From the NY Post:
Parkland is “not the only thing people need,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday as he defended plans to build a soccer stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
“It’s not irreplaceable,” the mayor said of the 13 acres in Flushing Meadows that soccer promoters are trying to acquire for a 25,000-seat stadium.
“In fact, there’s an old airport, Flushing Airport, which is going to be turned into a park. So the total parkland would be the same,” added the mayor.
“On balance there’s an enormous amount of new park land,” he said. “But it’s not the only thing people need. A lot of people want a stadium to enjoy soccer.”
Right. So build it in Central Park. The tourists would love it!
From Patch:
In a fashion that could only be described as "typically Bloomberg," New York City's mayor has managed to yada yada the building of a stadium on public parkland in Queens.
Bloomberg talked about the plan to build a soccer stadium in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park during a press conference on Monday, saying essentially that the part of the park where they're planning on putting it is kind of crappy, so whatever.
"Keep in mind, that end of the park is not...it has seen its better days," Bloomberg said. "There's not a lot of money to fix it. This will improve that area. The new parkland will be great parkland."
This will be familiar to Queens residents as the same justification for the city's attempt to takeover Willets Point, which has been ongoing since Citi Field was just a gleam in the mayor's eye.
36 comments:
Thank the Queens city council delegation for
1. overturning term limits for the mayor's 3rd term.
2. appointing those 'community' boards that leave out the community.
3. stood idly by while this travesty unfolds (but they were almost united in renaming the Queensboro Bridge)
4. have a sense of entitlement that you re-elect them no matter how they sh*t all over you.
Build the freakin' stupid soccer stadium on the old Flushing Airport site and let it sink into the swamp. Good riddance!
Folks, there will be a soccer stadium built at Flushing Meadows.
You never really had a chance of stopping it.
The part of the park the stadium is going in is crappy and seen better days and there's no money to rehab it. Yet there is money to rehab Flushing Airport into parkland. Typical Bloomturdism.
So The EDC who is in charge of both parcels will fork over the old Flushing airport and convert it into parkland. How convenient! So the airport comes off the FAA maps and thus opens the airspace above to air traffic. LOVELY! More planes over the rooftops of residential neighborhoods to the north and east while downtown Flushing construction keeps requesting variances because they are building structures so tall that they impede FAA air space. Anyone else doing the math here?
Hey Crappy do you recall when Bloomberg laid out a huge development plan for Flushing Airport - where it was going to be a warehousing & wholesale marketplace for asian stores? This happened some time around 2002-2004 if I recall right. He promised it would be built quickly.
I'm sure there has to be a news story about it in several newspaper archives. They had a big presser for it, complete with those terrible artsy mock ups they do.
He lied about that development, and now he's lying about making it into a park.
Found it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/nyregion/17queens.html?_r=0
A search of the times archive shows the city has been trying to figure out what to do with flushing airport since the 60s.
CB7 hasn't represented the community for decades.
They represent their own self interests.
It's composed of an assortment of "fatheads"--who are impressed with an overblown notion--of their worth in the world.
Some members are too old to serve. Others are downright crooked. Then you have a few who profit from developers plans. Some get printing contracts and others get other favors--including free passes to tennis matches, etc.
ABOLISH ALL COMMUNITY BOARDS!
Save the taxpayers some money.
These boards were created to give voters a sense of false power--like a placebo is dispensed to cure a disease.
How legitimate can a community board's power be, if their votes are only advisory.
It's like putting cops on the street with unloaded guns.
Wow, I took one of those 20 minute airplane rides out of Flushing Airport when I was a young tad. Who owns that space? It would seem to have lots of value nowadays.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes"...one "no", and "2 abstain"!
CB#7 has just voted, once again, to approve another one of Bloomberg's plans.
If the blimp port that Alan Gross had proposed decades ago were built...it would have been a boon to the community.
Bloomberg is just busting this same community wide open, with this latest hare brained scheme of his.
BYW...the old airport site is federally protected wetland.
Go, Jerry, go!
Clean out the corrupt community board #7 stable and bring in some fresh mounts!
Thanks for your vote of confidence in me.
I'm not "Superman"
Only you voters out there can clean out CB7.
Make your voices heard as I've just done mine.
Are you afraid that Gene Kelty will bite you?
Work with him to improve CB7 instead of complaining.
By name or anonymous--
you go figure out who's posting
all these caustic comments.
The day it was reported the Kingsbridge Armory was getting rehabbed with 7 ice rinks, because we all know there is great demand for ice hockey in the boogie down Bronx, I resolved myself of the fact that we all being played and filleted...
Our city will see better days.... once we've hit the bottom... which we haven't. Ice skating rinks in the Bronx... yea, that's a really good idea. A soccer stadium in Flushing meadow? really? Because the turnouts at Citifield have been great? they haven't. Dismal to say the least... they GIVE AWAY tickets through their corporate sponsers to make it look full! There's no such thing as transparency here in nYc. No one looks at character anymore when voting.
Look at Weiner....he's running for mayor and he's 2nd in the pols... look at who's in office, are they good guys? Or goodfellas?
Anonymous said...
If the blimp port that Alan Gross had proposed decades ago were built...it would have been a boon to the community.
Bloomberg is just busting this same community wide open, with this latest hare brained scheme of his.
BYW...the old airport site is federally protected wetland.
