Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, announced plans to extend the Second Avenue subway into Harlem and modernize Jamaica Station in Queens, aiming to shave costs and time for an estimated 240,000 daily riders. The Metropolitan Transportation Authorit…
Midea has finished installing 150 packaged window heat pumps at Woodside Houses in Queens, marking the first full-building heat pump retrofit in a New York City Housing Authority property. The Clean Heat for All Challenge, launched by several state agencies, hails this electric overhaul for slashing energy use and carbon, with over 20,000 more units on order. We suspect tenants will notice the comfort—and perhaps the absence of clanging old radiators.
Governor Kathy Hochul pledged $50 million to design a modern overhaul of Jamaica Station—New York City’s multifarious rail hub—in her State of the State address, promising smoother links between subway, Long Island Rail Road, and AirTrain for its 200,000 daily commuters. With echoes of past mega-projects and nods from Queens officials, we await proof that “world-class” can mean more than fresh paint and better signage.
New York’s Senate, launching its “Democracy Day” voting rights blitz, passed a tangle of reforms—credit to Kristen Gonzalez, Michael Gianaris, and Zellnor Myrie—including tougher penalties for harassing election workers, new bans on foreign-influenced cash, and fresh tools for quelling AI-powered fakery. Presidential primaries may now join Super Tuesday’s scrum. We await, with clinical curiosity, whether these tweaks smooth democracy or merely polish its brass.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tapped Christine Clarke, a Legal Services NYC veteran, to helm New York’s Commission on Human Rights, vowing more funding and staff for an agency long hamstrung by backlogs and skeleton crews. Clarke, no stranger to tangling with city agencies, promises swifter justice for the aggrieved—although, in true bureaucratic style, City Hall kept the specifics as closely held as subway secrets.
Leasing has begun for the Orchard’s 824 flats—Long Island City’s tallest tower at 823 feet—where BLDG Management is dangling 248 affordable units (via lottery) alongside 576 market-rate pads. Residents of the Perkins Eastman-designed spire can soon amble among apple trees, pickleball courts and a pool, which renders New York’s largest private backyard rather more lush than most of its tenants’ pay-slips.
The 104th Precinct Civilian Observation Patrol in Queens, stymied by the NYPD's newly encrypted radio frequencies and a dearth of actionable information, has halted its roving watch. The group, whose decades of auxiliary vigilance have long been cheered by State Senator Addabbo (and, one assumes, many relieved parade-goers), finds itself sidelined—for now, data security trumps homegrown sleuthing, if not neighborhood peace of mind.
In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first act—scrapping two executive orders from Eric Adams concerning Israel and antisemitism—set City Council Republicans on the hunt for paperwork, with attorney Jack Lester decrying the move as “drastic.” Mamdani left the Office to Combat Antisemitism intact, pledged to fight hate, and heard out Jewish groups critical of the IHRA definition—a diplomatic opening, though not quite a love letter.
Nearly six years after New York’s Department of Correction was criticized for letting hundreds of violent incidents slip through the cracks of handwritten logbooks, the agency has timidly begun road-testing a digital replacement in a single Rikers Island unit. Over 100 staff have tried the system, and feedback is upbeat—but, true to bureaucratic form, there’s no timeline for an island-wide rollout. Some paper trails, it seems, die very hard.
