From left: Chuck Close and the Second Avenue Subway

Artist Chuck Close has been tapped to create a series of mosaics for the 86th Street Second Avenue Subway station. DNAinfo reported that the project will total $1 million.

“The idea is to reflect the riding population,” Close told the New York Times last week. “I’m going to do as many as 12 separate mosaics, mainly from pictures of artists I’ve taken over the years.” [more]

Council Member Jessica Lappin and construction on the Second Avenue Subway line

City Council member Jessica Lappin introduced legislation yesterday that would require the city Department of Environmental Protection to monitor air quality near the Second Avenue Subway construction site and publish results online on a monthly basis, DNAinfo reported. If studies reveal dangerous levels of pollutants, then the DEP commissioner would have to take action. [more]

Second Avenue Subway construction

Rather than take Upper East Siders’ word, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials want to experience sleepless nights along Second Avenue for themselves. According to the New York Post, transit officials plan to make late-night visits to apartments near the Second Avenue Subway construction site that has elicited constant noise complaints from neighbors. [more]

Tony's DiNapoli's old location on 83rd Street

Tony’s Di Napoli, the Upper East Side pizza restaurant that appeared vanquished by the Second Avenue Subway, will rise from the ashes, DNAinfo reported.

The Italian family-style eatery shut due to construction for the new subway’s planned 86th Street entrance last month, after 20 years at its location, at Second Avenue and 83rd Street. [more]

From left: Construction on the Second Avenue Subway and a muck house

While apartment owners and longtime residents of Second Avenue on the Upper East Side constantly voice complaints and anger over the construction work on the forthcoming subway, for young renters it provides a rare opportunity for a bargain apartment in Manhattan. [more]

Treadwell Farms Historic District

Residents of townhouses in the Treadwell Farms Historic District of Manhattan, which spans Second to Third avenues from 63rd to 60th streets, are growing frustrated because of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s lack of response to their complaints about ongoing underground blasting for the Second Avenue Subway.

According to NY1, the MTA finally installed vibration monitoring devices on some of the homes in the district after complaints of structural damage, but it is now allegedly refusing to share results from the testing with residents. [more]

Construction on the Second Avenue Subway

Rents are falling even further on Second Avenue on the Upper East Side as the ongoing construction for the Second Avenue Subway has made residing there less desirable and doing business there substantially more difficult, Our Town reported.

Businesses between 62nd and 96th streets on Second Avenue report decreased sales and some have closed, Andre Soto, director of management at Salon Realty, a property manager, told the paper. Soto said two of the four businesses in buildings his firm manages have closed up shop. The remaining businesses had their rent lowered by 40 percent to account for plummeting sales due to construction and blocked frontage signs on the blighted avenue. [more]

Yorkshire Towers at 305 East 86th StreetResidents of the Yorkshire Towers who filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year against a variety of federal agencies as well as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority saying the MTA had “arbitrarily and capriciously” chosen to place new subway entrances on their blocks and failed to properly assess the environmental impact of the mid-block entrances, are out of luck, Second Avenue Sagas blog reported.

A judge earlier this month granted a motion to dismiss the complaint by the residents of the building, at 305 East 86th Street at Second Avenue, based on a legal technicality (see the decision below). The residents waited eight months beyond the statute of limitations, and therefore the station entrances will go ahead as planned. That suit wasn’t the first one Yorkshire Towers filed against the MTA.

In a related case last year they sued the MTA over a Freedom of Information Law request.

The MTA has faced other criticisms as it continues in the first phase of the four-phase project. Residents near the construction complained at a community board meeting a couple of months ago that the work is causing them health problems. [Second Avenue Sagas] and [Second Avenue Sagas]
[more]

Sen. Charles Schumer has rescued two Manhattan infrastructure projects from massive budget cuts proposed by the House of Representatives, DNAinfo reported.

If the cuts proposed by the 2012 transportation/housing and urban development appropriations bill had gone ahead, they would have eliminated nearly 50 percent of funding for the East Side Access project, an initiative to dramatically expand the underground rail tunnels at Grand Central Terminal, Schumer’s office said, and cut $197 million in funding for the Second Avenue Subway.

“While the cuts passed in the House put the project on life support, I am pleased we were able to beat back these cuts and keep the [East Side Access] project moving forward,” Schumer said. [more]

Some residents near the Second Avenue Subway construction are complaining that the work is causing them to cough and forcing them to keep their windows shut and repeatedly sweep their apartments due to dust, DNAinfo reported.

Residents presented their complaints at a meeting of Community Board 8 last night, where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shared information from an air quality study it conducted at 10 locations between East 69th and East 87th streets.

According to the MTA’s preliminary findings, pollution from morning rush hour traffic should be a much greater source of concern than the construction, which recently completed its first phase (see video above). [more]