Blissville ready for its first park

From the Queens Chronicle:

Residents of Blissville, a section of Long Island City bordered by the Long Island Expressway to the north, Laurel Hill Boulevard to the east and Newtown Creek to the south and west, say they are due for some green space, and are collecting signatures to support their effort.

Miguel Cavanzos, a Blissville resident and the main organizer of the petition, said the children in the neighborhood must resort to playing in the street. He has stressed to members of Community Board 2 that the enclave, home to more families as main parts of Long Island City become more developed and expensive, also lacks any benches for workers to sit on at lunch and that residents must cross busy corridors for any public park.

Blissville, an industrial and commercial area, contains a few hundred residents.

“We don’t have anything, we’re isolated,” Cavanzos told CB 2 in June. “We need a public park. There’s kids that need green space to play.”

Since early June, Cavanzos has spearheaded an effort to drum up support; as of press time, he collected more than 160 petition signatures over the course of a week. Area business owners also expressed support. Cavanzos plans to present them to CB 2 when meetings resume in the fall.

Cavanzos said that as soon as children come home from school, they play in the street or stay inside. He stresses that the area is forgotten amid the development blossoming to the west.