LAND PLEDGE YANK’D
Park grab by city
The de Blasio administration is reneging on the city’s decadeold promise to replace parkland lost during the construction of the new Yankee Stadium in favor of a high-rise development.
The city’s Economic Development Corp. is pushing plans to build up to 1,045 units of marketrate and affordable housing as well as commercial space along a vacant four-acre lot on East 149th Street in The Bronx.
The area was long earmarked to be the last leg of the Mill Pond Park off the Harlem River.
Geoffrey Croft of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates said the sleazy switcheroo “screams of Brooklyn Bridge Park all over again, where [some of the] waterfront parkland once promised to a neighborhood was taken away by government in favor of high-rise housing.”
Croft and other activists met with representatives of Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito last week to lobby her to block the Bronx development, which must still go through a review process.
As both speaker and the legislator representing the affected Mott Haven neighborhood, Mark-Viverito will wield tremendous influence over whether the project gets approved by the City Council.
Mark-Viverito said through a rep that she is “reviewing this proposal” and remains undecided.
The area lost more than 25 acres of parkland after the Bronx Bombers in 2005 were greenlighted to build their new ballpark.
At the time, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. George Pataki and the Yankees promised to eventually create more parkland than was lost. But only about 21 acres of new green space has been delivered.
Killian Jordan, a member of Bronx Community Board 4, called it “spectacularly inappropriate” that the city would be dangling the hope of bringing the neighborhood much-needed affordable housing at the expense of losing promised parkland.
She suggested that the EDC instead build affordable housing on some of the city-owned lots now used for stadium parking, urging Yankee fans to use more mass transit.
But EDC off icials insist that the mixed-use project will be a big victory for the community because it will still include some new open space and provide neighborhood jobs.
The agency said it is considering acquiring a 2. 5-acre lot, f ive blocks south of Mill Pond Park on East 144th Street, to build another park there.
“We have a booming population that needs both affordable housing and recreational space, and [our] . . . investment strategy aims to do just that,” said EDC spokeswoman Stephanie Baez.
The city last year purchased land needed to complete a long-delayed park on the Williamsburg-Greenpoint waterfront in Brooklyn to appease residents there. The locals had been promised the parkland in 2005 as a giveback for a controversial neighborhood rezoning that included construction of high-rise housing.