We (volunteers, park gardeners, Bird Sanctuary guardians, park users, Parks Department, Goddard Homeless Outreach, Police, PEP officers, City and State electeds (who have given funding and offered more funding) are all working hard but our park remains a struggling strip of land…poverty, lack of resources, and heavy use by a community where this is the only “vacation” spot or air conditioning or get-away green space and, increasingly, home and daytime living room.
We get good help from Parks on helping us maintain the publicly stewarded spaces. But we need infrastructure help that requires the park’s department to make decisions and allocate resources or at least permission.
The Oval Track and Soccer Field at Canal/Hester Streetway: dangerous and almost unusable
We’ve offered ideas (labor and fundraising) on how to shift things: return Stanton Building to Neighborhood Use, Remove the Cargo container alongside it, Repair the Oval for 3 schools and community after-school soccer teams, Open Broome Street Bathrooms, Install Bike Racks for public’s bikes, Big Bellies (and pick-ups of trash within them), more frequent cleaning, Remove cars and trucks parking in this narrow park (incentivize parks staff with Metrocards?) etc.
We are not interested in endless blame, we are interested in solutions and moving forward. Awaiting Parks.
