By Matt Chaban 10/25/12 8:30am

Greensward

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El Barrio’s Secret Gardens: East Harlem Has Some Unexpected Parks, But It Still Needs Better Ones

Standing at the corner of 125th Street and 2nd Avenue, no one would ever guess that this was the gateway to one of East Harlem’s greatest open space assets. Even on a warm fall day, with the sun shining on the intersection, it is an inhospitable place for man or beast. Sedans, delivery trucks, minivans, gypsy cabs, 18-wheelers, what seems like half the vehicles in Manhattan rush by, honking and screeching, onto the Triborough Bridge. There is no signage, no walkways, no foliage directing—certainly not inviting—pedestrians across the bridge and onto Randalls Island.

The 265-acre landmass nestled between the South Bronx, East Harlem and Astoria is a wonderland of ball fields, tennis courts, venues, picnic areas and rolling lawns. It is, after the just-as-close, just-as-far northern end of Central Park, about the best parkland available to residents of East Harlem. Yet geographic and, more importantly, infrastructural impediments have made Randalls Island all but inaccessible for a low-income community desperately in need of open space.

“Just look at this tangle of roads,” Alyson Beha, director of research planning and policy for New Yorkers for Parks, said during a recent tour of East Harlem’s open space. “There are these large recreational facilities that border East Harlem, but it can be very difficult in terms of people being able to access them. We’ve got some real wayfinding issues.” Read More

By Aaron Short 10/10/12 11:44am

Gettin' High Line

6 Photos

The Hinterlands of the High Line

The High Line Will Never Be the Same: Strolling the Wilds of Chelsea One Last Time

It is an unusual and yet utterly New York paradox that to glimpse the natural world in Manhattan you must visit an unnatural place.

That is part of the appeal of the weirdly beautiful High Line. Not the manicured park, with its concrete boardwalk and hordes of tourists but what came before on the 1.5-miles railroad trestle, the despoiled beauty of Mother Nature set loose in the wilds of Chelsea, undisturbed for decades but for the occasional trespasser.

More than 10 million visitors have taken in the breathtaking views of the city’s skyline and the Hudson River and traipsed through its minimalist landscape of historic tracks and native grasses since the High Line park opened in 2009. It has encouraged development in Chelsea and Meatpacking, inspired artists and filmmakers, and managed to polarize the surrounding neighborhood before it has even been fully restored.

Yet the thin strip of pre-post-industrial wildlands that made that all possible is about to disappear. Read More

By Kit Dillon 9/25/12 5:36pm

on the waterfront

16 Photos

Hunts Point Landing Now Open

EDC and Congressman Serrano Open Hunts Point Landing Park, Go Kayaking

Much has been made of the transformation of the city’s waterfront, but it is usually tonier precincts like Manhattan and bourgey Brooklyn getting all the attention. Meanwhile, the Bronx waterfront has undergone a quieter transformation that has still managed to maintain its industrial character while introducing greenspace and recreation to the area.

Yesterday, the latest piece of this aquatic puzzle opened, a fun-looking 1.5-acre park in the Hunt’s Point section of the borough.  It includes a new fishing pier, a kayak launch, and a restored shoreline with tidal pools that, according to the city’s Economic Development Corporation, will naturally absorb storm water runoff.  The park is liberally sprinkled with large granite slabs of city history, remnants of the deconstructed Willis Avenue Bridge, which make up much of the comfortable looking boulder seating area and grass retaining wall. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10:54am

Gettin' High Line

Who needs a proper playground when you have this? (FotHL)

The High Line Has a Way With Money, Scores $5 M. While Neighbors Go Wanting

One of the chief complaints against the Chelsea Market expansion explored in this week’s Observer is that the project held no benefits for the community, only the High Line, which was receiving $19 million toward a long-term improvement fund.

It is only the latest sign of the park’s pull in the neighborhood and in the city, but here is another: DNAinfo dug into the city budget and found that the High Line is getting $5 million toward the creation of its third section. That is many times what neighboring amenities are getting, such as Hudson River Park, which is in much more dire shape. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/17/12 6:09pm

manifest destiny east

Disconcertingly disconnected. (Bing Maps)

The Real Problem With Willets Point

A reader sends along this thoughtful critique of the problems inherent in the latest plans for Willets Point:

What a horrible idea. A parking lot and a mall? That neighborhood is a mess already, though. Just a few hundred feet from the bay in one direction and Flushing Meadows in the other, and they’re both nearly impossible to access. It should be a wonderful spot to hang out before a ballgame, and instead it’s just a tangle of highways. Thank you, Robert Moses.

