Riverside Park Jogger Brutalized

Manhattan

A woman was critically injured by a mugger who threw her into a wall as she jogged in Riverside Park, cops said yesterday, according to the New York Post.

The 19-year-old victim was running by the tennis courts near West 120th Street at 6 a.m. Monday when the thug attacked her and stole her iPod.

A passer-by found her in a pool of blood on a bench.

The woman was rushed to St. Luke's Hospital with bleeding on the brain, a fractured cheekbone and cuts to the face, head and neck.

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Park jogger brutalized 

New York Post  - July 7, 2010 - By Larry Celona   

Woodside's Triangle Park A Step Closer to Reality

Woodside residents Tom Ryan (l.), his daughter Victoria, her friend Lorraine Schucke and Marion Molno (r.) hold photo of disputed land.  The property, 34th Ave. and 59th and 60th Sts - has been the subject of a 10-year struggle between neighborhood residents who want it turned into a public park and the landowner who has plans to build there. City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer just secured funding for the purchase of Triangle Park. (Photo: Keh for News)

Queens

A years-long dispute over a small plot of land at the intersection of three Woodside streets may come to an end with a $350,000 boost from the city, according to the New York Daily News. 

The land - dubbed Woodside Triangle Park by locals - has been the subject of a 10-year tug of war between neighborhood residents who want it to remain green space and the landowner who has plans to build there.

Now, City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer has secured $350,000, which he hopes will be enough to purchase the land at the junction of 34th Ave. and 59th and 60th Sts. and turn it into a city park.

"We have very little open space, so when the threat of developing came in, we were against it," said Tom Ryan, one of several neighborhood residents who have been lobbying for park space.

Vinny Oppedisano, owner of Sano Construction Corp., bought the land in 2000 and said he has been willing to sell it to the city ever since.

"I told them, 'Show me the money and I'll leave and you can have the property,'" he said, adding that the price tag has gotten higher as he has invested more money in the land. "I've been waiting 10 years."

The plot was left open to the public until recently, when Oppedisano gathered all the necessary city permits and began construction of an 11,000-square-foot, two-story house.

A fence was then erected around the triangle and its trees were cut down.

"They were such beautiful trees," said resident Marion Molno. "That just broke our hearts."

But when the bulldozer started digging, the community came out in full force.

"We need more green, not another house," said resident Daniel Kim, 80, who lives directly across the street from the land.

At a June 15 rally, Van Bramer (D-Sunnyside) and Oppedisano came to an agreement - the landowner would halt construction and give the councilman a few weeks to come up with the money.

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Triangle squared away? Woodside land dispute may finally be solved

New York Daily News -  July 6, 2010 - By Leigh Remizowski

Woodside Park Controversy

MYFOX NY - June, 20 2010 - Adrian Carrasquillo

Queens Electeds Trying to Sell "Decrepit" Parkland To Cemetery

No word on why elected officials allowed the park to remain in this condition. 

Queens

A PROPOSAL to sell a hard-to-access 4 acre parcel of parkland in East Elmhurst to a cemetery has stalled - despite strong community support, according to the Daily News.

Elected officials said the proceeds from the sale of the triangular plot - bounded by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and 30th Ave. - would go toward purchasing park land in another location. And the sale would allow the nearby St. Michael's Cemetery to expand.

But the city Parks Department won't sign off on the plan until a comparable plot of land is lined up, officials said.

"The reason why we're opposing the transfer of the land is because we don't have replacement parkland," said agency spokeswoman Trish Bertuccio. "Green space in New York City is scarce, and we want to make sure that we preserve as much of it as possible."

The parcel is open space along the highway, without any playgrounds or play equipment.

But Assemblyman Michael Gianaris isn't so sure that the land is worth saving.

"It's decrepit. It's unkempt. There's rats and vermin in there," the Astoria Democrat said. "We have the opportunity to actually create acreage of good parkland in a different location and put this land to productive use."

He was approached by cemetery officials with the idea last year, he said. In February 2009, he introduced a bill in the Assembly to authorize the sale - since city parkland can't be bought or sold without legislative approval.

St. Michael's "will keep that land in much better condition than it is now," (Peter) Vallone said. "It's going to make the piece of property much more beautiful to the public."

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Parkland's sale to cemetery is ailing

New York Daily News - July 6th 2010 - By Clare Trapasso

Proposed New Rules Worry Community Garden Advocates

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesTremont Community Garden in the Bronx in 2008. New rules are being written for the city’s community gardens.

CITY-WIDE

New rules being drafted by the city may omit some protections and assurances accorded nearly a decade ago to hundreds of community gardens scattered across the five boroughs, according to the New York Times.

The proposed rules, which are being written by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, are meant to replace a 2002 agreement between the city and the New York State attorney general’s office that helped end years of court battles and protests involving the future of the gardens.

That agreement, which is set to expire in September, settled a lawsuit in which the attorney general’s office sought to stop the Giuliani administration from selling city-owned gardens to developers.

As a result, the city preserved 198 community gardens in the parks department’s GreenThumb program, increased the protection of 197 other gardens and agreed not to develop 100 gardens maintained by the Department of Education. About 150 gardens were designated for sale and development.

Several drafts of the new rules, which are not yet finalized, describe a process to develop gardens that is similar to the one in the existing agreement. But the drafts and the current agreement also differ significantly. The drafts, so far, do not contain language guaranteeing the continuation of gardens preserved by the existing agreement. And while the existing agreement states that “the city represents that it has no present intention of selling or developing” other gardens, such assurances do not appear in the drafts.

Consequently, some gardeners said, the draft rules would appear to make all gardens equally eligible for development, regardless of their current status.

