Press Coverage

Kallos, however, has directed legislative efforts against scaffolding through Int. 1353, which will require the DOB inspect scaffolding that has been up for more than a year at least every six months from that milestone at the owner’s expense. This also has not made it further than the Committee on Housing and Buildings.

“Our city is literally crumbling with scaffolding to catch the falling bricks, only they aren’t working, and people are still dying,” Kallos said. “The only solution is for building owners to actually have to make repairs in days not years under legislation I’ve proposed. If we can’t pass scaffolding legislation now, our next Mayor will have to finally chase the blight of scaffolding from our city.”

Councilmember Ben Kallos is grateful for the Mayor’s allocation of $284 million to the East River Esplanade, but he wants repairs to start now.Photo by Dean Moses

“At this point we are three quarters of a billion, and some of the money is moving. We were able to get a repair done on 76th Street in less than six months during a pandemic, but now the challenge is to say to the Mayor, ‘Thank you for the money, start the work now,'” Kallos said.

Now the funds have be allocated, residents are keeping their eyes peeled, waiting for the announcement of when they can expect construction to begin.

Councilman Ben Kallos, who co-chairs the East River Esplanade Task Force with Rep. Maloney, said that since he’s been the co-chair, there has been approximately $872 million invested in the East River Esplanade going back to 2014 for repairs and infrastructure upgrades.

“At this point, we’re more than three quarters of a billion in, some money is moving. Now the challenge is: start the work now,” said Kallos.  

Several past rounds of Esplanade repairs were supposed to be split between the Upper East Side and East Harlem, including a $35 million commitment from the city in 2014 and $75 million in 2019. But those repairs have been carried out unevenly, said City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who represents the Upper East Side.

"I'm troubled by the fact that the work that was funded on the [Upper] East Side has already been completed, and much of the work that was funded over the last seven years for East Harlem still hasn't started," Kallos said Thursday.

City Councilmen Ben Kallos and Jimmy Van Bramer, whose districts include either end of the Queensboro Bridge, have fought for years for a separate bike lane. They have held several rallies and recently marched across the bridge during the pandemic.

“This news couldn’t have come sooner as more people rely on bikes during the pandemic,” Mr. Kallos said. “The single shared lane on the Queensboro Bridge has gotten more crowded and dangerous.”

Just months after New York City offered early voting for the first time during a presidential election, voters could soon get more early voting options under a new City Council bill expected to be introduced Thursday.

The bill, which Upper East Side Councilman Ben Kallos, plans to introduce to the Council at a Thursday meeting, would increase the number of early voting sites, with expanded hours of operation and at least two sites required in each Council district initially for the upcoming June primary.

“This would add at least two early voting polling sites per Council district for the coming election and would eventually scale up to eight. It would also give voters more hours to vote,” Kallos told the Daily News. “During the last election, there were zero early voting sites in my Council district. To be fair, one was 500 feet outside my district, but we don’t have enough early voting sites.”

Kallos blamed the city Board of Elections and legislators in Albany and called state lawmakers “corrupt” for not passing a law mandating more early voting sites.

The current state law requires just seven sites per county, he pointed out.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Two Upper East Side officeholders said the city has blocked them from buying snow plows to clear the neighborhood's bike lanes, even though residents asked for them and the money is already allocated.

"It's incredibly stupid to put the health and safety of people riding bikes in jeopardy because the city doesn't want to spend $30,000," said City Councilmember Ben Kallos, referring to the cost of the six-foot plow attachment in question.

New Yorkers have long complained that intersections and bike lanes remain slush-covered for days after snowstorms, posing a hazard to cyclists and pedestrians alike.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Two Upper East Side officeholders said the city has blocked them from buying snow plows to clear the neighborhood's bike lanes, even though residents asked for them and the money is already allocated.

"It's incredibly stupid to put the health and safety of people riding bikes in jeopardy because the city doesn't want to spend $30,000," said City Councilmember Ben Kallos, referring to the cost of the six-foot plow attachment in question.

First and Second avenues will not be getting the narrow-gauge snow plows that two Upper East Side Council Members have funded because, get this, city rules bar the use of council members’ discretionary capital money to purchase equipment with detachable, swappable seasonal attachments.

“It’s total bullshit. I feel like Charlie Brown — and Mayor de Blasio is Lucy,” said Council Member Ben Kallos, whose constituents urged him to buy the $143,000 Multihog snow plow, plus its $30,000 snow plow attachment, as part of the participatory budgeting process in 2020. When the balloting was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kallos and his East Side counterpart Keith Powers allocated the funds from an account of capital money they both control.

