When the Division of Metropolis Planning introduced its huge Lengthy Island Metropolis housing growth plan to neighborhood residents final yr, it put ahead an formidable imaginative and prescient for the waterfront: To increase an current mile-long esplanade by roughly one other half mile to attach the neighborhood from Hunter’s Level to the south as much as Queensbridge Park to the north.
However longtime Queensbridge Homes resident Daniel Taylor, 69, was pissed off to be taught that the proposed open house would cease on the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, simply wanting the general public housing advanced that has been his dwelling for greater than six a long time.
The Queensbridge Homes, the biggest public housing advanced within the nation, used to have its personal signature park, a New Deal undertaking underneath Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia whose playgrounds and ball courts ran for half a mile underneath the bridge, protecting just a little greater than three acres and connecting the waterfront to the west to what’s referred to as Queens Plaza at this time to the east.
Generally known as Child Park, it closed within the Eighties for lead paint removing on the bridge, and most of it by no means re-opened to the general public.
Right this moment, the Division of Parks and Recreation makes use of swaths of the Child Park house for trailers used as workplaces, and for truck parking. At the same time as growth within the neighborhood has boomed and introduced new parks to the prosperous waterfront and to neighboring Queens Plaza, NYCHA residents have by no means regained entry to most of Child Park.
“It was simply the identical previous rhetoric because it’s at all times been,” stated Taylor. “We’ve by no means benefited.”
Longtime locals have fond recollections of what Child Park meant to them. Whereas attending to Queensbridge Park by the water required crossing busy Vernon Boulevard, at Child Park mother and father and children loved playgrounds shut by.
“You stroll in — it was every part. The sprinkler was enormous, the handball courtroom, the playground itself — we had like, two playgrounds! And bear in mind them sq. metallic swings that used to burn the youngsters’ butts?” Queensbridge resident Kim Alston, 65, recalled at Queensbridge in a late summer time afternoon. “That was the worst factor they ever did, was to shut that park. These children don’t know something about it.”
The Parks Division is at the moment spending $6 million to reconstruct a half-acre portion of Child Park, and in 2023 accomplished reconstruction of handball and basketball half courts. However longtime residents say these efforts cowl solely a small fraction of what Child Park as soon as was.
“That little half acre of land that they’re making an attempt to name the renovation of Child Park is an insult to me, as a result of nothing in there has something to do with the Child Park,” Taylor stated.
Whereas Taylor and different residents have for twenty years advocated for Child Park to be absolutely restored, their trigger has struggled to draw significant consideration till now.
Penny Lee, who served as a senior planner for Lengthy Island Metropolis on the Division of Metropolis Planning from 1988 to 2017, reasoned that it’s as a result of Queensbridge had been remoted inside a principally industrial neighborhood till current years.
“They simply by no means had a sufficiently big constituency, however the truth that they’re the nation’s largest public housing growth,” Lee stated. “They didn’t have a surrounding residential neighborhood that they may plug into to assist plead their case, and so I feel, consequently, it’s simply been forgotten about.”
However that seems to be altering as Lengthy Island Metropolis has grow to be one of many quickest rising neighborhoods within the metropolis over the past decade. Practically 850 individuals have signed on to a petition began this summer time to revive Child Park, whereas the Hunters Level Parks Conservancy, Court docket Sq. Civic Affiliation and Lengthy Island Metropolis Partnership have additionally supplied their assist.
Most crucially, Councilmember Julie Gained (D-Queens), is insisting on a full restoration of Child Park as a situation for her assist for Mayor Eric Adams’ Lengthy Island Metropolis rezoning plan, which may convey some 15,000 new flats to the world underneath the banner “OneLIC.” The Council should vote by October 29 on whether or not to let the rezoning proceed.
“With out this, there isn’t a manner that the Metropolis Council goes to go this undertaking,” Gained stated on the Council’s September council listening to on the rezoning.
She demanded, concerning the Parks Division trailers and parking tons, a timeline, funding and commitments for redevelopment forward of the Council vote.
“Now we have a possibility right here to proper the historic wrongs in Lengthy Island Metropolis,” Gained added. She later instructed THE CITY in an announcement: “For many years, Queensbridge residents have decried how the parks beneath the Queensboro bridge have been stolen from them by the Metropolis Authorities to create a poverty barrier. Queensbridge residents are reduce off from the remainder of Lengthy Island Metropolis—it’s time to finish segregation in Lengthy Island Metropolis by connecting Gantry Park to Queensbridge Park and reclaim these park areas.”
