From Miss Heather:
I decided a comparison of Gantry Park (in luxury waterfront condoville, Long Island City) and the Nature Walk (in decidedly NOT luxury waterfront condoville, Greenpoint) would be a more appropriate use of this footage. The lesson here (as best as I can comprehend it) is: if a neighborhood acquiesces to having an ENORMOUS luxury enclave on her waterfront (READ: Long Island City) said residents get a nice park. Otherwise, you can look at shit.
25 comments:
Both sides still suck in the Newtown creek fumes and gas chemical leaks.
By the way theres condos in Greenpoint too as you know so soon they can have a pretty park and not realize if they want to that the east river is and always will be toxic sludge.Gantry condo yuppie dwellers can take some time to breath that air in and see the effects.
You should take a sample of this alleged oil and shit and send it to Bloomberg and the EPA in a cocktail.
Gantry park looks they way that it does because there is a dedicated and involved community group that ensures that it is taken care of. The group that I belong to even steps in where the city falls short and cleans it on the weekends on their own time and at their expense. Yes this includes the yuppies. They work with city officials to make the park is properly staffed and maintained.
So what this really is an example of is what an involved community can do to protect its resources. I'm not sure what hard-on this site has for LIC, but despite calling us a fake community it appears that this is an example of why LIC is as real a community as there is.
No, the difference is that Gantry Park is a state park with staffing and resources while the Greenpoint park isn't even managed by the City's Parks Dept but is owned by DEP which has zero experience in this area. Also, Gantry Park is on the East River which is generally cleaner than Newtown Creek which the Brooklyn park fronts.
The LIC yuppie condoville "community" has nothing to do with it. I do beach cleanup there every year around this time and can tell you that Gantry Park is as filthy as other shore areas in Queens.
Thank you anonymous #3... How is the public supposed to come in and clean up the water on the weekends? What a moron anon #2 is.
Gantry Park is always very nice and very clean whenever I go there.
This is my last post on the subject. My points are as folows:
1) If you think the State is more competent than the city when it comes to the management of parks, you have never been closely involved with either.
2) To say that the residents have nothing to do with the upkeep of this park is a slap in the face to all those residents who volunteer their time to keeping the parks clean and safe. This includes poo and tar and trash.
3) Water goes where the current takes it. The author implied that the city and state are going out of their way to keep this park clean and letting Greenpoint suffer. I'm not sure how you manage to keep on section of the east river clean at the expense of another. Perhaps you can take that point up with the author.
Lastly, participation and membership in The Friends of Gantry Park is open to all who support our mission. Feel free to join us in continuing to protect this gem of a park or otherwise feel free to continue the anonymous sniping here.
The vast majority of Queens residents drive out to Jones Beach instead of the Rockaways because that state park is cleaner and better managed than the NYC parks beachfront. DEP is not in the park management business, either, so you can expect it conditions to be taken down a notch.
If you volunteer in your park, good for you. But volunteers can't be expected to do everything.
Cleaning the shore, plucking things out of the water, are part of park cleaning duties.
Miss Heather's point is that if the Greenpoint shore was lined with condos you would see the Creek cleaned up. That's a big ultimatum to place on a community. A decent park that doesn't stink or have effluent floating by should be a right, not a privilege.
Gantry park looks they way that it does because there is a dedicated and involved community group that ensures that it is taken care of.
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Yes indeed! They built the pier and painted the gantries themselves.
The point is they looked like the Newtown Creek pictures about 15 years ago.
And have the pictures to prove it.
Besides Gantry Park, I bet you have generous amounts of money provided for you.
Your not on Teri's shit list because you have the balls to think and speak those things people need to think and speak about.
Isnt 100,000 of dollars being spent on Newtown Creek.
Who is going to follow the money - or is it going to be spent to convert brown fields for brown skin people to move into like Hunters Point South?
If you volunteer in your park, good for you. But volunteers can't be expected to do everything.
Lots of effort is being spent to have the public clean the waterfront (Greenshores NY) - something our taxes used to do 20 years ago.
If the Greenpoint shore was lined with condos maybe there would be a community that would insist on the the Creek being cleaned up. What community exists there now? The defunct standard oil company which polluted the site years ago?
Besides Gantry Park, I bet you have generous amounts of money provided for you.
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Each of the new condos contribute financialy towards the upkeep of this state park. It was a condition of the ground lease that they signed with the city. Think about that the next time you are playing extreme frisbee in Gantry park and wondering why other parks are not as well maintained.
Why is so hard to believe that good can come from development?
"What community exists there now?"
As of the census of 2000, there were 39,360 people, 15,865 households, and 8,744 families residing in the 11222 zip code, which is roughly coterminous with Greenpoint.
"Why is so hard to believe that good can come from development?"
Why is it so hard to believe that bad can come from development?
Why is it so hard to imagine parks being built but not contingent on allowing skyscrapers into your backyard?
Hey no sweat - when the yupsters bail and leave the town to the tweeded, the parks will end up looking the same.
City Lights is already considered to be outdated. And the park is beginning to wear rough around the edges as well.
When you have a "Friends of" group, a small band of people dictates what goes on in the park and who gets to do it. Forcing condos to contribute toward park maintenance is a bad idea. The condos have a tendency to close the pier off for their own benefit.
Gantry State Park: oh I remember that place! It was the place that restricted observing the July 4 Celebration a few years ago to all the rich white people in Queens West. A stink was raised in 2006, so they let people in first-come, first-serve. That year.
Check out the dreck over the railing on Shore Blvd between the Hellgate and Triborough. Bleccchhh!
Yes there is a big sludge that needs to be cleaned up between Hells Gate and the triborough along the shore, especially the garbage.
???So what this really is an example of is what an involved community can do to protect its resources. I'm not sure what hard-on this site has for LIC, but despite calling us a fake community it appears that this is an example of why LIC is as real a community as there is.?
Thats not a community.And yes the park there almost became exclusively for the yuppie slash and burn new "community".No matter what your pride thinks your doing there its still the dirty east river and your getting ripped off and displacing people.Thanks to the still constant building by recycle a bicycle there some toxic glue or chemical for the foundation by the big white tents that are bringing more "community".Your pushing out recycle a bicycle too insular condo folks.
If your taking care of it(god what a joke) dont create a world for your liking while ignoring LIC for its long history and other reisidents who dont rezone.
Gantry Park was much better when it had the train tracks and historic trestle bridge over Vernon Blvd.
When the neighborhood was a quiet neighborhood of working class people who walked to their own jobs in the very neighborhood they lived in.
Now it's nothing but plastic yuppie materialistic overdeveloped prefab shit.
I sincerely believe that the only force powerful enough to force the city to resolve its CSO problem on the Newtown Creek and Exxon Mobil to clean up its massive oil spill is a collection of large real estate developers. They don't want slicks sliding past the floor-to-ceiling windows of their glass towers.
I believe we need to partner with them and press them as friendly partners to build sustainable structures, especially in terms of energy use and rain runoffs. Parkland increases the value of their investments too, but again, we must press for real access.
As for LIC, I have lived here for nearly 14 years. I do snarkily refer to "tower people" or "Eloi." I'm sad sometimes that I wander familiar streets and see mostly unfamiliar faces. But I've been through this before as a native of Flushing and I know the solution: get out there, introduce yourself, engage and invite.
Many of the Eloi are transitional yuppies, but I also know a retired fire captain, teachers, and (gasp) yuppies who are active volunteers in the community.
Hey, I might be 40 now, but I'm not resigned to being a curmudgeon!
:)
Erik Baard
www.licboathouse.org
www.naturecalendar.com
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