Early on Tuesday night, [Bill DeBlasio] was asked about Major League Soccer’s attempt to place a Spaceship-Enterprise-size soccer stadium in the midst of Flushing Meadows, Queens’s densest and most heavily used park. He cleared his throat with some populist rumbling about city tax giveaways. Then he allowed that, well, perhaps, maybe, a pro soccer stadium might raise the money needed to give that dowdy dowager of a park a face-lift.
It was left to Mr. Lhota to make the point that, perhaps fortunately for Flushing Meadows, appears to have won the day: Our urban parks are a precious patrimony, and in this densest of American cities it is rarely wise to auction off greensward. If Flushing Meadows-Corona Park needs money, and enough three-piece-suit-wearing worthies cannot be found to toss together a conservancy, a mayor should find a way to pay for that park.
“It shouldn’t be in that park,” Mr. Lhota said of the stadium. “We don’t have enough park space in this city as it is.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/nyregion/big-lead-aside-de-blasio-holds-less-tightly-to-line.html
It was left to Mr. Lhota to make the point that, perhaps fortunately for Flushing Meadows, appears to have won the day: Our urban parks are a precious patrimony, and in this densest of American cities it is rarely wise to auction off greensward. If Flushing Meadows-Corona Park needs money, and enough three-piece-suit-wearing worthies cannot be found to toss together a conservancy, a mayor should find a way to pay for that park.
“It shouldn’t be in that park,” Mr. Lhota said of the stadium. “We don’t have enough park space in this city as it is.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/nyregion/big-lead-aside-de-blasio-holds-less-tightly-to-line.html
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