Category:

About that power plant...

2/19/2013

In a previous entry, we highlighted the text from the Fairness Coalition' handout "10 reasons to vote NO on the USTA expansion." Number 2 was the following:

Power Plant in the Park?
The plan calls for building a dirty diesel fuel power plant to be built inside the park. Hidden inside the most recent DEIS report, the USTA seeks to build a 8 Megawatt, 20 foot high diesel-fueled power plant. Surrounding communities already suffer from air quality and asthma rates at epidemic levels. This power plant will emit a massive amount of air pollution into the park and surrounding communities. (page 11-17 DEIS Jan 2013)

Let's take a closer look at what the DEIS says about this:

CENTRAL CHILLER PLANT
To meet electrical power needs during peak demand conditions, the proposed project may include additional reciprocating engines that would serve a central chiller plant. Due to insufficient natural gas availability, it is assumed that the engines would use diesel fuel. The plant would have a maximum capacity of up to 8 megawatts and would be operated only during the US Open.
The plant would be located to north of the project site—north of Meridian Road, east of Arthur Ashe Stadium (Stadium 1), and west of Louis Armstrong Stadium (Stadium 2). This would be approximately 350 feet from areas that would be accessible to the public.

One megawatt can power 1,000 homes for a year. So about 8,000 homes could be powered by this chiller plant. Why would a stadium need this kind of power? And they will house it in a 2-3 story building. Does Flushing Meadows need more non-park-related buildings?

Save FMCP says "NO" to the USTA expansion

2/11/2013

• The USTA says it needs extra money to prevent big name players from defecting to places like Dubai.

According to the USTA, the rationale behind the proposed expansion (land grab) is that it is necessary because it would allow the USTA to pay top players more money in order to prevent them from going to up-and-coming foreign venues/tournaments like Dubai, the United Arab Emirates state located in the Persian Gulf. The USTA has repeatedly said the extra money generated would help ensure the U.S. Open would not lose the marquee players to other markets that could be more lucrative.

While this may be important to this private business - which is being allowed to run on public parkland - it is NOT of importance to those who use the park.

• When the USTA was allowed to double its parkland holdings in the 1990's, they said they would NOT seek any more incursions into the park.

The current USTA plan would:

• Bring an additional 10,000 daily spectators

• Remove more than 400 trees

• Demolish existing stadiums and build a replacement them with 15,000 and 8,000-seat stadiums

• Construct two new garages including a 423-space, 2-level garage, and a 270-space, 3-level garage

• The outdoor tennis courts which the pay-to-play USTA charges up to $32 an hour to use as compared to the City which charges $200 for an entire seven month season and outdoor courts are free for the remaining 5 months of the year including the courts nearby in the Flushing Meadows Park. Free.

Good Neighbors?

The USTA made $ 275 million last year according from the public park land according to USTA Chief Operating Officer Daniel Zausner while giving just $ 2.5 million back to the city according to their license agreement.

• The USTA prohibits Soccer from being played in the park when the US Open is underway.

• There are already so many cars coming to the park during the US Open that patrons of CitiField and the Open are forced to park on the grass.

There are two other commercial projects currently proposed for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, including a 1.4 million sq. ft mall and a new stadium for Major League Soccer. Together, these projects will alienate 56 acres of parkland.

USTA site through the years

2/9/2013

In 1951, the area the USTA currently occupies was parkland in the truest sense of the word.

In the 1990s, the City handed over a whole bunch of parkland to the USTA to expand their tennis complex.

It just kept getting larger and larger. This shot is from 2006.

And this one is from 2008.

Here's what the site looks like today. Note the gorgeous ring of mature trees on the bottom left.

If the USTA's plans are approved, this is how much real estate they will control. 400+ trees will die. Insane, isn't it?

Queens CB7 meeting

1/31/2013

Queens Community Board 7's Parks Committee held a meeting on 1/23/13. CB7 isn't concerned with losing parkland -- only with what USTA will "give us" in return. USTA won't replace the parkland it's taking, but will substitute improvements to the park.

