Opening of New York’s First Public Observatory Mired in Red Tape Courtesy of City Hall

New York City’s first public observatory may no longer come to fruition thanks to an array of regulatory roadblocks to the project being erected by the city of New York. The observatory was scheduled to open this spring at Jerome Park, near the Bronx High School of Science. Instead, the city government told the organization behind the project — the Amateur Astronomers Association — to raise its insurance coverage to $5 million from $1 million as a prerequisite for opening. The AAA plans to negotiate that amount.“We’re putting a tin can a little bigger than a port-a-potty on a piece of grass that nobody uses,” the executive vice president of the Amateur Astronomers Association, Bart Fried, told Gothamist news. “It shouldn’t take two-and-a-half years to circle back to where we were two-and-a-half years ago.”The AAA’s donors are asking why the project is being held up and expressing frustration. “We’re starting to get questions from people that donated money. Like ‘What’s the status?’ What’s going on? I gave you good money,” Mr. Fried said.This is “the same problem manifesting itself everywhere in government,” the director of research at the Empire Center for Public Policy, Ken Girardin, tells the Sun. “Draw a line between this and what’s going on with the MTA’s construction costs,” Mr. Girardin adds, referring to high price tags on city transit projects.The city also decided that the Law Department and Department of Buildings must review the project before it comes to fruition. The buildings department typically reviews initial applications within two or three days, or the same day if submitted via a professional certification program, a spokesman for the agency, Andrew Rudansky, tells the Sun. The total review time, however, is between eight and nine weeks for the average project at the Bronx, according to the agency’s own estimates.“It’s just held down by a couple bolts. And there are no utilities. We can unbolt it and pick it up and take it off-site on a whim,” Mr. Fried said. The ease of moving the structure makes the buildings department review unnecessary, according to Mr. Fried.The initial expected cost of the project was $100,000. The metal structure is shorter than a basketball hoop, at nine and a half feet high, and is six and a half feet wide. It resided at Nassau Community College for 40 years until 2019.The new observatory, if established, will contain a Celestron Edge HD telescope with the capacity to spot comets, asteroids, and every planet in our solar system. The astronomy association would maintain staff every night of the week and offer unique programming for students at Bronx Science.The parks staff requested programming and operations information from the association in March, but the astronomers association says it provided those details more than a year ago. Though the parks department initially expected construction to begin in the spring, it now indicates that it is yet to have even reached an agreement with the astronomers association. “We are working with the association in good faith to finalize an agreement and will continue to follow city-mandated processes that must be completed before a contract can be finalized,” a spokesman for the parks department, Gregg McQueen, told Gothamist news.The AAA received the parks department’s draft agreement —35 pages long — pertaining to the observatory’s operation and maintenance. Another couple of months will be needed to finalize the agreement, Mr. Fried said.Between the jacked-up insurance coverage, additional city government reviews, and information requests, the astronomers association faces an uphill climb to establish the observatory.The AAA, though, is determined to make it happen — in one location or another. “I’m not going to die until this thing’s built somewhere in this city,” Mr. Fried said. “After that, the bus can hit me. I don’t care.”

Opening of New York’s First Public Observatory Mired in Red Tape Courtesy of City Hall

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