Worth Street is not fully liberated yet, but the block between Church and West Broadway is paved and open and truly unrecognizable. In fact, I was so disoriented when I walked by coming from Soho yesterday that I did a triple take — I was sure I was on the wrong block. (My pics are fine, but the one from F. above is glorious.)

However, the street is still under construction in the next block east, and neighbors there are at their wits’ end after five years of torture. The projected end date now is spring 2022.

The issues, neighbors say, are not just the inconveniences of construction, but the symptoms of it that have led to a “diminished quality of life and real estate value.” Garbage is consistently trapped in the fence and then strewn across the sidewalks, and the fence encourages the wrong uses on the sidewalks, especially after hours. The residents of 73 Worth have appealed most recently to CB1, noting that:

● Most of the block’s retail remains empty because the block is so undesirable
● What was once a safe, bustling block has become one where adults fear potential danger when walking alone at night due to insufficient lighting
● There is human feces littering the street
● Garbage bags are being ripped open by homeless people and the refuse is then scattered along the street, attracting rodents
● Garbage piles up in the construction zones, which attracts the rats

We feel helpless and the mental health of our community has been declining to a level where people just want to move out, uprooting their lives.”

When I last tried to get a handle on the Worth Street progress, I was led to believe they were just six months behind schedule on a five-year project. It’s an extremely complicated build requiring coordination among a half dozen agencies and the rerouting of 100-year-old infrastructure. But a reader noted that the DDC’s own timeline was originally scheduled to be three years when it started in 2016 (see pic below), ending in May 2019. As a result, who can blame any neighbors for being cynical?

Addressing these quality of life issues in the meantime with increased sanitation and security lighting seems like a very small ask for five years of pain.