CHARLESTON — Borough President James Oddo and Councilman Joe Borelli withdrew their support of a planned waterfront retail center because of the gridlock traffic that they say it will bring to local roads.
Developers for Riverside Galleria, a 470,000-square-foot place proposed on Arthur Kill Road near the Outerbridge Crossing, submitted a plan to mitigate the traffic, which included widening Arthur Kill Road, but it didn't ease Oddo and Borelli's concerns.
"Frankly, I have no faith in the traffic plan presented to us, and the threat of a weekly Saturday morning traffic Armageddon along Arthur Kill Road easily outweighs the value of reclaiming this stretch of waterfront and the other comparatively limited positives I saw as potentially emanating from this project," Oddo said in a statement.
"The project simply won’t work, and I cannot support a plan that has such obvious downsides with limited upsides."
The councilman said that one impact study estimated that the project could draw nearly 200 cars to area roads.
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Riverside Galleria will include stores, restaurants, a cafe, a dine-in movie theater with a rooftop bar and more. Plans also call for a waterfront park — with access for cars and pedestrians to the water — and a wetland and nature preserve, developers previously said.
The project was voted down by Community Board 3 on Tuesday. It will now move through the borough president's office, City Planning, City Council, and finally the Mayor's Office for approval before they can start construction.
