A message from Jim Delaney BCCA Board Member;

Hi All,
This Friday at 10AM (or 10:30AM?) there will be an event at the
tunnel celebrating the completion of the painting of murals by an artist
and eighth grade students from St. Greg’s.  The artist, “Joel”, is from
Bushwick, Brooklyn, by way of Illinois.  He told me the NYC Dept. of
Transportation hired him to work on the project.  It included meetings
with the students who worked on the designs before they got involved with
the actual painting which started a week ago.  Prior to that, the DOT
cleaned and primed the walls, and repaired three overhead lights which
were not working.

As you know, the tunnel at 88th Road has often been an eyesore,
covered with graffiti which remained until one of the few and far between
clean-ups by the DOT.  Several community volunteers spent a lot of time
over the years painting over the graffiti. We thank them for their
efforts which were largely unrecognized, and also Senator Avella who has
written letters on our behalf  and held a press conference at the tunnel
in the past to get DOT to fix it up.  And special thanks now to St.
Gregory’s School and the eighth graders for all their hard work in
helping to beautify this part of our community.

Jim Delaney
Bellerose Commonwealth Civic Association