Barry Grodenchik Appointed As New Parks Committee Chair For City Council

City-Wide

By Geoffrey Croft

City Council Member Barry S. Grodenchik has replaced Mark Levine as the Chair of the Parks and Recreation Committee.
   
Grodenchik represents the twenty-third council district in Eastern Queens and was elected to the council in November 2015. 

“I am honored to have been elected by my colleagues as chair of the parks committee,"  Barry Grodenchik said in a statement.

"As a lifelong New Yorker who grew up in city parks and the current representative of a district with over a thousand acres of parkland, I welcome the opportunity to work to improve the parks that are vital to every community in the city.  

I thank Speaker Corey Johnson for his support and look forward to working with my colleagues on the committee as well as with Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver and his staff,” he said. 

The appointments were announced today at City Hall.

The new parks chair took the opportunity to address his fellow legislators on the floor. 

Council member Grodenchik spoke about the transformative impacts of parks.  

He recounted a story of his father Nathan and his friends walking across Crotona Park in the Bronx in the summer of 1935 and being approached by a "Parkie" who asked if they wanted to learn how to play tennis. 

His friends kept walking. Barry's father played tennis for 62 years until he was no longer able to at the age of 79.



Parks and Recreation Committee:  Barry S. Grodenchik-Chair,  Joseph Borelli, (Staten Island),  Justin Lee Brannan (Brooklyn), Andrew Cohen, (Bronx),  Costa Constantinides, (Queens), Mark Gjonaj (Bronx),  Andy King (Bronx),  Peter Koo (Queens), Francisco Moya, Queens),  Eric Ulrich, (Queens), and  Jimmy Van Bramer, (Queens).