When asked what improvements, USTA and the NYC Parks Dept. said they don't know, and they won't know until the fate of the MLS proposal has also been decided, because only then can the improvements be apportioned between USTA and MLS. When asked, "What's the USTA budget for these improvements?" the USTA said it doesn't know. So, USTA is proposing to compensate for the parkland with improvements to other areas of the park, but USTA will not even say what amount is reasonable. If a decision-maker is asked to approve this, isn't he/she entitled to know what USTA considers the value of the parkland to be?

That USTA and Parks came to the meeting tonight without such information, shows their inconsideration for CB7. Parks said it's difficult to appraise the value of parkland, because there's no market.

This, despite the USTA lease establishing a value.

USTA said that this expansion is necessary to, among other reasons, ensure that the U.S. Open does not lose top players to other up-and-coming foreign venues/tournaments that could be more lucrative.

So, the value of the 0.68 parkland acre USTA wants, is intended to provide nothing less than the successful continuation of the U.S. Open -- which rakes in $275 million annually to USTA. As such, that 0.68 acre is exceptionally valuable to USTA, and must be compensated on that basis.

Another CB7 meeting will be scheduled for late February, when USTA is expected to "bring the number." The whole CB7 board is scheduled to vote on March 11 (should also be a public hearing that night).

Straight Talk: Parkland Theft

1/24/2013

When 'public use' costs $66/hr

1/23/2013

Interesting article from Capital New York, entitled, A tennis-center expansion in Queens requires a tricky definition of 'public':

Flushing Meadows Corona Park is the biggest park in the borough of Queens, but it's probably not the nicest one.

Surrounded by highways that render it inaccessible to the neighorboods that surround it, the park is underfunded and inconsistently maintained, replete with patches of dirt and stagnant water, bottle caps and spindly trees, and Worlds Fair relics that the city has let go to seed.

The park, as a result of the neglect, is particularly vulnerable to being nibbled away at by land-hungry tenants.

The Wilpon family and Related Companies want to build an enormous mall on its paved-over northern reaches, Major League Soccer wants to take up 13 acres for a new stadium, and the USTA wants to make its 42-acre, gated tennis complex bigger.

Whenever a city in New York State wants to take public parkland and sell or lease it to a private entity, it has to get the state legislature to pass "alienation legislation."

The state recommends, but does not require, that the entity for which the parkland is being alienated replace it with a comparable amount elsewhere.

That's a recommendation the city generally follows.

And that's why Major League Soccer is busy scouring the borough for 13 acres of parkland to make up for the plot it wants to take in the middle of Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

That's also why, in 1993, when the USTA expanded its footprint in the park from 21.6 acres to 42, it had to build the 48-acre Powell's Cove Park in College Point, according the Parks Department.

This time, however, the department is not demanding replacement parkland of the USTA. Instead, it's asking for money.

Further in the article, we read the following:

Courts at the U.S.T.A.'s publicly accessible tennis courts range from $22 an hour on weekdays between 6 and 8 a.m., to $66 an hour on weekends, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

It costs just $15 to play on regular Parks Department tennis courts, and just $200 for the entire season, unless you're a senior, in which case it costs only $20 per season. If you're younger than 18, it costs only $10.

"It is significantly more costly than other Parks Department tennis facilities and it is not as open and welcoming to the public as other park space is," Leicht said. "I think it’s disingenuous to say this is a truly public use.”

“It’s not public space,” agreed Michael Rikon, an attorney with experience in land-use matters. “If the public wants to get in there, they’d have to pay a lot of money. ...That’s hardly the same as free access to the community.”

Ladies and gentlemen, it's not truly "public use" unless it's freely accessible.

About that power plant...

Save FMCP says "NO" to the USTA expansion

USTA site through the years

Queens CB7 meeting

Straight Talk: Parkland Theft

When 'public use' costs $66/hr

Save FMCP

Archives

Categories