TOMPKINSVILLE — The city is looking for a developer to buy and redevelop the Sanitation Department garage on Jersey Street, which residents have fought the city to close for years.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation released a request for expressions of interest for a developer to buy the garage, on the corner of Jersey Street and Victory Boulevard, in order to redevelop it on Thursday.
Residents have waged a decades-long fight to get the city to relocate the garage, which they said was an environmental hazard and an eyesore. Community activists joined Councilwoman Debi Rose to push for the relocation in 2010 with a rally outside the garage.
“The Sanitation garage is a neighborhood blight, a noxious neighbor, and a hindrance to economic revitalization,” John Kilcullen, a member of the New Brighton Coalition of Concerned Citizens, told the Staten Island Advance in 2010.
The 100,000 square-foot building was turned into a Sanitation garage in 1958, and currently houses all workers and equipment for Sanitation that serves neighborhoods north of the Staten Island Expressway, according to the request called an RFEI.
Because of the population growth in the borough, the Department of Sanitation needs to relocate to a new facility with a larger capacity, the RFEI said. There has been no date set for the relocation.
The deadline to submit proposals will be on April 23, 2014.
