From Crain's:
Hundreds of Upper East Side residents are expected to rally Sunday in an effort to prevent one of the city’s largest developers from turning a popular park into a 40-story residential tower.
Weeks after equipment to take boring samples landed at Ruppert Playground on 92nd Street between Second and Third avenues, protesters will call on the city to negotiate a deal with the Related Cos. that would preserve the approximately 1-acre space as a park.
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development sold the property to Related’s Carnegie Park Associates in 1983 as part of a larger deal that fell under the Ruppert Urban Renewal Project Plan. Under terms of the agreement, Related had to maintain the park for 25 years. That deal expired last June, freeing Related to develop the site. With the recent arrival of drilling equipment in the playground, residents and elected officials are concerned their opportunity to save the park may be waning.
5 comments:
A deal is a deal. The city should not have made this deal in the first place. Call me a tree hugger if you want but I believe any place that is wooded or kids use for recreation in this city should be preserved from now on.
Why dont they send someone to tell the local advocates that they have to contact the mayor's office, the local politican, and their developer controlled community board to find out what they can, or cannot do.
Or perhaps they can talk favorablely about an out of the way polluted rat infested piece of crap for a waterfront park.
They do this in Queens.
And the local tree huggers buy this shit sandwich lock stock and barrel.
I live near this so-called urban oasis, and it is a mostly deserted, scrappy little patch of asphalt that has been more of a curiosity (byon tennis on 92nd really?) and an eyesore (the tot lot is a splintery pile of rotting wood)
Locals should concentrate on forcing Related to add a school- something the neigborhood desperately neds- the the plan.
I've played tennis there plenty of times and will miss it if it goes. Who organizes these protests?...I want to attend one.
A school there would be great...let's get the DOE on Related's case.
Related bought and paid for this parcel. The ones at fault were the ones who sold it to them.
I hate developers, having been a victim of a very unscrupulous landlord who rebuilt my apartment house around my head with me in it, nearly at the cost of my life.
However, this is vacant ground, paid for ground, and if the city wants it back, they can repurchase it.
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