Saturday, February 20, 2010

New park for Bronx kids 3 1/2 years in the making

From the Daily News:

Three and a half years after Mayor Bloomberg closed huge portions of Mullaly and Macombs Dam parks to make way for the Yankees new $1.5 billion stadium, the replacement ballfields the city promised are nowhere to be seen.

It has been nearly 18 months since the last game was played in the old stadium. Yet its concrete hulk still looms like a gray ghost across the street from the Yankees new palace.

Shea Stadium, in case anyone has forgotten, came tumbling down in fewer than eight months. It was leveled quickly because the Mets needed the land for parking.

But when it comes to the old Yankee Stadium, the demolition crews have taken their sweet time. Until the old stadium is razed, the city can't even begin construction of Heritage Field, a complex of three replacement ballfields for the community.

No one in authority seems to care about this huge delay. Not the bureaucrats in City Hall. Not the Parks Department. Not the Yankees. Not the local politicians.

Back in late 2006, when U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald rejected a challenge to the stadium plan by local residents, she noted that the city was replacing all parkland with new permanent park facilities.

"Nearly all [of those facilities] will be operational by the time the new Yankee Stadium opens in 2009," the judge said in her decision, "and the remaining three ballparks to be located on the existing Yankee Stadium fields will become accessible by 2010."

This was all a lie.

1 comment:

Georges said...

I am not surprised, take a good look at Tank park in Elmhurst - it scrapped the layout for some reason and it looks like a pile of unwanted boulders and yeccaaaa!

Stop overdesigning these parks already and open one for our children's sakes!