If you attended our November Membership Meeting, you learned a little about the work we are doing to help strengthen and revitalize East Harlem. In 2017, we undertook a comprehensive community visioning process to address a wide variety of issues facing the community, particularly along the East 125th Street corridor. Based on this, we released our Community Visioning Action Plan in 2019 (download the PDF here). And over the past year, we have been meeting with elected officials and agencies to garner support - and ultimately funding - for these recommendations.
On November 23, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had submitted a grant request for Phase II of the Second Avenue Subway, extending the line up through East Harlem. The Second Avenue Subway extension will connect with the Lexington Avenue line and terminate near the intersection of Lexington Avenue and East 125th Street, where the East 125th Street Metro-North Railroad Station is located.
We will continue to work with Congressmember Espaillat and other elected officials at the city, state, and federal levels - along with all the agencies potentially involved. With the passage of the infrastructure bill, along with President Joe Biden's Justice40 initiative that requires at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to go to communities like East Harlem, we feel the time is right to make the community's vision a reality.
