Tag Archives: Staten Island

State Island Courthouse Completion Nonetheless Highlights Construction Chaos in Outer Boroughs, Especially the Bronx!

8 Oct
Long overdue and grossly over-budget Staten Island Courthouse is finally finished. Photo by Jordan Moss

Long overdue and grossly over-budget Staten Island Courthouse construction is finally finished. Photo by Jordan Moss

Despite more than a decade of delay and $100 million over-budget, the new courthouse in Staten Island that I wrote about twice over the summer is finally complete, reports the Staten Island Advance. Aside from that paper, I stated in my early posts that NYC’s comparatively massive amount of media stayed clear. I don’t understand — the project budget skyrockets and no other media makes a simple call to the state Dormitory Authority to find out what’s going so wrong? Heck, they didn’t even need to take the ferry over there!  If it weren’t for the Advocate there would be no published record of what was going on at all.

The Bronx had its own disaster with its relatively new 161st Street courthouse, but financially and time-wise nowhere near its Staten Island relative.

It would be great if a citywide journalist compared the Bronx and Staten Island courthouse calamities, which could play some role in preventing the next one.

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Still Waiting for Citywide Coverage of Staten Island Courthouse’s Disastrous Delay

2 Jun

There is still no certainty regarding when an architecturally impressive, yet incomplete, courthouse will open for business on Staten Island, after more than a decade of delay and more than $100 million over budget.

And there still hasn’t been any citywide coverage!

As I mentioned in Bronx Matters’ last post on this, this is an ongoing fiscal travesty following a similar construction, and civic, disaster in the Bronx. There has been zero citywide coverage in Big Apple newspapers as far as I can tell, even as the crisis continues. What’s up with that?!

Here are links to a more recent article and editorial from January on the Staten Island Advance’s silive.com website.

The Advance says Mayor de Blasio can’t predict the move-in date,  but Gov. Cuomo should be interviewed too, as it’s the state’s Dormitory Authority that is responsible for the construction. Heck, at this point, every city and state elected official should be called on it too as no one seems to be making any noise.

Bronx Matters’ ears are wide open.

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Staten Island Courthouse Construction Catastrophe Mimics Bronx’s. Any Big Media Paying Attention?

30 Apr

Remember back in 2010/11 when the Bronx Hall of Justice courthouse construction went $100 million over budget accompanied by delays and scandalous conditions resulting in mice infestation, roof leaks and sewage pipes letting go of excrement? Well, at least that got some citywide coverage.

I went to Staten Island today to get my ID NYC at an office over there (OK, way over there from the Bronx, but less of a wait list than to get it in the Bronx or Manhattan), and saw the new courthouse there still under construction. I was going to just post the following photo of the lovely building on Instagram. I like the way it looks architecturally much more than the Bronx Hall of Justice.

This Staten Island Courthouse is way behind schedule. Has there been any citywide coverage? Photo by Jordan Moss

This Staten Island Courthouse is way behind schedule. Has there been any citywide coverage? Photo by Jordan Moss

But I just looked up this courthouse construction on-line and can’t find any citywide coverage about how delayed and costly it has been. Only the State Island Advance has written about it and that was a whole year ago, when it said the construction was “bedeviled by delays for more than a decade.”  Wow! We have four citywide newspapers, and apparently none find this important enough to cover, much less explore any possible problems in other parts of the state. Maybe it’s just that citywide media doesn’t get over there much, or at all, to notice. (How could they not notice when covering the Eric Garner travesty a few blocks away.) Is the same true of the TV networks? And are Staten Island elected officials saying/doing anything about this?

Let me know if I’m missing something here, folks.

-Jordan Moss

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