A longtime East Village resident said that he was "shocked and vexed" yesterday to discover that the East River Park Track at the FDR and Sixth Street was closed without any warning "until further notice" for reconstruction.
This project has been in the works since 2013. Per the Parks Department website, "this project will reconstruct the synthetic turf soccer field and resurface the running track."
The fine print notes that the construction will start this month, and take one year to compete. There wasn't any advance communications about this seemingly sudden closure.
The note the Parks Department left on the gate lacks many specifics, such as the reopening date...
Per the reader, who's training for the New York City Marathon: "Seems like a disservice to the schools, clubs and individuals who use the track in the prime months of September and October."
11 comments:
"INCONVIENCE"
Ths is a good thing, although a little advance notice would have been nice. I stopped by the running track the other day and saw how badly it needs to be repaired. The old bathrooms and park office building is literally crumbling. The track has big holes in it and the surface is worn to the ground in spots. This would never have been allowed to happen on the West Side, especially anywhere near Battery Park City or the UWS. It's like a theme park on the Hudson River, with brand new facilities, clean bathrooms, beach volleyball, wine bars with table service, skateboard parks and miniazure golf. Even their plants look healthier. It was so bad in East River Park this summer that the old hotdog stand by the ballfield was gone and the frozen ices guy was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile half the water fountains either don't work or have extremely low pressure, and the water which was once drinkable tastes foul. For $3 million they should at least refurbish the track's bathrooms and fix up that old water fountain, which is one of the few in tha park that works.
Though, as is often the case, the City will run behind schedule and rather than sprint to the finish, they'll end up slow-walking the entire project🤷🏼♂️
Yes, there's work to be done, but, working with the community to schedule the reconstruction as well as to define what is most important in terms of type of use with the community would have been a better outreach approach than a last minute sign.
Thanks for the heads up.
ER park is a sh@tshow in many ways. The grass was uncut for about a month below the bridge and it remains untrimmed. Broken trees litter the lawns. Manager should be fired.
This turf really, really, needed to be resurfaced. There were/are 5-6 inch wide seams exposed of just glue and wood, no turf, really dangerous. Many of a knee injury has occurred here. Why they can't expedite this and get it done before next summer is annoying though.
Agree that the track needed maintenance, but for the parks department not to notify residents in advance--and with more than a paper sign--is a terrible inconvenience for the neighborhood. It's also seems disrespectful, although I'm sure that wasn't the parks department's intent. Hopefully, this article and thread will encourage the parks department to better communicate with the neighborhood on the status of the repairs during construction.
Looks like another case of two cities service when it comes to parks. The aforementioned hudson river parks is an oasis now with all the "amenities" and the practically inconvenient east river parks continue to be dilapidated and behind schedule with renovations.
Its about time, turf field was just Terrible. But until next year in SEPTEMBER!? Well why not before Summer?
wait....
isn't this gentrification
i thought (we lemmings)
want EVERYTHING to remain the same
as in the good-old-days....
Check!
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