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Some of you may know the back story on my blimpport project but under the circumstances, it deserves repeating. Flushing Airport meant something to me even as a young child looking out my apartment window at the small municipal airfield. My parents took me over to the airport and I met Speed, Johnny (the mechanic), and Mrs. H. Speed took me up for my very first flight in a Piper. We flew over LaGuardia Airport and down the East River to the Statue of Liberty and back. Needless to say, I loved the experience!
A few years later, the Goodyear blimps Mayflower and Columbia moored at the north end of the field and I was smitten. I met the Goodyear Airship Operations staff and became part of their "family". It was a big disappointment when the blimps stopped using Flushing and moved to Teterboro in the mid-70's.
Airship International Ltd. made the first attempt to moor advertising blimps at the site. I was hired as a consultant but the Company didn't keep its promises to the city and community and the project was dropped. I didn't want to give up and personally formed a Company (Airships Unlimited) and continued to advocate for a blimp port.
At that time, Community Board #7 and local elected officials and community groups were in favor of the plan. However, I had to submit an RFP, along with other developers, to the NYC EDC. As I was to find out, the process was a total sham!!! The EDC changed the response time to 8 weeks from an original promise of 6 months!. I went to then City Councilman Tony Avella and told him that I felt something was wrong. Indeed it was!. The RFP had been issued a week or so earlier and both Tony and I were caught unaware of this part of the process. I had no chance of responding to it.
I managed to secure adequate funding and was devastated by Bloomberg's disrespect. National and local media paid a lot of attention to my attempts to create the first blimp port at this hometown property. CNN even produced a report by Jeannie Moos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpe2X2UdZ4
Mayor Bloomberg came to Flushing and held a Town Hall meeting. There was an overt attempt to keep me from speaking but I insisted on speaking to the mayor as he was about to leave the podium:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9Xhs7NYDs
The warehousing/wholesale project came out of left field and took the other developers and me by surprise. Tony Avella organized several protests until Bloomberg waved the white flag. You see, the community was promised that the property would be used for passive recreation. The original size of the available property was 78 acres and that was sharply reduced to about 28 acres when most of the property became federally protected wetlands. The most insulting act by this administration and the EDC was the bulldozing of the historic pre-WWII hangars without notifying local historians who wanted to preserve some of these historic structures.
chucky boy is posting them him and his hooker bitterman look at queens crap everyday...they love this site untill it exposes their corruption and conniving ways...
“On balance there’s an enormous amount of new park land,” he said. “But it’s not the only thing people need. A lot of people want a stadium to enjoy soccer.”
WHO???
From 2009:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/nyregion/thecity/
26disp.html
Department of Homeland security is laughing at the "blimp proposal".
could you imagine these flying tanks of combustible gas flying so close to a MAJOR airport.
this is the 21st century. no need for 19th century technology.
move on to something relevant
Flushing airport should be a park regardless of a soccer stadium deal or not. A park in flushing airport is the least the city should do for the amount of overdevelopment and nonsense projects it dumped on college point.
Most blimps take off from airports, so what the hell are you talking about?
Anonymous said...
Department of Homeland security is laughing at the "blimp proposal".
could you imagine these flying tanks of combustible gas flying so close to a MAJOR airport.
this is the 21st century. no need for 19th century technology.
move on to something relevant
_____________________________________________________
Hey idiot!!! All American airships have used helium which is non-flammable. Perhaps you can explain why the NYC Police Department and other security agencies (including the DHS) employ blimps at major events? Did you even watch the Bloomberg video where I show the Fuji blimp with the NYPD logos? Ever think before you speak?
PS I'll bet you're glad you can make such a foolish comment in anonymity.
Queens Crapper said...
Most blimps take off from airports, so what the hell are you talking about?
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Very true. However, there has never been an aviation facility only for lighter-than-air craft. I'm trying to create the first one! I've posted a separate response to that commenter. By the way, in what world is a helium a combustible gas?
Trading Flushing Meadows-Corona Parklands for Flushing Airport is just another example of the convoluted Bloomspeak that's killing the borough.
NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!
Ya may want to peruse the following. Once again Queens Crap calls it!!!
http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2009/05/city-not-cleaning-up-oil-spill-at.html
Let's inflate Shulman and Stavisky with Helium.
Then we could have twin blimps flying over FMCP
during the US Open.
Never mind. On second thought it might distract the players from their game.
Combustible?
What a flaming asshole you are, fella!
Let's light a match and find out.
The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade uses balloons filled with helium. So every tank of helium, in those gift balloon stores, are also a threat to national security?
Your state of idiocy is a threat to our country.
Isn't there a tent city for illegals on the airport now? You can see it across from target.
Isn't there a tent city for illegals on the airport now? You can see it across from target.
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Interesting new information. Disturbing, if true.
Community Boards should be coterminous with the City Council districts and should answer to the city councilperson. In fact, the Councilperson and the assembly person should be the same person. This way they would keep busy and not get carried away doing frivolous and ridiculous things.
any further development at the old flushing airport will only increase street flooding in Flushing--approx. at 32 ave and below parsons blvd---yes it is a 'wetlands'----the famous sinkhole is across the street in the supermarket's parking lot--remember the hoffmans soda bldg.--by the way, is there still working equipment utilized by LaGuardia airport within the wetland?--maybe us old folk remember too much
That coterminous idea for CBs and councilmanic districts sounds like it could be a good one. It needs some further examination.
The current system isn't working very well.
Take Bloomberg up for a blimp ride and drop him off in the Bermuda triangle.
Then he can swim home to his posh island compound.
It's not that far.
Take bloomberg for a ride and dump him on chuckys new carpet
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