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Who Says: We should have known this was coming. Just wait until the start tearing down the old stadium and find that the land is contaminated from an oil leak from the stadiums oil tanks..

Time and Cost Rise for Yankee Stadium Parks

 Anthony Santiago, left, and his twin brother, Christopher, playing in a temporary park at Jerome Avenue and East 161st Street.

 Cost estimates for eight small parks around the new Yankee Stadium have almost doubled.

The cost of replacing two popular parks where the new Yankee Stadium is being built has nearly doubled. At the same time, several of the eight new parks, which were supposed to be completed before the new stadium opens next spring, have been delayed by as much as two years, according to city documents.

The price of the new small parks — which are to replace tennis and basketball courts, a running track and baseball and soccer fields eliminated to make way for the new stadium — is now projected to be $174 million, almost one-seventh the cost of the $1.3 billion stadium itself. The original estimate had been $95.5 million. The increase comes amid skyrocketing costs for construction projects, both public and private, around the city.

The stadium is being financed by the Yankees with city subsidies, while the eight new parks for the South Bronx, which range in size from 0.24 acre to 8.9 acres, are being paid for by the city.

None of the replacement parks have been completed, and construction on several has not yet started; however, the parks department has built a temporary replacement park on a parking lot in the area, opened a ball field this spring at a school almost a mile to the east, and is building a sports field at a recreation center about a mile to the north.

The city was required to build the new parks after it selected the 28.4-acre Macombs Dam Park and a portion of the 18.5-acre John Mullaly Park as the site of the new stadium in 2005. State and federal law dictated that a similar amount of parkland nearby of equal or greater fair market value be built to replace the parks that would be lost.

Some residents have been critical of the trade-off. While Macombs Dam and Mullaly Parks were almost contiguous stretches of grass and trees amid the concrete topography of the South Bronx, the replacement parks are small parcels scattered around the area. The sites include sports fields atop a planned stadium parking garage and a park along the Harlem River, which is on the opposite side of the Major Deegan Expressway.

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Lengthy Interview With Councilmember Foster

The Highbridge Horizon has now posted a lengthy interview with Councilmember Helen Diane Foster on our Web site.

On April 11, the Horizon interviewed Foster in her District Office on Jerome Avenue. We published excerpts of this interview in our April issue, but because the Web does not provide the same space constraints as the printed page, we offer a far more expanded version online.

During the interview, Foster was typically candid, as she addressed a wide range of topics during the course of a roughly hour-long conversation. Her words about the killing of Sean Bell, and the trial of the three officers who killed him –words Foster spoke exactly two weeks before the officers were acquitted — have echoed powerfully in recent weeks.

“There is more outrage over the torturing of animals,” Foster said, “than there is over the fact that another Black man is killed at the hands of the police.”

A little later on in the interview, she added: “I think when the verdict comes out, once again like the Diallo case, this city will be looked at and judged on what that outcome is. It appears that we keep going back to Dread Scott, where a Black man has no rights that a white man has to respect, including his own life. And if we see another acquittal in this city, it will be a sad day for all of New York City, and how we are looked at [not only] by ourselves, but by the country. “

Other highlights of the interview:

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Many of the livery cabs that ply northern Manhattan and the Bronx come to a gloriously gritty stretch of Jerome Avenue south of the Cross Bronx Expressway lined with auto and salvage shops. They come for repairs, but they also need a quick place to eat, and that’s where El Rincon de los Taxistas comes in.

“The Taxi Corner” is not a corner, per se, but rather a food truck parked just off Jerome Avenue, on Edward L. Grant Highway near 167th Street, in the High Bridge section of the Bronx.

It is the type of restaurant on wheels that is common in Latino neighborhoods, perennially parked near public pools and parks and other areas where hungry people congregate. Typically these trucks offer meals in the ethnic style of the neighborhood at easy-to-swallow prices. Read more..

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Chase In The Bronx Leads To Shooting..

In the ninth shooting to involve police during the first seven days of 2008, police officers shot and wounded an unarmed suspect who led them on a car chase through the Bronx yesterday, police officials said.

The confrontation happened at about 11:30 a.m., as plainclothes anti-crime officers on patrol attempted to stop the suspect as he was driving near Jerome Avenue and Kingsbridge Road, police said. The suspect fled in his car as the officers approached, prompting them to jump in their unmarked car and give chase, police said.

After the suspect’s vehicle became stuck in traffic near West Kingsbridge Road and Aqueduct Avenue, about three blocks away, police tried to stop him again. According to police officials, the officers approached the vehicle and demanded to see the suspect’s identification.

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New York City Commuters Face Delays for Cross Bronx Roadwork

Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) — Commuters heading into New York City across the George Washington Bridge were delayed as much as an hour this morning because of construction work on the Cross Bronx Parkway Expressway that’s scheduled to continue into next week.

The New York State Department of Transportation has been doing repaving on the eastbound Cross Bronx Expressway between the George Washington Bridge and Jerome Avenue from 11 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. every day this week, closing two of four lanes between the bridge and the Major Deegan Expressway and two of three lanes between the Major Deegan and Jerome Avenue, according to a statement on the city’s Web site.

The work also forced closure of the George Washington Bridge’s eastbound lower level and the ramp from the northbound Henry Hudson Parkway to the eastbound Cross Bronx Expressway, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge.

Last night, two eastbound lanes of the bridge’s upper level were also closed, along with the left lane of the ramp from the eastbound lower level to the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Port Authority said on its Web site. That caused delays of as much as an hour for traffic heading into New York, said Bernie Wagenblast, New York operations manager for Westwood One Inc.’s Metro Networks traffic service.

“It apparently ran later than it was scheduled,” Wagenblast said in a telephone interview. “Needless to say you just need one little thing to go wrong and traffic backs up across the bridge into New Jersey, and that’s what happened today.”

The additional closures are scheduled to take place tonight and Dec. 3 before a holiday construction embargo goes into effect, according to the Port Authority.

Adam Levine, a spokesman for the state Transportation Department, didn’t immediately return a telephone message left by Bloomberg News seeking further comment.

SOURCE: Bloomberg

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