From Newsgroup: nyc.politics

Millions of dollars in taxpayer money have been spent on a new park and
dog run in Queens u now if only residents could use them.

The $17.8 million state-funded Maspeth Park has been a virtual ghost town since opening under the Kosciuszko Bridge last year.

It is in an isolated industrial and manufacturing zone at 54th Road and
43rd Street u over a mile from the nearest subway station uand lacks the proper signage and lighting for passers-by to find it, locals told The
Post.

oNobody even knows about this. IAm the only one here u always,o said Elvis Mazzotta, 36, who was one of three people seen there on a sunny Tuesday afternoon last month.

Mazzotta said he goes there about once a week, calling it oone of the best workout parks in the city,AA although hardly easily accessible.

He said he is forced to drive to the site and park on the sidewalk, as
there is no public parking readily available during the week.

Karen Narvaez, who has lived in Sunnyside with her husband and three young kids for 12 years, resides with her family less than half a mile from the
park u but says her children canAt walk to it because of the highway cuts through the area.

oHow are you gonna get there? ItAs not safe for kids to walk the path to
get to the skatepark,o said Narvaez, 38.

The park drew similar criticisms from the local Juniper Park Civic
Association when the site opened last year.

Though Gov. Kathy Hochul claimed in a press release that the new park is olocated within walking distance from surrounding residential
neighborhoods, including Sunnyside and West Maspeth,o the civic group
argued that strolling through an industrial zone first ois quite an
adventure from any direction.o

oWe need to do more advertising,o acknowledged Thomas Mituzas, who serves
as secretary of the nearby Blissville Civic Association in Long Island
City.

oMore can be done. a We need to improve the 43rd Street underpass and make
it more inviting to people [with] better lighting and better access,o he
said.

The park lacks much green space but does come with basketball courts,
exercise equipment, game tables and even professional sports lighting for after-dark recreation.

While some locals lamented that theyAve waited decades for a park u only
to have it be mainly concrete u Mituzas said the site is still a great addition to the neighborhood.

oWeAll take a park, whatever you want to call it,o he said. oItAs a pure
joy for me.o

Blissville is oone of the safest neighborhoodso for children to walk
through, and the park draws up to 20 or 30 people on a good weekend,
Mituzas said.

One of its more popular attractions is its concrete skateboarding park u
which draws a crowd of a whopping half-dozen skaters on weeknights, said a skateboarder who declined to give his name.

The 27-year-old skater said he isnAt bothered by the lack of public transportation to it because the park is worth going the extra mile u or
two u to access it since it is near a popular street spot to skate and
film.

Meanwhile, just over a mile from Maspeth Park is the L/CPL Thomas P.
Noonan Jr. Playground in Sunnyside, which opened a $2.5 million dog run to fanfare last month.

But that park has faced its own accessibility issues for years, local
families told The Post.

The biggest concern surrounds a group of homeless men who live on the
grounds and shower in the kidsA splash pad and trash the bathrooms and
pass out u naked and high u in the toddler playground, residents said.

Maria, 43, said a gang of homeless men moved into the childrenAs
playground after the dog park where they used to sleep was renovated.

A park employee told The Post the half-dozen men have been ousing the
bathroom all around the parko u and their messy business has prompted park workers to close the womenAs bathroom.

Illicit gatherings grow up to 25 people on the weekends and consist of the
men fighting, doing drugs around young residents and littering the park
with crack pipes and needles, locals said.

oItAs bad,o said Sunnyside resident Cristian Humala. 39. oThey use the sprinklers to shower all the time, even when there are kids.o

Alyssa, 35, who lives a block from the park, says the homeless at the park
got worse after the pandemic, and as a result, she doesnAt go there
anymore without her husband.

Anna, a 42-year-old babysitter who comes to the park every day, said she witnessed a man pull a huge knife in broad daylight during a fight over a woman.

oThe kids were all here,o she said.

City Council member Julie Won, whose district includes both Maspeth Park
and Noonan Playground, told The Post that individuals sleeping in parks is
a opervasive citywide issue and is not isolated to Noonan Playground.o

oOur city is in an affordable housing crisis,o Won said in a statement.

She added that her office is currently working to identify and accept recommendations from locals to build more parks.

Sally Z
1 hour ago

Someone needs to explain to Julie Won that the so-called "affordable
housing crisis" is created by our government that keeps selling our land
to well-connected developers through nontransparent backroom deals. Who
then rent them out to wealthy foreigners to make huge profits. They also
bring more businesses to NYC which attracts job-seekers who then further exacerbate the problem they created, thereby driving up rents, which
further enriches the well-connected developers. All the new housing that's being built is for "other" people and not for us, the native New Yorkers.
Then they give away our tax dollars to people that don't work. Yeah, we
know what's going on and so do the politicians.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/01/us-news/20-million-in-taxpayer-funds-spent- on-nyc-park-dog-run-that-few-use-thanks-to-location-homeless-druggies/
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