It’s a very interesting point, and perhaps points to a better way forward for this forlorn corner of the city. Read More

By Matt Chaban 2/01/12 12:16pm

Greensward

13 Photos

Green Giants

N.Y.U.’s Fuzzy Math: Just How Much Open Space Is There In the Rezoning?

Walking through the two N.Y.U. superblocks just north of Houston Street can be both a tranquil and oppressive experience. Surrounded by brusque, mid-century apartment buildings many times taller than the townhouses and loft buildings surrounding them, the open space at the Silver Towers and Washington Square Village is not exactly inviting.

Created by some of the greatest landscape architects of their day, these spaces are, to put it mildly, challenging. Like the modernist architects redefining what buildings should look like in the middle of the last century, so too did these landscape architects, favoring viny slopes and more concrete than vegetation in places. At the corner of Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape, which to most New Yorkers may look like an overgrown thatch, is actually a celebrated space taught in design and art schools around the world.

These “parks” need, if not improving, at least updating. That is a big part of N.Y.U.’s pitch to the community as it works to rezone the area, one of the most vicious Village NIMBY fights since Robert Moses built these superblocks half a century ago.

Still, does that mean N.Y.U. can bend the truth when talking about the project? Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/05/11 10:21am

Kimmelmania

This'll do. (City Review)

We Need More Zoning

Michael Kimmelman returned to the public realm for this week’s column, where he all but declared what appears to be his raison d’etre going forward: “We’ve been so fixated on fancy new buildings that we’ve lost sight of the spaces they occupy and we share,” he wrote in the Sunday Times. But instead of Zuccotti Park and protest spaces, this time Mr. Kimmelman turns his attention on Midtown, where he ambles about with the esteemed planner (and mayoral soothsayer) Alexander Garvin.

Together, they argue that the city needs to do more to plan these spaces, which are largely designed ad hoc, if at all, by the developers who own the properties. They point to Holland, that godhead of urban enlightenment, as a prime example from which to learn: Read More

By Matt Chaban 11/02/11 5:12pm

Greensward

Mr. Mayor, tear down this fence. (Geoffrey Croft/NYC Parks Advocates)

Sutton Place South Gives Up the Ghost… of Its Backyard

It appears they have opened the open space floodgates on the East Side of Manhattan.

Ever since the city reached a land deal with the United Nations to help build a new East River park, a parade of new developments have taken place in Manhattan’s rarefied reaches. There are new plans for the U.N. and the esplanade beside it, and the Related Companies has finally revealed new plans for Rupert Playground, where it wants to build condos and a medical facility.

Reversing the karma of the public-to-private transfer at the playground, the city yesterday reached a settlement with Sutton Place South, the East 50s co-op that for over a century has controlled a private park overlooking the river. When the FDR was built, the co-op was given control of a new park built on piers over it, but that deal lapsed in 1990, though it was not brought to light until a few years ago. As with so many things in the world, litigation ensued. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/11/11 11:00pm

Greensward

A land swap to make Robert Moses proud.

Park Life: The East Side’s Landless Gentry Fight for Every Scrap of Open Space

Think of the perfect Saturday on the East Side. Brunch with your friends and the kids at, say, Fig & Olive, Artisinal or—the mayor’s favorite—Viand. Maybe a stroll along Madison for a little shopping and errands, and then off to Central Park to let the little ones wear themselves out before a nap. Or maybe it’s the other way around, soccer and softball in the park, a little tennis with friends or just some sunning on one of the lawns, then a late lunch.

Living East of Eden sure can be nice, but just like Adam and Eve, it always seems like there is more outside the garden gates.

Not satisfied with their proximity to one of the loveliest parks in the world, East Siders have been lobbying for decades for more leisure land, particularly along the river. They look jealously on at their West Side brethren, with Riveside Park and Hudson River Park—and even the green shoots along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. Thanks to rampant development, from Robert Moses’ FDR Drive up through the Bloomberg Building on 59th and Lexington, the East Side has grown more crowded every day, and yet access to the water, a mere mile away, has been all but impossible. Read More