City Vows to Crack Down on Brooklyn Stores That Stash Wares on Sidewalk

KENSINGTON, BROOKLYN — The city's Department of Sanitation will start cracking down on Borough Park grocery stores that use sidewalks as staging areas for their goods, Community Board 12 chair Yidel Perlstein announced at the group's last meeting of the year on Tuesday.

Community Board 12 represents Kensington, Borough Park, Midwood and Dahill.

Perlstein said that starting in January, local grocery stories — especially those on 13th, 16th and 18th avenues — will be given a week's notice that they can no longer block sidewalks or streets with produce and other items for sale, a common complaint and safety issue, according to board members.

After the warning, Department of Sanitation trucks will begin collecting and throwing away food and drinks left out in public areas, Perlstein said.

Here are some of the other highlights from Tuesday's meeting:

• Community Board 12 (CB 12) district manager Barry Spitzer said the state's Department of Transportation still plans on moving ahead with a plan to eliminate right turns off of Ocean Parkway onto Avenue C, Avenue J, Avenue P and Kings Highway, even though the plan has been opposed by a host of community members and city officials. Spitzer said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district includes Borough Park and Midwood, has pledged to keep trying to change the minds of state DOT officials, as will the board.

• Spitzer said the city's Department of Sanitation, which handles snow removal, has changed its shoveling approach this winter. Instead of ranking streets in prioritized tiers as was done in the past, he said, Sanitation will now plow according to a grid system, which reduces the chance that smaller streets will be left snowed in. The city has also upgraded the GPS tracking system attached to snow plows, allowing residents to monitor their progress in real-time.

• Capt. Robert Conwell of the NYPD's 66th Precinct, which covers Kensington and Borough Park, said the department recently shut down an abandoned building at 1040 40th St. that was being used for illegal activities. The building is now boarded up and inaccessible, Conwell said.

• CB 12 has hired a new Community Service Aid to help facilitate the board's relations with the community. Rochel Leah Goldblatt, who grew up in Las Vegas, is an Air Force veteran who was deployed twice during her time on active duty, including once to Iraq. She can be reached at BKCB12@gmail.com.

• And in order to make CB 12's meetings accessible to more people, Perlstein said the board may hold its January general meeting in Kensington, rather than at its normal location, across the street from the CB 12 office, located at 5910 13th St. An announcement will be made if the meeting is in fact moved, he said.

You can stay up-to-date on CB 12's activities by following its new Facebook page.

Lead image courtesy of CB 12

[Editor's note: this story has been updated.]