"IMOGENE" Filming in Broad Channel causing "headaches" for residents...

"IMOGENE" star, Darren Criss (your teenage girls will recognize him from the T.V. show "Glee") as he walked along the streets of Broad Channel earlier this week.

Once again, the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment has issued permits to a production company to film a movie on the streets of Broad Channel and once again the residents of Broad Channel are being inconvenienced with a large scale displacement of parking spaces.

The movie in question (this time) is "IMOGENE" is a comedy about a  playwright who stages a suicide in an attempt to win back her ex, only to wind up in the custody of her gambling-addict mother.  The movie is scheduled to be released in 2013.

The production company for this movie will be in Broad Channel through Friday, August 19, 2011.

The excitement surrounding a movie shoot in our neighborhood has been tempered by the fact that the Mayor's Office, in permitting this shoot, has disrupted the lives of many Broad Channel residents because parking has been restricted along Cross Bay Boulevard as well as on East 8th and 9th Roads for the duration of the shoot.

A quick walk around town revealed that the movie company has displaced no less than 75 parking spaces normally utilized by Broad Channel residents on a daily basis.

  

According to their website, "...the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) streamlines government communications by making more information accessible, leveraging technology to aid in the transparency of government, and by supporting relevant industries in New York City."

The Mayor's Office might want to spend a little less  time "supporting relevant industries in New York City" and a little more time considering the impact such motion picture permit issuances has on a          specific neighborhood.

 

In a small island community such as Broad Channel, with its narrow streets and severely constrained parking, the large scale and week long displacement of resident parking spaces is no small matter.
If parking on your street is disallowed, where do you park your car, especially when close to another hundred residents are also scrambling to find a space? God knows you do not want to park it up on the Cross Bay Boulevard median.
This is an issue that should be addressed by the Civic Association and our local Councilman Eric Ulrich and the District Manager of Community Board 14.  If the city is going to "permit" the wholesale restriction of residential parking access, then some sort of accomodation must be made for those residents who are affected.
Additionally, when construction commences on West 11th, 12th and 13th Roads next summer with the city's flood mitigation project, no permits should be issued by the Mayor's Office for these type of movie shoots until such time as the project is completed and all resident parking spaces restored.

Restricting parking on Cross Bay Boulevard for one or two days is one things, restricting whole stretches of residential streets for a week is quite another.