Gained’s assist for the plan is essential, as Councilmembers sometimes vote with the colleague representing the world the place zoning modifications are proposed.
“We’re already failing,” Gained added, pointing to statistics supplied by the Division of Metropolis Planning in the course of the listening to that exposed how Lengthy Island Metropolis at the moment presents simply 0.9 acres of open house per 1,000 residents — far under the objective of two.5 acres per 1,000 residents set forth by metropolis pointers. “That’s fairly abysmal. Even for people who find themselves unhealthy at math, that’s fairly unhealthy.”
‘We Would Not Cease Taking part in’
When Child Park opened in 1941, it boasted slides, swings, jungle gyms, sprinklers and a wading pool for kids, in addition to basketball, handball, volleyball, shuffleboard and bocce ball courts. A marionette theater inside a Parks Division trailer typically stopped there for puppet reveals, too.
The house supplied “badly wanted recreation services for individuals of all ages,” the Brooklyn Eagle wrote on the time, together with for employees in Lengthy Island Metropolis’s protection business, which included the Brewster Aeronautical Company plane plant which manufactured fighter planes for the World Conflict II effort.
Queensbridge residents included 3,097 white and 52 Black households that yr, in accordance with the LaGuardia & Wagner Archives. And when residents Patrick and Abbie Patte recalled their expertise shifting into Queensbridge in 1939 to the Day by day Information 25 years later, they listed Child Park amongst their favourite options in Queensbridge.
Stated Abbie Patten: “That is the place we now have raised our 5 fantastic boys, and that is the place we now have had many gratifying nice experiences.” A type of boys grew as much as be a priest, whereas others have been a navy lieutenant, a chef and a financial institution clerk.
Taylor, for his half, has loads of scars on his knees to show his days of taking part in within the sprinklers and monkey bars at Child Park as a baby. On an August afternoon at Queensbridge, he recalled how he had discovered to experience a motorcycle, putt golf balls, and play basketball with neighbors at Child Park.
“We’d not cease taking part in,” Taylor recalled. “If I scraped my knee it didn’t matter, I’d get proper again up.”
Alston chimed in: “You see, again then, everyone knew everyone — we have been secure in that park. I don’t care what block you got here from. You have been secure in that park.”
“And that’s my important level,” Taylor added. “That was a spot our mother and father took us that they knew they have been secure. They didn’t fear about us there.”
The decline of Child Park began within the mid-70s and 80s, longtime residents say. By the point Jude Shaw, 81, arrived at Queensbridge as a 29-year-old in 1973, Child Park had already been noticeably downsized, he stated, with the playgrounds and sprinklers torn down and the basketball courts lumpy.
“Residents had referred to as it Child Park, nevertheless it actually wasn’t no Child Park — no park, no child,” Shaw recalled not too long ago as he handed the park on a day stroll. “There was nothing there.”
Keen to listen to extra about Child Park’s glory days, Shaw turned to Taylor and requested: “How did it look?”
“It was clear, man,” Taylor responded. “Crispy clear.”
As of late, there’s little to point out that your entire strip is, certainly, nonetheless formally mapped as public parkland. Skid steers unload undesirable junk right into a parking zone dumpster the place the bocce courts as soon as stood, whereas tall wire fences in a stretch nearer to the river cordon off workplace trailers occupied by Parks Division directors — within the very spot the place some residents nonetheless recall taking part in basketball on full-sized courts.
‘A Actually Lengthy Time within the Making’
By the point Child Park’s decline started, the inhabitants at Queensbridge had additionally shifted dramatically. In 1969, Queensbridge’s inhabitants was 63% Black, 21% white, and 16% Puerto Rican, in accordance with the LaGuardia & Wagner Archives.
These residents bore the brunt of the systemic disinvestment that adopted, with President Richard Nixon withdrawing new federal funding for public housing in 1973. In the meantime, New York Metropolis was nearing chapter by the mid Seventies.
“They simply didn’t wish to do nothing over right here,” stated Daniel’s brother Eddie Taylor.
“The 70s was tough occasions,” Daniel added. “There was a degree the place they stopped taking good care of it, so individuals stopped bringing their children down there for that purpose.”
