The Bloomberg administration is advancing a proposal to turn the busy 34th Street corridor between Herald Square and the Empire State Building into a pedestrian plaza similar to that of Times Square, banning cars from one of the city’s most congested areas. A public hearing on the plan, which was proposed in 2008 and is intended to give pedestrians more space and speed up crosstown busses, was held Wednesday. Last week, officials from the Department of Transportation met to discuss the proposal with local business leaders, and the city is currently working on environmental and design reviews. The $30 million project would be completed by the end of 2012; a final design is expected in the fall of 2011. [NYT]  

The inspector general at the U.S. Department of Transportation has launched a probe into how government funds were used in some of the city’s largest transit projects, many of which have fallen years behind schedule and have been plagued by major cost overruns. The projects in question — the Second Avenue Subway, the Fulton Transit Center, the new PATH terminal and the Long Island Rail Road extension to Grand Central Terminal — have received $7 billion in federal funds, which were overseen by the Federal Transit Administration. The investigation, which began March 25 and is expected to last 10 months, will look into whether the FTA muddled its regulatory job and allowed the projects to stray so far from their original plans. The PATH terminal is a Port Authority project; the other three projects are backed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. [Post]

The Brooklyn Bridge is about to undergo a $500 million renovation project, including a massive lead paint removal, according to the Broadsheet Daily. The effort, which is being funded in part by stimulus money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is set to take about four years. Contractor Skanska is slated to lead the project, which will begin around late May or early June. Overnight traffic on the bridge may be affected the most, according to a representative from the Department of Transportation, who said officials expect about 82 percent of the traffic to be diverted to the Manhattan Bridge.

The city is seeking proposals for an expansion of its Times and Herald Square pedestrian plazas across the city, yesterday asking community non-profit groups to submit ideas for neighborhoods including Murray Hill and the Upper East Side in Manhattan, Astoria, Queens and Borough Park, Brooklyn. The Lincoln Center area is also a likely candidate, with groups already plotting an expansion of Dante Park and an upgrade to the open space near Martin Luther King High School at West 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. This isn’t the first time the Department of Transportation has asked for such proposals, having approved 32 applications in a first-round process in 2008, but it is the first time the agency has sought proposals since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced earlier this year that the trial plazas in Times Square and Herald Square would be there to stay. Groups have until June 30 to submit their proposals, and accepted plazas would be slated for construction by July 2012. [Post]

The city is finally taking on the proposal for a waterfront bike and walking path along Brooklyn’s waterfront and making it a priority. Neighborhood activists have long been pushing for a 14-mile-long park that stretches from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge, and this month, the Department of Transportation officially took over planning from the grassroots Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. The project has $16 million in federal, state and city earmarks, a new project manager and a design firm. A preliminary version of the pathway could be in place within three years, but the full, landscaped park will take longer and more money, according to the city. The exact route has not yet been determined. [NYDN]

The Department of Transportation’s 700-foot-long parking lot and storage facility in South Williamsburg has some of the best Manhattan skyline views around, and much to Community Board 1’s dismay, the city doesn’t want to give up that valuable waterfront real estate. Last week, Community Board 1 voted to ask the city to turn over the land on — Kent Avenue between South Sixth Street and Broadway — to the parks department. The site actually used to be a park many years ago, and the community wants it back, thanks in part to the proposed 2,200-unit Domino Sugar factory development nearby that would reduce the per capital open space in the neighborhood. “The Department of Transportation has a carpentry shop there. There’s no reason why it has to be on such pristine land,” said Community Board 1 Parks Committee member Dewey Thompson. [Brooklyn Paper]

Two would-be Greenwich Village restaurateurs were sentenced to up to 15 years in prison yesterday for a violent scheme to intimate their landlord into forgiving their rent payments. The two men, Ekkehart Schwarz, 71, and Vassilei Giamagas, 36, were convicted of pressuring the manager of their building to forgive $267,000 in back rent on a lounge called Restaulounge-bar De’Vill, which they had planned to open in 2008 at 68 West Third Street. They were said to have threatened him with a fake gun and sodomy, hired a thug to force him to hand over $25,000, and to have stalked him by hiding a GPS in his car. Giamagas is an illegal Greek immigrant and faces deportation and a minimum of 11 years in prison. Schwarz is a German architect who also faces deportation and a minimum of eight years. Schwarz is a former Department of Transportation employee. [NYDN] 

The Department of Transportation’s Plaza Food Court, a four-kiosk public space in the Financial District in Police Plaza near Centre Street, is seeking new vendors to sign five-year leases starting March 15, and Shake Shack could turn out to be one of them. Randy Garutti, Shake Shack’s new COO, has reportedly visited the site and in an e-mail obtained by Eater.com, he wrote that he is interested in the space, which he called a “good prospect.” The four spaces could be subdivided or combined by a single entity, DOT, which has been making efforts to increase public plaza space across the city, wrote in a letter to prospective vendors. The new vendors would be subleasing from the current operator, which has been running the site for the past 10 years. “Our goal is to make the Plaza Food Court a destination-hot spot,” the letter said. If the deal with Shake Shack pans out, it would be the latest in the chain’s expansion plan for the city after the success of the original Shake Shack Madison Park. In October, Shake Shack opened on the Upper West Side, and the company recently announced a new Nolita branch. [Eater]

The pedestrian plaza at the corner of Hoyt and Schermerhorn streets in Downtown Brooklyn is nearing completion. The 17 by 70-foot plaza, which includes a pedestrian area secluded from traffic, along with bike paths and plantings, took just a $5,000 investment from the city to complete. Even so, the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, is saying that the small investment is making a big difference in the neighborhood. “It’s some much-needed room to breathe on a very crowded sidewalk,” Wiley Norvell, a group spokesperson, said. “Previously, this is space that was sitting under parked cars the entire day while pedestrians squeezed onto a few feet of sidewalk.” The project will be completed and opened to the public ahead of schedule, according to the Department of Transportation.

A Battery Park City play area scheduled for demolition could have a new lease on life. Under a current plan in place, the state Department of Transportation would close Tire Swing Park on Oct. 13, then remove its wooden playground equipment and mature trees to make way for new equipment. But community protest has caused state officials to rethink the agenda. The DOT has agreed to consider residents’ input and will present two alternative park plans to Community Board 1 on Oct. 6. If the renovation takes place as scheduled, state officials said that the park will reopen by Memorial Day 2010.