“This would be a policy change from preservation to the ability to develop,” said Aresh Javadi of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, who said he would ask that the city make all GreenThumb gardens permanent. “We want to work with them to achieve a fruitful agreement that gives parks gardens a safe and protected environment.”

New Rules Worry Community Garden Advocates

New York Times  City Room - July 6, 2010 - By Colin Moynihan

Man Shot, Woman Raped In McCarren Park Over Last Two weeks

A Lone Park Enforcement Police Officer to be Hired For the Park

Brooklyn 

The mercury is rising in McCarren Park — and so is the crime.

There have been 15 incidents within a two-block radius of the Greenpoint park over the past three months, including a rape and a shooting that occurred within the past two weeks, according to the Brooklyn Paper. 

Last Saturday night, at approximately 8:30 pm, a woman was raped in the McCarren Park bathrooms after she met a man on the corner of Bedford Avenue and N. 12th Street earlier that night.

And on June 18, just after 1 am, a gunman fired at random inside the park and two bullets pierced a man in his legs.

Neither the rapist nor the shooter has been caught.

Other crimes near the park include four robberies, four assaults, three burglaries, and two grand larcenies, as perps have snatched victim’s phones away, broken into their cars, or straight-up robbed them point blank on the street.

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Heat wave leads to crime wave in Greenpoint’s McCarren Park

The Brooklyn Paper - June 2, 2010 - By Arron Short 

Prospect Park 4th of July Filth - UPDATED

The lakeshore in the southeastern portion of Prospect Park was an unholy mess on July 5, though a small army of workers moved in to begin a long day of cleaning at around 9:30 am.

(Photo:  Julie Rosenberg/Community Newspaper Group)

BROOKLYN

Happy 4th of July!!  Brooklyn Paper editor Gersh Kuntzman posted a video on YouTube that he describes as the "Worst Hall of Shame Ever." (more than two thousand views so far) The video depicts some of the filth left over from the 4th of July weekend in Prospect Park that he shot this morning. Click here or below for the full article at The Brooklyn Paper. 

A Walk in the Park tried hard to find similar conditions in other heavily utilized parks - Central, Madison Square, the High Line Esplanade, and Bryant -  over the weekend but was unsuccessful. Must be the maintenance and security dedicated to these public spaces -  basic maintenance and operation necessities that apparently Brooklyn parks, and many of the other non-privately maintained parks in all of the City's boroughs including Manhattan,  do not deserve.

The Brooklyn Paper has been chronicling the lack of basic maintenance and security in Prospect Park for some time. 

Brooklyn

We’ve seen some pretty crazy stuff in Prospect Park this summer — entrails, blood, chicken heads, dead turtles, swan-on-swan violence (alleged!) — but nothing compares to this morning’s disgusting conditions on the lakefront in the southeastern portion of the park.

 

For now, however, enjoy our latest video footage from this morning by clicking here.

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Our most disgusting ‘Meadows of Shame’ video — ever!

The Brooklyn Paper - July 5, 2010

Artificial Turf Not Holding Up According To Survey

"The city keeps installing more, but they don't take care of the ones they have. They are repeating the same mistakes as with grass fields, but this time it's much more costly."

Artificial Turf - Central Park East Community Playground. E. 106th St & Park Avenue in in East Harlem. July 6, 2010. Besides producing temperatures of over 160 degrees, the field which opened in September 2008, is already showing signs of deterioration in numerous locations. The field was a partnership between the Trust For Public Land, Department of Education and the School Construction Authority. The public school houses three schools - an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school - with a total of 1,000 students. (photo © Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates)

City- Wide

Maybe artificial turf fields aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Nearly half of the synthetic fields surveyed in a new report are so worn they failed to make the grade - even though city officials have long trumpeted turf over grass for being easier and cheaper to maintain, according to the New York Daily News.

"Clearly more maintenance needs to be done," said Cheryl Huber, deputy director of New Yorkers for Parks, which released the study last week.

Of the 40 fields and playgrounds with artificial turf surveyed by the group over the past two summers, 19 were slapped with grades of D or F - mostly for having dangerous holes, loose seams and worn-out plastic blades.

Among the worst spots was Sternberg Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where investigators found problems as far back as 2008 - just three years after the turf was installed, the group said.

"It's all torn up - home plate, the pitcher's mound. The situation's the same all over the field," said Ernesto Noble, 65, a retired school bus driver, who was warming up before a baseball game last week. "They need to send somebody to fix this place."

Nearby, pals Josh Diaz, 20, and Brian Montijo, 20, said the holes and torn seams were dangerous.

"It comes undone, it gets ripped up," said Diaz, as Montijo pointed out a gaping hole to the left of home plate. "I don't play as hard on this."

Wagner Playground in East Harlem - where investigators also spotted loose turf seams, missing or detached turf and worn away blades - failed two years in a row. It, too, was installed in 2005.

"The uneven surface can make you fall over when you play," said Mobido Sy, 11, of Harlem, who added that last summer he tripped on one of the field's loose seams during a soccer game and slammed into another player. "I got a cut on my head."

Other turf trouble spots highlighted in the report include Baruch Park and Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the lower East Side, Marble Hill Playground and St. Mary's Park in the Bronx and the Parade Grounds in Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

The city has installed the synthetic grass in 94 fields and 17 playgrounds across the city since 1998, the group said. Another 21 asphalt fields are slated to get the synthetic grass by 2013.

"The city keeps installing more, but they don't take care of the ones they have," said Geoffrey Croft, head of New York City Park Advocates, which has been critical of the city's push for artificial turf. "They are repeating the same mistakes as with grass fields, but this time it's much more costly."

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City's artificial turf fields full of holes, loose seams according to new survey

New York Daily News - July 4, 2010 - By Vinnie Rotondaro, Peter Simunovich and Elizabeth Hays