If You Don't Build it They Won't Come

Ray Kinsella may have given up by now if the voice that he heard belonged to someone from the New York City Parks Commission. A report in Sunday's NY Times revealed that the costs for new parks around Yankee Stadium had nearly doubled, from $95.5 million to $174 million.

Not one park has been completed as of yet and most have not even begun to be built to replace the lands lost when construction of the new Yankee Stadium (28.4-acre Macombs Dam Park and a portion of the 18.5-acre John Mullaly Park) began.

Residents are not only upset at the delay, but at losing wide expanses of land. Instead of huge parks areas like Macombs Dam Park, smaller parcels of land are being distribued throughout the area.

“We’ve lost our biggest park, and what we’ve been reduced to is this parking lot,” said Anita Antonetty, 51, a South Bronx resident, referring to the temporary park at Jerome Avenue and East 161st Street. “We lost hundreds of trees that were 80 years old, and now there’s this monstrosity of cement across the street from where people live.”

“The real emphasis was on building a stadium for the Yankees, and the community and the parks were an inconvenient afterthought,” said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group. “The Yankees couldn’t miss a season, but it was O.K. for the community to miss five years of parkland and be shut out of a community benefits agreement.”

A temporary park was built, though a year behind schedule at Jerome Avenue and 161st Street and it is heavily trafficked. It's done little to appease the residents whose land has been encroached on. And that park will eventually be paved over for a parking lot. The cost of which is sure to be higher than originally anticipated.