City begins clean up of Hallets Cove
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The city broke ground on the remediation of Hallets Cove, a polluted cove in Astoria, on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
After years of waiting, residents of the Astoria Houses will soon have a waterfront to be proud of.
A group of elected officials and community leaders were on hand Thursday to break ground on the official beginning of the clean up of Hallets Cove, a blockwide inlet near Vernon Boulevard and 30th Road that has long been polluted and unsightly.
“This is what we need to be doing across the city, what we need to be doing across Queens – we need to harden our infrastructure, really capitalizing on invested in both gray and green infrastructure, but specifically doing everything we can to protect our shorelines,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. “For far too long this beautiful piece of waterfront has been anything but.”
First conceived in 2015 by then-City Councilmember Costa Constantinides, the clean up effort finally began earlier this fall when an old and degraded radio tower pier inside the cove was destroyed and removed.
In addition to the general clean up, the city is expected to install a new railing along Vernon Boulevard and make ecological improvements including the replacement of an invasive plant species with new wetland vegetation and the planting of new trees along the street.
The cove sits around 100 yards away from NYCHA’s Astoria Houses, which is home to around 5,000 residents.
“My children, who are now senior citizens, lived here in a time where the debris made it unfit for anything,” said Claudia Cogar, the president of the Astoria Houses Residents Association. “This is freshening the air, the air that we breathe. We in the Astoria Houses, our children, have suffered for so many years because of the air that we breathe and this is going to make a difference and give them a longer life.”
Constandinides, who now serves as the CEO of the Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens, said that during his first few months in office, Cogar took him on a walk to the cove and demanded he fix it.
He said that he recently did the same with his successor, Councilmember-elect Tiffany Caban.
“Climate justice is racial justice, period, full stop,” Caban said. “I look at this space, and the Astoria Houses that are next to them and then we look at some of the other waterfronts in other zip codes around the city and the difference there and understand that it is all Black and brown, low-income, working class communities that most acutely bear the brunt of the climate crisis. And so, this project is a move in the right direction.”
Caban said that she was doubling down on Constantinides’ commitment to combating climate change in the district – the former member served as the chair of the Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection.
“I'm looking forward to not only being able to stand when a lot of your projects come to fruition right here in this area, but make sure that the passing of the baton is seamless and that we're building on that and I think we're going to do some incredible things together,” she told the former seat holder.
The total cost of the project is $5 million, according to the borough president. Around $3 million has already been allocated by former Borough President Melinda Katz’s office in 2016 and 2017. Constantinides and the mayor’s office each allocated $1 million in funding toward the project.
Constantinides said it was great to see a project that he started so many years ago finally come to fruition, even though it came after he had left office.
“You have to be okay with planting seeds for shade that you're never going to sit under – but I'm going to sit under the shade as a citizen, which is the most important job,” he told the Eagle. “You don't do things to have them done in your time in office, you do things because it’s the right thing to do. As long as you're okay with that, nothing's bittersweet about it.”