But the city won’t take the cash, for reasons that would impress even Franz Kafka.

Funds for the project were allocated by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, City Councilmember Ben Kallos and former Councilmember Jessica Lappin.

"Roosevelt Islanders have always loved their public library and now they are going to love it even more," Kallos said in a statement.

To start, the library will be open for grab-and-go service from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

You’re probably used to seeing headlines about neighborhood groups as they rail against shelters and hotels housing homeless New Yorkers — particularly over the past year and particularly on the Upper West Side. This week, residents on the Upper East Side surprisingly bucked that trend: At a community-board meeting about a new shelter on East 91st Street, locals overwhelmingly supported the project, Patch reported. “No fanfare, no problem. The men can stay,” said City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who actually advocated for the shelter (imagine that!).

This couldn’t be more different from the monthslong saga of their neighbors on the other side of Central Park. There, residents raised just shy of $180,000 to support legal action against three Upper West Side hotels to oust their homeless residents, and on a Facebook group, locals openly fantasized about using wasp spray and dog feces to make the homeless feel unwelcome. Some now oppose a newly planned shelter for women on West 59th Street. As one commenter on a recent West Side Rag post put it, “I don’t want to hear another word from anybody that the UWS isn’t doing its ‘fair share’ of housing the homeless. We’re doing far more. Why doesn’t the UES have any shelters and we get flooded with them?” This sentiment was echoed at community-board meetings, where residents asked why their similarly well-to-do Upper East Side neighbors weren’t hosting more homeless beds.

Welcomed with open arms by the Eastside Taskforce for Homeless Outreach and Services, co-founded by city councilmember Ben Kallos.

“There’s a lot of folks in the neighborhood, we have probably a dozen or so, that everybody knows. They’ve got their spot, and this will help get all the homeless folks off the streets and into a room with a place to sleep and be safe, warm and fed each night,” Kallos said.

Rockefeller University will build a life-sciences hub on its Upper East Side campus, part of the mayor's push for new public health spaces.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Rockefeller University will build a new life-sciences hub on its Upper East Side campus as part of a citywide push to make New York the "public health capital of the world," Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday.

The $9 million grant to Rockefeller will help it convert some of its existing academic research labs into a new incubator for life-science companies, dubbed the Tri-Institutional Translational Center for Therapeutics.

City officials said the 26,000-square-foot facility will be the first of its kind among the Upper East Side's collection of biomedical institutions, and will link up with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weil Cornell Medicine to conduct research.

The facility has been years in the making, according to City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who began meeting with Rockefeller University to discuss the incubator space shortly after taking office in 2014.

""Biotech will own the future and if we learned any lesson in 2020, it is that New York City needs to become a hub for this industry as soon as possible," Kallos said in a statement. "These biotech centers will create thousands of good-paying jobs and have the potential to be crucial in discovering life-saving cures and treatments for diseases right here on the Upper East Side"

The city funding will cover only part of the cost of the new labs and Rockefeller will need to raise the rest, Kallos's office said.

The combined $38 million in grants announced Thursday are part of LifeSciNYC, a $500 million initiative launched by the de Blasio administration in 2016 to grow the city's life-sciences industry over the next 10 years.

De Blasio's administration has also backed a controversial proposal to greatly expand the New York Blood Center on East 67th Street, which officials said would help the city recover from the coronavirus pandemic by adding thousands of square feet of new lab space. Some neighbors, however, have opposed the plan due to its size and impact on the surrounding blocks.

Rockefeller University, whose York Avenue campus stretches between 63rd and 68th streets, opened four new buildings on a platform above the FDR Drive in 2019.

One of the nation's most prestigious research institutions, Rockefeller's faculty have won 26 Nobel Prizes.

"The combined research strengths of three world-leading biomedical institutions provides an unparalleled foundation to ensure the success of the new Tri-Institutional Translational Center for Therapeutics," Rockefeller President Richard P. Lifton said in a statement.

"By consolidating existing collaborations and providing much-needed biotech incubator space into the bargain, this new center will focus the boldest biomedical science in the world on solving today's most challenging medical problems – while also growing the fast-emerging biotech sector in New York City."

He’s trying to enact change on his own, connecting with city Councilman Ben Kallos for help.

“Max has proposed a really great idea, which is just that if you are calling 911 from a mobile phone you should be able to set it so that the operator can see your live video, can hear what’s going on around you and have that available as evidence,” Kallos said.

It’s an idea the councilmember plans to explore in an effort to make something good out of a bad experience and make city streets more safe. They would be exploring this with security in mind as an option for callers who consent to using a video method.

