Flushing Meadows park building is falling apart

Photo: Geoffrey Croft

From the Daily News:

Squirrels and sandbags are here to stay.

Or so it seems at the run-down Olmsted Center in Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is $1.6 million over budget and delayed with no end in sight, the Daily News has learned.

For years, workers have complained about the conditions inside the center, which dates to the 1964 World’s Fair.

The grievances include squirrels crawling into the building’s dilapidated walls and routine flooding from the ground during minor rainstorms.

Department workers are forced to place sandbags at entrances to prevent water from pouring inside.

In 2008, the Bloomberg administration set aside $25 million to revamp the low-lying building, which houses approximately 500 architects, engineers and other support staff.

But the project stalled and the department’s capital base remained a leaky mess.

Ah, Flushing Meadows. What a dump.

Welcome to the Flushing Meadows junkyard!

These photos were taken in the vicinity of the Olmsted Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

I know the Olmstead Center is undergoing construction, but most of this stuff looks perfectly usable and I gotta wonder a) why it's being junked and b) why it's being strewn around the grounds instead of being disposed of properly.

FMCP office building being upgraded

From the Queens Courier:

Recent talks of upgrading World’s Fair relics seem to focus on the New York State Pavilion.

But the Olmsted Center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which was constructed in 1964 and used as temporary offices for Robert Moses and the World’s Fair Corporation staff during the colossal event, is also getting a makeover.

The Parks Department announced Aug. 4 that it is collecting bids for a contractor to renovate the center, which is named in honor of Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of Central, Prospect and Riverside parks. Today, the building houses the bulk of the agency’s capital project staff.

The renovation project, which is designed by BKSK Architects, is split in two phases.

The first is the expansion of the center with a new 10,000-square-foot annex building, which is nearing completion.

The second phase, which will commence in early 2015, will technologically enhance the building and resolve flooding problems. It will include a new water channel system to lead water into bioswales that will contain and absorb it.

Is it me or does this look like a giant storage facility that you'd find next to a highway in the Midwest?