’t think it would cause him too much trouble because he only had planned to go shopping for Thanksgiving at the last minute earlier in the day.
Another resident said, “I can take some inconvenience for [President Biden’s] safety.”
When then-President Barack Obama traveled to New Dorpo to talk to locals and assess the damage following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, it was the last time a sitting president had visited Staten Island.
During their presidential campaigns, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both traveled to Staten Island on the same day in 2016. Trump’s speech at the Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Brunch at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield drew almost 1,000 attendees. Clinton hosted a voter mobilization rally at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden in Livingston, which drew over 500 attendees.
The NYPD and U.S. Coast Guard Sector New York were contacted by The Advance/SILive.com for more information about the incident, but as of the time of publication, neither agency responded.
Capodanno Boulevard is lined with police barricades and has no parking signs.DiCostanzo, Toniann
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