City on the Edge: City Limits' Reporting on Climate Change, Health & Environment
A Casino is Coming to Queens. Critics Say It’s Wrong for the Flood-prone Site.
Metropolitan Park is one of three downstate casino proposals approved by the New York Gaming Facility Location Board last month, and would transform what is now an empty 50-acre asphalt parking lot next to Citi Field into a casino, hotel, food hall and entertainment venue that supporters say will bring green space and tens of thousands of jobs.
But advocates opposed to the casino say the site should be a climate-resilient park instead, noting that the low-lying area, hemmed in by Flushing Bay and Flushing Creek, is flood-prone. “Floodplains could serve as green buffers that absorb stormwater, not as sites for massive new structures,” said Rebecca Pryor, executive director of Guardians of Flushing Bay.
Amid frigid temperatures, New Yorkers lodged 26,000 311 complaints about lack of heat or hot water over the last week, the most in a seven-day period since 2018. City Limits’ reporter Patrick Spauster spoke to WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show about what landlords are required to provide, and what tenants can do if their heat isn’t working.
Opinion: For Affordable Clean Energy at Home, New York Needs Solar ASAP
“The ASAP Act can deliver two things New Yorkers urgently need: lower bills for households and more clean electrons on an increasingly strained power grid.”
