Monster fence for chaotic MTA project killing NYC businesses: We are helpless

Businesses along a once-bustling Bronx block are suffering a slow death thanks to a chaotic MTA construction project that is chasing away customers and inviting the homeless, costing thousands of dollars in lost revenue, owners and workers say.The Metropolitan Transportation Agency essentially cut off the row of storefronts from the neighborhood in the fall when it erected a massive mesh fence steps away from their front doors as part of the Van Cortlandt Park-242nd Street station restoration project in Fieldston.Enraged business owners say they’ve lost up to 50% of their business in the past six months because of the plummet in both foot and car traffic — clearing way for a homeless-free-for-all in the already-uninviting corridor created by the fencing.“This is killing us,” said Lou Porco, the owner of Broadway Joe’s Pizza, which has been in the area since 1969, to The Post last week.“A lot of people think we are closed because they can’t even see us.People can’t stop, they can’t pull over because there is no parking,” he said.Gary Singh, owner of the local Shah Halal Food, said the situation is all the more frustrating because of the lack of progress he has witnessed by the MTA — which has now extended the problematic project another two years.“The MTA said they need money.

They got the congestion pricing toll to help them out, and here they start working, and then they stopped,” he said.“They are asking for money, but they are wasting money.  Nobody is working out there.”At the time, the MTA claimed it would take six months to build a two-stop elevator from the street to the platform level as part of plans to make the No.

1-train station more accessible, but crews only worked for about two weeks before seemingly abandoning the project, the business owners said.As March grew closer, MTA officials broke the news that the construction would be delayed two years, after crews supposedly discovered that a sewer was below the proposed el...