Supporters said the new shelter will provide safe housing for unhoused people who are already a visible presence on the Upper East Side. City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who worked to bring the shelter to the neighborhood, mentioned a man he sees on the street most days on East 93rd Street and Second Avenue.

"Does the man on 93rd have to stay there for the rest of his life, or can we offer him something two blocks away?" Kallos said.

City Councilman Ben Kallos, who also pushed for the program, called for its reinstatement.

“The faster we bring the program to more francophone families that need it, the better off the children will be,” he said.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A proposed shelter on the Upper East Side won the unanimous backing of a community board committee on Wednesday, as members expressed hope that the new facility could help the neighborhood's street homeless population find more permanent housing.

The 88-bed shelter is set to open in January 2022 on East 91st Street between First and York avenues. It will be run by Goddard Riverside, the housing-focused nonprofit that is headquartered on the Upper West Side and operates nearly two dozen locations around Manhattan.

An existing building at the current site will be torn down to make way for the new seven-story structure, which will be purpose-built as a shelter serving single adult men and women.

The facility will be a Safe Haven — a type of shelter with a low threshold for admission, whose primary goal is to get people off the streets and into a safe bed. The site will offer social and meal services, counseling, and a rooftop recreational area.

A number of elected officials joined Wednesday's Community Board 8 meeting to speak out in favor of the shelter. City Councilmember Ben Kallos, whose office had advocated for the facility, said it would serve the neighborhood's street homeless residents who are already visible in places like subway stations.

A number of elected officials joined Wednesday's Community Board 8 meeting to speak out in favor of the shelter. City Councilmember Ben Kallos, whose office had advocated for the facility, said it would serve the neighborhood's street homeless residents who are already visible in places like subway stations.

"There's one person on 86th Street on the downtown entrance, there's one person on the northbound entrance ... we all know who they are, we know what they look like," he said.

State Sen. Liz Krueger, whose East Side district includes two other Safe Havens, said neighbors have welcomed the facilities.

"The communities are very glad that they opened and they're actually seeing a difference in people on their streets or not on their streets," Krueger said.

Some residents said the apparent support for the shelter contrasted with the Upper East Side's reputation as a less-than-welcoming neighborhood for the homeless. Resident Ben Wetzler said he hoped the shelter's move-in would be conflict-free, unlike the recent battles on the Upper West Side.

"I'm really hopeful that our neighborhood will be more welcoming and do a better job of working with you," he said.

No one at Wednesday's meeting said they opposed the shelter, although two neighbors expressed concerns about safety. In response, representatives from Goddard Riverside said the shelter would have 24/7 security, as well as psychiatry services for any seriously mentally ill people admitted there.

Among the shelter's supporters were two students at East Side Middle School, located down the block from the future facility.

"I feel that it is very important to help people feel welcome so that they can accept these services," said seventh-grader Ahana. "It's also important to empathize with others to try to understand how you would feel if you were in their situation."

The shelter, and the supporting resolution passed on Wednesday, will be discussed again at CB8's full board meeting on Jan. 20.

Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (D) and Councilmember Ben Kallos (D-Yorkville, Lenox Hill) joined advocates, providers, and students in a virtual rally Wednesday morning to call for full funding of New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). Williams and Kallos also called for the passing of their joint legislation establishing a universal youth employment program. 

Joining Williams and Kallos were Youth Services Chair Debi Rose (D-Staten Island); Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer (D); Councilmember Carlina Rivera (D-East Village, Gramercy Park); Councilmember Carlos Manchaca (D-Brooklyn); J.T. Falcone from United Neighborhood Housing; Chinese Planning Council (CPC) Chief Policy and Public Affairs Officer Carlyn Cowen; Global Kids School Director Diamond Butler; University of Rochester student Jorge Morales; and CUNY student Joseph Cobourne. 

City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who condemned initial reports that TeeHands was based in the neighborhood, said he welcomed news that the address may have been fake.

"The Upper East Side is a welcoming and friendly place. We do not harbor White supremacists or their sympathizers, so of course, it makes sense that the address listed for this shady company selling racist T-shirts is not a real address in my district," he said in a statement.

The website listed an address at 85th Street and Second Avenue. Councilman Ben Kallos represents the district and believes it was run out of a resident’s apartment there.

“The Upper East Side is the neighborhood that welcomed my grandparents when they fled antisemitism in Europe. They welcomed my wife, who fled antisemitism in Russia,” Kallos said. “It’s enraging to think that Nazis were selling antisemitic propaganda, hiding in plain sight.”