Bill to save W’burg community center dead, but DeBlasio has joined the cause
“A state bill aimed at keeping a Williamsburg senior and daycare center from being evicted is dead in the water, but pro-center activists say that now the mayor has their back.
The legislation that Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D–Williamsburg) proposed to allow the city to seize the building that houses the Swinging Sixties Center using eminent domain, on the grounds that taxpayer money has helped pay the center’s rent for decades, passed the Assembly but is languishing in the state Senate, and Lentol says it is kaput. Lentol said Senate Republicans’ small-government sentiments will likely kill the bill, and said that he is taking a new tack to save the center: bringing in the big, tall guns from Mayor DeBlasio’s office.
“He committed himself to finding a solution to the problem,” Lentol said of the mayor. “We have more leverage with the mayor in our corner.”
A spokesman for the mayor’s office confirmed that it would enter the fray on the side of the Ainsle Street tenants who have been battling landlords Harry and Victor Einhorn since December 2013.
“The administration shares the community’s concerns about 211 Ainslie St. and is eager to find a solution that satisfies all stakeholders,” said Deblasio’s press secretary Phil Walzak.”
Furfaro, Danielle. Brooklyn Paper 26 June 2014.