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For the motorists who use it daily and the people living in the buildings along its malls, Eastern Parkway is two miles of inconvenience as the six-lane roadway undergoes reconstruction.
The city's Transportation Department says the $58-million reconstruction is aimed at recapturing the splendor of the roadway, which was designed by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux who also designed Prospect Park.
The project includes installation of new sewer and water lines and reconstruction of the main roadways, service roads, sidewalks and malls. That phase of the work, 60 percent of which is completed, according to a DOT spokesman, also involves installation of granite curbs and a bikeway paved with hexagonal asphalt blocks. New benches, new street lamps and new street name and traffic signs are to be installed. The grassy areas on the malls will be re-established, and 1,000 new trees will be planted. The work is scheduled to be completed this fall.
But community groups that have long advocated for the rehabilitation are dissatisfied with the way the job is proceeding.
Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, chairman of Community Board 9, said temporary signage erected for the construction is misleading. He said motorists aren't warned before getting onto the parkway that there are no left or right turns off the main road along the area being rehabilitated, which extends from Grand Army Plaza to Pitkin Avenue.
"There have...