That park was progressively repurposed for non-recreational makes use of. The Parks Division issued a allow to NYCHA in 1975 to show what had been a bocce ball courtroom right into a parking zone that the Housing Authority nonetheless makes use of as one, although the allow permitting that change has lengthy since expired. By the Eighties, the Parks Division closed down most of Child Park to take away lead paint off of the Queensboro Bridge — with the tons plagued by contractor vehicles and instruments.
“Child Park by no means recovered,” stated Lee.
Lee recalled strolling over the Queensboro Bridge from her Higher East Facet residence to her workplace in Queens Plaza on her first day as a metropolis planner in 1988: “After which I landed in Queens Plaza, and thought, ‘That is Queens’ entrance door?’”
“There have been no bushes, or there have been medians with a number of scrappy bushes and plastic luggage in them. It was simply gross,” Lee stated. “I simply thought: One thing totally different must be right here. Now we have to scrub up this house.”
Lee’s curiosity in Queens Plaza additionally prolonged to Child Park. Queensbridge residents, she stated, deserved higher. It was, furthermore, a possibility to supply a linear connection between the plaza and the waterfront.
The opportunity of rebuilding Child Park has had a number of false begins, together with in 2001, when a Queens Plaza enchancment plan supported partially by federal funding referred to as for a brand new Child Park design together with different enhancements alongside the bridge.
However the Parks Division had different plans. Over Metropolis Planning and the local people board’s objections, it sought to maneuver its operations to assist city group gardens, together with an out of doors storage yard for heavy gear, to what had been Child Park, in 2005 — whereas designs for the Queens Plaza plan have been nicely underway.
The town stated on the time that this might solely take up about one-fifth of the three.12 acre house in an undesirable space immediately underneath the bridge, and that the relocation would “really velocity the redevelopment of the park by inserting a full-time Parks worker on web site.” However that was by no means absolutely dropped at bear.
The Division of Metropolis Planning proceeded with a park design anyway as a result of the scope of the Queens Plaza undertaking had referred to as for it. A closing schematic unveiled in 2006 confirmed native bushes and shrubs framing the doorway of the park, with a brand new recreation space the place the NYCHA parking zone now sits, complemented by an overlook backyard, kids’s play space and water play space.
However the Division of Metropolis Planning was by no means in a position to attain an settlement with Parks to revitalize the house, Lee recalled, as a result of Parks was involved concerning the security of a public open house beneath an elevated bridge — regardless that energetic park areas are additionally at the moment in use underneath bridges at Brooklyn Bridge Park, in addition to the newly revamped John V. Lindsay East River Park underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.
The Parks Division declined to remark, and as an alternative referred THE CITY’s inquiry to the mayor’s workplace.
“We agree with Lengthy Island Metropolis residents on the significance of open house, which is why we’re unifying the waterfront from Gantry Plaza State Park to Queensbridge Park as a big, vibrant public house,” stated mayoral spokesperson William Fowler, who harassed the rezoning “will end in practically 15,000 new houses and over 14,000 jobs” within the neighborhood. “Queensbridge Child Park is on the forefront of our minds as we proceed productive conversations with the councilmember.”
Lee, for her half, sees the Parks Division’s reconstruction of the half-acre house within the northwest nook of Child Park as a promising signal.
“It’s good to know that there’s been a change within the mindset. While you work in metropolis authorities, you’ve bought to be actually affected person, and prepared to simply accept incrementalism,” Lee instructed THE CITY. “And so, to me, the truth that they’re doing that part at Vernon Boulevard is a big victory. I applaud them for that as a result of it has been a extremely very long time within the making to get there.”
Gained can also be now negotiating with the Division of Transportation to transform a number of of its tons underneath the Queensboro Bridge into open house — which along with Child Park would make up 8.5 acres.
The Parks Division and the Division of Transportation stated on the September council listening to that the areas are at the moment supporting “geographically delicate operations,” reminiscent of bridge upkeep, and in response to an inquiry from THE CITY declined to say whether or not they assist changing the tons again to public open house.
Each companies, nonetheless, stated within the listening to that they’re dedicated to exploring choices to relocating and consolidating their operations.
Nick Molinari, chief of planning and neighborhood growth for the Parks Division, acknowledged Lengthy Island Metropolis falls wanting Metropolis Planning requirements for park house entry and stated the division can also be exploring choices to develop open house.
Taylor, for his half, stated he’s prepared to assist the rezoning even with out the total restoration of Child Park due to the job alternatives and housing it guarantees.
“I don’t wish to throw the newborn out with the tub water,” Taylor stated.
