Protecting and improving the community for the people who live and work here

Village Voice: City Hall says expansion of Bronx green space was never a formal commitment

by Patrick Arden September 5, 2017

“Antonetty and her neighbors still pine for the old parks along Jerome Avenue, which had been the centerpiece of their community. Macombs Dam Park was established in 1897, a quarter-century before the Yankees arrived in the Bronx, and the neighborhood grew up around it. Macombs Dam and Mullaly parks were worn from heavy use — one field was bare, and the grass could often be brown — but they had hundreds of mature leafy green trees, some sixty feet tall. The outdoor space held special importance for families crammed into one-bedroom apartments.

All that was lost in August 2006, when the city closed off the parkland to make way for a new stadium. State law requires the formal “alienation” of parks by the legislature before they can be used for non-park purposes. When Albany lawmakers alienated portions of Macombs Dam and Mullaly parks in 2005, Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to replace the green space with a new park on the old stadium site across the street, and with the addition of a set of other parcels elsewhere in the neighborhood.

Locals had problems with the “replacement” parks from the start. In exchange for a unified stretch of parkland, they would get plots of land scattered across more than a mile, with much less greenery and fewer ballfields. One of the largest replacements would sit two stories above street level atop a parking garage, with artificial surfaces and no trees. Small “pocket” parks would be in the shadow of the 4 train’s elevated tracks. A 2.89-acre asphalt ballfield wasn’t even replaced — the city converted it intoanother garage, insisting the land had only been used for parking cars, though project documents acknowledged it had been parkland.”

Yet Adrian Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner from 2002 to 2012, tells the Voice that all of what’s currently built of Mill Pond Park — including Pier 4 and the developed slice of Pier 5 — ended up as part of Yankee Stadium’s replacement parkland. The undeveloped section of Pier 5 wasn’t in that deal, Benepe says, though “it had been envisioned that it might be nice to have a park there one day.”

A little more history:

And from March 2006 Gotham Gazette:

“What if the city decided to put a stadium in the middle of your local park?

…instead of being set inside a large, green space surrounded by hundreds of mature trees, the fields would be scattered on separate parcels, including the tops of parking garages. The new recreational spaces would be closer to the highway and train tracks and an additional five-minute to half-hour walk from where people live. Most of the trees would be cut down. The new stadium would go smack in the middle of the community’s current park, next to a residential area.”

NYTimes 2008: “None of the replacement parks have been completed, and construction on several has not yet started; however, the parks department has built a temporary replacement park on a parking lot in the area, opened a ball field this spring at a school almost a mile to the east, and is building a sports field at a recreation center about a mile to the north.”

…Mr. Benepe [former NYC Parks Commissioner] said he was sympathetic to All Hallows High School and others …[re].. old Macombs Dam Park… “By the time all of the construction is done, this neighborhood will have one of the finest collection of parks and sports facilities anywhere in the city…”

From Bill Moyers (Updated September 12, 2013):

“There, in the South Bronx, the poorest district in the entire country, taxpayers were being asked to subsidize the private profits of one of the wealthiest franchises in organized sports. The Yankees’ owner at the time, the late George Steinbrenner, had bought the team for $10 million dollars in 1973, and by the time the old Yankee Stadium — “the House that Ruth built” — was ready to be replaced, it was worth $1.3 billion, according to Forbes.

Taxpayers were promised big bang for their buck, with new jobs and prosperity coming to a neighborhood feeling the full impact of the recession. The claim was considered dubious at the time, and a study conducted in 2011 found that the 3,400 stadium jobs paid a median wage of $10.50 an hour for non-managerial positions. The Yankees, meanwhile, had grabbed $50 million in tax breaks, $326 million in capital improvements, $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds and 24 acres of parks that had been owned by the public (after dragging its feet for several years, outrage over the loss of the parks eventually led the city to complete a long-promised facility for local youths last year).”

On-line Petition to Save Rivington House now available!

Please sign: HERE

Thank you!

Bill Moyers website. This post first appeared at Jacobin Magazine

By Christian Parenti

“The effects of climate change are already upon us. Here’s what the 2020s and 2030s will look like if we fail to change things.”

If properly planned for, one can imagine how such problems could be managed. But if the current denial continues until markets are caught unaware, there could be regional real estate panics and, flowing from those, major financial losses.

…NYC’s Department of Finance recently estimated the total assessed value of the city’s property for fiscal year 2017 at more than $1 trillion. That is real money, enough to help trigger problems in financial markets more broadly.

Collapsed property values means a collapsed tax base, which means local government will be hard pressed to make costly infrastructure repairs. And it is the infrastructure as a whole that property values depend on.

Defensive Preparations

The NYC tristate area offers a glimpse into the possibilities and pathologies of planning for sea-level rise. After 2012, when Hurricane Sandy did $50 billion in economic damage, including destroying or damaging 650,000 homes, it was clear something needed to be done. Eventually Congress allocated about $60 billion in federal aid for recovery and resilience work in the impacted area. But the pace of disbursement has been painfully slow.

The city is now building a barrier around lower Manhattan, called the “Big U.” Designed to be covered with grass and serve as public open space, the wall will run from 42nd on the East Side, along the shore, and up to 57th Street on the West Side. Construction will take years and cost billions….

…At this rate and in this fashion, it is hard to imagine how the city’s entire 520-mile coastline could be secured. Worse yet, half preparations are, in some ways, as bad as no preparation. …New York City’s largely symbolic efforts thus far, “Barriers, dikes and levees make people feel safe, even when they are not.”

…Meanwhile, in a clear subsidy to unsustainable gentrification, the city is also planning to build a $2.5 billion tramline along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront, where old industrial warehouses are giving way to luxury high-rises.”

And, we would add, spending NYC money to fund Diller Island?

It was COLD! But we persisted from 10am to 1pm. Mulching, weeding, raking, clearing out garbage and leaves, daffodil bulb planting near the benches and in the empty tree pits.

Thanks to Emily and Gabriella who led the NYers for Parks crew with Michelle, Kevin and Caitlin:

And the terrific and hard working Con Edison volunteers organized by Christina.

And M’Finda Kalunga’s Jonathan. And K too!

The Sri Sathya Sai Baba handed out food to the neighborhood as they do every Saturday.

NYers for Parks brought coffee and snacks.

We got a LOT done.

Thank you to Captain Sanchez’ PEP officers: Vazquez, Motrechuk, and Villani!

The mulch guys Joe and Samir could not be stopped!

The Soup providers were out today in front of the M’Finda Kalunga Garden.

Some of the soup volunteers did a bit of work in the Garden with Jonathan. K planted aliums, Angela raked, Bob supervised!

And Ted created large posters for the campaign to remind the Mayor to keep his promise to hold a meeting with the buyers of Rivington House and Councilmember Chin:

From “Just Mercy – A Story of Justice and Redemption”

“Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system.”

From Manhattan Borough President’s Office:

Green Map, University Settlement and SDR Community Coalition thank Jean Gardner and the Tishman Environment and Design Center (TEDC), The New School, LESReady, 596 Acres, terrific students, all the table leaders and participants!

We are still processing the information and ideas gathered from the public, students,  faculty and other engaged citizens who showed up to help us reclaim this building for the neighborhood.

We’ve had 4 local visionings with more to come to update and gather all perspectives on any outcome for this building – but we are grateful to have those who study weigh in with fresh perspectives. It takes a village.

Photos by Dee Dee Maucher.