A troubled MTA project has turned a once bustling street next to a Lower East Side park into a noisy construction site that’s become a haven for drug use for more than five years — and neighbors say there’s no end in sight.
The two-block stretch of Forsyth Street between Delancey and Stanton streets used to be a gateway to Sara D. Roosevelt Park, an eight-acre open space. But that changed in late 2018, when rehabilitation work began on a subway ventilation plant. The area is now surrounded by damaged, graffiti-covered fencing — and the project’s completion has already been delayed by nearly two years.
“These are frequently used, despite our lights, as toilets and places to shoot up,” said Tessa Huxley, the president of an affordable housing co-op next to the construction. “And we’ve lived with that for a long time.”
The MTA is regularly criticized for construction delays, like its East Side Access project that ran more than a decade behind schedule. But the bulk of the transit agency’s blown deadlines happen out of sight and underground. Forsyth Street residents say above-ground construction and repeated delays have exacerbated drug use and homelessness at the neighboring park.
Huxley said the work has made the area around the park — which has been the site of two murders since 2021 — feel even more unsafe.
“Several of us were attacked by people with obvious mental health problems who decided that was where they were living and how dare you go past them,” Huxley said, who has lived on the block for 40 years. “That was not OK.”
When the MTA began work in the area, officials billed it as an essential project that would both prevent fires and improve air circulation in the M line tunnels. The agency promised construction would wrap up by 2022. That timeline has been extended several times, as evidenced by the MTA’s signage at the construction site. The “2022” completion date was covered with “2023,” which was written in marker…
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