Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani vowed on Monday to complete the many, many street redesigns abandoned by Mayor Adams — starting on McGuinness Boulevard, where Hizzoner's top advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin allegedly watered down a safety project in exchange for thousands of dollars worth of bribes.
"What we've seen in these charges, it begs the question of what the safety of New Yorkers is worth. Is it not worth more than $12,500 and a cameo in a TV show? Is it not worth more than crab cakes and clams at Gracie Mansion," Mamdani said at a rally in Greenpoint with backers of the McGuinness project.
Lewis-Martin resigned from city service after her first indictment late last year, but City Hall's rot runs deeper than just one person, Mamdani said. Adams repeatedly puts campaign donors and special interests over the safety and well-being of everyday New Yorkers, the democratic socialist pol charged.
"We need a politics where the decision is not determined by the last person who calls you, and just how much money they have," he told reporters. "I do not think that the Botanical Garden should have the final say on whether or not there's a Fordham busway."
Mamdani specifically pledged to complete protected bike lanes the city proposed — and Adams then scaled back or killed — on Ashland Place, Bedford Avenue and Third Avenue in Brooklyn, as well as busways on Fordham Road and Tremont Avenue in the Bronx.
The Queens assemblyman further backed the protected bike lanes slated for 31st Street in his own Astoria Assembly district, which are currently in limbo after local businesses sued to stop the project earlier this month.
"I stopped biking on 31st Street and I started biking on 35th Street because of the fact that I did not want to jeopardize my life each and every day that I took that Citi Bike from right in front of my apartment building to where my district office was," Mamdani said. "What I would tell those businesses, if they came to me, is that I stand with the DOT and with the other elected officials of the neighborhood in looking to ensure that every street is safe in our neighborhood."
Gina and Tony Argento, the owners of Broadway Stages, a prominent film studio back in Greenpoint, allegedly provided Lewis-Martin $2,500 via bank transfer, $10,000 worth of catering and a brief appearance on the Hulu show "Godfather of Harlem" in exchange for her efforts to scale back the McGuinness Boulevard project.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said the charges — which include another $60,000 in bribes not related to McGuinness Boulevard — amounted to a "classic bribery" scheme.
Mayor Adams, however, has declined to go back to the original plan for McGuinness, despite the bombshell charges. On Friday, Hizzoner called the scaled back redesign — which maintained two travels lanes in each direction near the Argentos' business — "a win," while heaping praise on Lewis-Martin and her alleged co-conspirators.
DOT originally proposed reducing the number of travel lanes from four to two on the entire stretch McGuinness, in order to shorten pedestrian crossings and slow down drivers. Bragg's indictment alleged that the city kept all four travel lanes intact on the northern stretch closer to Broadway Stages' properties due to Lewis-Martin's (allegedly bought-and-sold) influence.
The McGuinness redesign was years in the making. Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio first committed to the project in 2021 after the hit-and-run death of local schoolteacher Matthew Jenson.
After DOT put its proposal out there, however, Lewis-Martin, a close confidant of the mayor's for four decades, directed a city official to "make sure we shut their asses down on McGuinness," according to the DA's indictment.
Mamdani vowed to govern in the interests of "working people" rather than donors if elected.
"Working people can and must be safe," he said. "No matter if they drive, if they bike, if they walk, if they ride the bus, if they take the train, they must be safe across their city. And we will make decisions with safety as the imperative."
Advocates held Monday's rally at the intersection where the road diet ends — hoping to make the roadway a symbol for making the streets safer for people, not bowing to big businesses.
"Once McGuinness is finished, once we have Mayor Mamdani in office, we should call McGuinness Boulevard the People's Boulevard," said local Assembly Member Emily Gallagher.
"The People's Boulevard that's been fought for time and again by this community, against corporate interests, against Robert Moses and against greed itself, and it is time to finish the job."
Representatives for the campaigns of Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not immediately respond for comment.
