Looking for something fun to do this summer in NYC? How about a free ferry ride that also supports a neighborhood that was knocked off its feet after Hurricane Sandy? Mayor Bloomberg joined other city officials this week to announce the launch of a free Red Hook Summer Ferry that will operate on weekends throughout the summer season. The newly expanded service spells good news for Red Hook businesses hoping to see an increase in foot traffic, and it provides a way for them to continue recovering after last October’s superstorm. The ferry will kick off Memorial Day weekend at Pier 11 in Manhattan and will give people another reason (besides just going to IKEA) to visit Red Hook.

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This week, the Rockwell Group announced exciting plans to build a treehouse-inspired Imagination Playground in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville. The firm is working with NYC Parks to transform a 1.5-acre section of Betsy Head Park into an active playground to encourage kid-friendly activity and play outdoors. The design of the new playground will feature a winding ramp that snakes around London Plane trees, jungle gyms that spill out into an open area and much more. Construction on the playground is set to begin in spring 2014 and the facility is expected to open by 2015.

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Image via NYC Mayor’s Office Flickr

Rockaway Courthouse has sat empty for decades, but plans are now in the works to give it new life as a much-needed hospital in a community that faced the 2012 closure of a major health center, not to mention the blows of Hurricane Sandy. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Economic Development Corporation recently announced that developer Harmony Group will resurrect the abandoned 24,000-square-foot historic building and use the structure to establish a multi-specialty ambulatory center. The rehabilitated building is expected to house medical tenants and outpatient surgical services that will include ophthalmology, urology, obstetrics, gynecology, and orthopedics.

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Mayor Bloomberg announced this morning that more than 100 NYC restaurants have signed up for the first-ever NYC Food Waste Challenge, an initiative that aims to cut down on the amount of organic waste sent to landfills. Some of the city’s most popular eateries will be taking part, and names on the list include Batali and Bastianich Hospitality Group, Blue Hill, Chipotle, Cleaver Co., Juice Generation, Le Bernardin, Momofuku, Pret-a-Manger, Union Square Hospitality Group and ‘WichCraft. Restaurants participating in the challenge have pledged to reduce 50 percent of their food waste through composting and other waste prevention methods.

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New Yorkers who’ve found themselves majorly annoyed that the city would not accept salad containers, plastic fast food boxes and other rigid plastics for recycling are in for some good news today. This afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce the expansion of NYC’s recycling program to include all rigid plastics. The hope is that the move will not only allow more materials to be recycled going forward but it will also eliminate much of the confusion about which kinds of plastics to wash and put in the recycling bin and which to simply throw away. Stay tuned for more information about this important development as it comes in.

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Just in time for Earth Day today, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission rolled out six Nissan LEAF taxi cabs for a year-long pilot program that will evaluate what it would take to successfully adopt electric vehicles into the city’s fleet. If the pilot program is successful, the city estimates that one-third of all NYC taxis could be electric by 2020. Mayor Bloomberg kicked off the launch by taking a spin in one of the taxis this morning.

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Soda-loving New Yorkers are having a field day today after photos of Mayor Bloomberg sipping a Big Gulp spread across social media networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram overnight. In the pics, Bloomberg, who is notorious for his efforts to ban large sugary drinks throughout the city, appears to be enjoying exactly the type of beverage he’d admonished at numerous press conferences.

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Image via NYC Mayor’s Office Flickr

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that New York City’s population is the highest it’s been in over 60 years, with more people moving in than moving out for the first time in decades. According to data derived from the US Census Bureau, 161,000 more people have begun calling the city home in the past two years (an increase of 2 percent). So what does this mean for NYC’s economy, resources and housing situation? Read on to find out.

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Recycling in New York City just got a little easier today with the launch of the city’s largest public space recycling initiative. Mayor Bloomberg joined the Times Square Alliance, BigBelly Solar and the Alcoa Foundation this morning to announce the debut of the Times Square Public Space Recycling Pilot program and 30 new BigBelly solar-powered waste and recycling stations. With over 500,000 visitors a day, Times Square sees more garbage than any other nabe in the city (approximately 900 bags daily), so it is hoped that the new stations will help both tourists and locals recycle all of that trash properly.

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Image © DNAinfo/Victoria Bekiempis

A group of children from the Hewitt School’s Earth Committee are making waves in the city, calling for a plastic bag ban and working with leaders to make New York City a greener place to live. Through Change.org, the students have collected 1,616 signatures and have taken the petition to the City Council. Their hope is that the city will hear their pleas and enact legislation that helps curb the damage plastic bags cause to marine life as well as the amount of litter in the streets.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg made some bold statements against the coal industry during this week’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy Energy Innovation Summit, according to a report from The Hill. Bloomberg, a promoter of natural gas and its lower carbon emissions, called coal “a dead man walking” and stressed the need for cleaner alternatives. He also made a point that coal-related environmental problems exacerbate extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy.

