The change came less than two months after DOT announced it would keep the lanes intact, as it had on the similarly scaled-back redesign of the northern section of the roadway between Calyer Street and the Pulaski Bridge.
Local advocates and elected officials - who had slammed the scaled back redesign for doing 'nothing' for pedestrians - were thrilled by the return to the road diet. 'I'm just really grateful to the better angels of the Adams administration for coming back with this,' Assembly Member Emily Gallagher told Streetsblog, paraphrasing no less an authority on battles than Abraham Lincoln.
The dramatic shift follows federal prosecutors indicting Mayor Adams for allegedly taking bribes from foreign donors, and after the feds raided the home of several senior administration officials, including notably his chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin Friday, who had worked to stop the McGuinness proposal.
Advocates had for years pushed to make the corridor safe after a hit-and-run driver killed teacher Matthew Jensen there in 2021, but a concerted campaign led by the powerful Argento family that owns local film studio and Broadway Stages got the ear of Lewis-Martin to halt the life-saving upgrades.
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