McGuinness Boulevard Opponents Trounced in Low-Turnout Greenpoint Contests

Supporters of Assemblymember Emily Gallagher are hoping her win Tuesday sends a clear message to Mayor Eric Adams and City Hall: that the neighborhood wants long-promised roadway improvements on McGuinness Boulevard from which his administration has been retreating .

Gallagher, a staunch defender of the city transportation department’s plan introduced last spring to shrink McGuinness by one traffic lane in each direction and add protected bike lanes, won with 75% of the vote. She handily beat back a challenge from opponent Anathea Simpkins, who had concerns about that plan and whose campaign was backed by many of its prominent opponents.

In down-ballot races for Democratic district leader and county committee, the Keep McGuinness Moving which organized to block changes to the street, ran several of its most vocal surrogates, all of whom lost to reformers and safe-streets advocates.

While voter turnout was paltry , with about 9% of the district’s registered Democrats voting in the Assembly race, the stalled McGuinness redesign loomed large for many who did turn out for the closed primary. And advocates for the street changes framed Gallagher’s win as proof of local support for the redesign some locals have furiously objected to .

“Many neighbors said to me that McGuinness was on the ballot in this election,” said Councilmember Lincoln Restler, whose district includes Greenpoint. “The results couldn’t be clearer. There is a broad and deep consensus in Greenpoint among Greenpointers to finally make McGuinness safe.”

Simpkins and her campaign didn’t return a request for comment. But lifelong Greenpointer Monica Holowacz, who was involved in the Keep McGuinness Moving campaign last year and supported Simpkins in her run, pushed back on Restler’s framing.

“I don’t think that this election was about a street,” she said. “I feel realistically all this election showed is that people don’t care to vote anymore.”

A Compromised Compromise

Following controversy and back-and-forth, changes to the northern part of the treacherous roadway — where hundreds of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists have been injured, and three people were killed over a decade — are underway. But the transportation agency’s plans for the southern part of the street, running from Calyer Street to Meeker Avenue, remain unclear.

Mayor Eric Adams instructed the city Department of Transportation to walk back the initial plan last summer, after pressure from Keep McGuinness Moving. That campaign has ties to influential longtime Adams donor Tony Argento, the owner of film production studio Broadway Stages, which owns sound stages all across the neighborhood, as well as from top mayoral aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin .

The compromise plan the DOT later proposed included the initial redesign on the southern half of the street, with a watered-down version on the northern half that added unprotected bike lanes and kept all existing traffic lanes.

While work began on the northern half last fall, the city fumbled again, saying it would conduct further traffic analysis before finalizing the design for the southern part of the street this spring . But spring came and went with no update from the DOT.

Mona Bruno, a DOT spokesperson, declined to provide an update on the timeline for the southern half of the street, saying only that work to improve two intersections on the northern part of the street is ongoing.

Adams justified the repeated delays last fall by saying he wanted to ensure his administration was “hearing from both sides” about the plan.

But Gallagher said her decisive win Tuesday should assure the mayor and other critics that Greenpointers stand with her vision for the Robert-Moses era thoroughfare.

“The folks who are basically saying that I was going against all the people who live here,  they were wrong,” she told The CITY on Wednesday. Her win, she said, “shows that the really mean, angry voices are loud, but they are not the majority.”

Asked about the community’s feelings on the redesign in light of Gallagher’s win, Amaris Cockfield, a spokesperson for Adams, said the city is, “committed to working with community members to deliver a safer, better McGuinness Boulevard that works for everyone who lives, walks, rides, drives, and works on it.”

A Mandate?

While opposing the boulevard’s redesign wasn’t central to challenger Simpkins’ campaign, the anti-gun violence activist and single mother had aligned herself closely with a faction of the neighborhood that had mobilized last year to block those changes, THE CITY reported.

Simpkins garnered the support of former Assemblymember Joe Lentol, who Gallagher ousted in 2020 and who joined neighborhood rallies against the street redesign. Her campaign also got financial support from Argento, and she ran on a slate that included district leader candidate Averianna Eisenbach, who co-founded the Keep McGuinness Moving campaign and who ran with the support of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.

Eisenbach also lost Tuesday, to a slate of safe street advocates that included Luke Ohlson, who worked for years as an organizer with the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.

Four other main surrogates for the Keep McGuinness Moving campaign — Argento, Holowacz, who is also the director of community relations at Argento’s Broadway Stages, her mother Christine Holowacz, and Evelyn Pinezich — all lost in their bids for seats on the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s county committee.

Kevin LaCherra, with the pro-redesign Make McGuinness Safe campaign, said Argento’s loss — after he’d played such a key role in blocking the street redesign last year —was particularly poignant.

“Tony Argento could not get his own next-door neighbors to vote for him,” he said.

Pinezich, speaking on behalf of Keep McGuinness Moving, said the group supported Simpkins not because they were resisting changes on the boulevard per se but because they were looking for someone “willing to listen and learn, not disregard and diminish so many constituents with legitimate concerns.”

Pinezich also pointed to low voter turnout with only 5,600 ballots cast in a district with 138,000 residents living there.

“This is not a mandate that one person won, but instead — that much more work needs to be done to create a more inclusive and genuine level of local participation that would truly reflect and honor our community’s needs,” she said.

‘Kind of Messy’

Among some of the voters who did cast ballots on Tuesday, though, several said McGuinness Boulevard was on their minds.

“‘Make McGuinness Safe.’ I would say that was a major decision in wanting to vote today,” said Keith Guske, a 27-year-old software engineer who cast his ballot on Tuesday afternoon at a polling site by McCarren Park. “I think that’s probably the main issue.”

Others said they’d struggled to follow all the back-and-forth about the plans for the street, even as they were frustrated by a lack of progress.

“My wife and I have been talking about just wanting to see that that gets fulfilled,” said Chris, 36, who declined to give last name, but also said he was supporting Gallagher for her stance on McGuinness. “It just seems kind of messy.”

Some Simpkins supporters, for their part, lamented that they couldn’t vote for her because they weren’t registered as Democrats in a district where — as in much of New York City — most elections are decided in Democratic primaries given their overwhelming voter registration advantage.

Meanwhile, the changes that have gone into effect on the northern half of McGuinness seem to have angered people on all sides. There are still two lanes of traffic in either direction, the freshly painted bike lanes are unprotected and often blocked with double-parked cars, and there are two fewer lanes of parking.

Rumors have been circulating for months, Restler said, that the DOT wants to implement the same watered-down version on the southern half of the boulevard, though residents are still waiting for a formal announcement.

“Maybe Mayor Adams is the person that can unify everyone in Greenpoint with a McGuinness plan that’s so awful that the proponents and opponents can come together in dismay,” he said.

THE CITY is a nonprofit newsroom that serves the people of New York. Sign up for our SCOOP newsletter and get exclusive stories, helpful tips, a guide to low-cost events, and everything you need to know to be a well-informed New Yorker. DONATE to THE CITY

The post McGuinness Boulevard Opponents Trounced in Low-Turnout Greenpoint Contests appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News .