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Image © NYC Mayor’s Office Flickr

Yesterday, mayor Michael Bloomberg and Oklahoma clean energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens unveiled New York City’s first green mobile food truck powered by compressed natural gas. The Neapolitan Express Pizza truck serves up its slices with the help of Clean Energy Fuels and is all set to make its debut on to the streets of New York’s mobile food scene early next week.

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Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the new “We Are Made in NY” campaign to help local tech startups thrive in the city. The plan will bring resources to the fingertips of entrepreneurs and startup companies, helping to foster the local economy. The multi-platform initiative is part of the mayor’s plan to put New York on the map in the tech world and keep money circulating between local talent.

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This morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined NYC’s new Hurricane Sandy Recovery plan, which shows how the allotted $1.77 billion in federal grants will be used. The funds will aid those suffering from the most damage through a series of eight programs that will not only help rebuild, but also get businesses back on their feet and help communities grow stronger through the reconstruction process. The eight programs will fall under three categories: housing recovery, business recovery and infrastructure resiliency.

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Though the threat of school bus drivers striking still looms over New York, there is one silver lining that’s come out of the situation. Mayor Bloomberg and the Board of Education reminded kids and parents that if the strike does occur, NYC public transportation (a green option) is available and that students will receive free Metro bus and subway tickets in order to get to school.

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We wrote about the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s “New York’s Next Top Makers” competition back in October, and we’re excited to say that the contest is now open to submissions. The call challenges NYC designers and inventors to enter their product designs for a chance to win cash prizes and an opportunity to prototype their products. If you have a great idea but aren’t sure where to begin or how to raise money to produce it, this could be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

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Mayor Bloomberg and several other city officials kicked off the opening of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 5 this morning. The $26 million, five-acre former shipping pier will feature three outdoor multi-purpose recreation fields for soccer and other team sports, a picnic peninsula that will include picnic tables, barbecues and children’s play equipment and a continuous esplanade for strollers, sports spectators and people interested in fishing.

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They say hindsight is 20/20, but what if we had been warned about Hurricane Sandy as far back as thirty years ago? A report by AP now shows that New York actually began working on new legislation to prepare for scenarios that seem strangely similar to what happened during Sandy all the way back 1978. Officials of yore even predicted flooded subway lines and massive coastal surges, and rightly assumed that the Rockaways peninsula would be most at risk. Yet, despite the 1978 law, which called for a regularly updated plan that would help to restore vital services to the city, it seems the state and city did not take the warnings about the superstorm as seriously as it should.

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Newly re-elected President Barack Obama will arrive in New York today to visit areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. Accompanied by Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg, Obama will partake in an aerial and walking tour of a borough neighborhood hit hard by the storm, but exactly which one is being kept a secret for now.

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Earlier today, Mayor Bloomberg announced NYC Restore, a new initiative to create one-stop locations that connect residents and businesses impacted by Hurricane Sandy with the services and supplies they need most. Seven NYC Restoration centers in total will be opened in New York’s hardest hit neighborhoods, and the Far Rockaway, Gravesend, Coney Island and Staten Island locations were launched today. The Red Hook, Breezy Point and Throgs Neck-Pelham Bay centers are set to open later in the week. Read on to see where you can find the locations closest to you.

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On Friday, Mayor Bloomberg and Seastreak announced some great news for everyone who has been struggling to travel between the Rockaways and Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy – a new, temporary ferry service between the two locations. The service will begin on Monday, November 12 and ferries will carry passengers from Beach 108th Street and Beach Channel Drive in the Rockaways to Pier 11 in Lower Manhattan and back again. A one-way fare on the temporary ferry will be $2, and service is expected to start at 5:45 AM on Monday morning in the Rockaways. For those that need to go to midtown, free transfers will be available between Pier 11 and the pier at East 34th Street. Read on for the full service schedule.

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NYC Rapid Repairs is an unprecedented new program announced by Mayor Bloomberg and Director of NYC Housing Recovery Operations Brad Gair today to fix homes damaged by Hurricane Sandy as quickly and efficiently as possible. The mayor explained that through a partnership with FEMA, the new program would organize teams of contractors and city inspectors, and send them into neighborhoods that were affected by Hurricane Sandy to assess and rebuild so that people can get back into their homes and get on with their lives. If your home was destroyed or impacted by the super storm, you’ll be able to sign up for NYC Rapid Repairs starting on Tuesday by calling 311 or by going to NYC.gov. Please read on for other important details.

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