Yankee Stadium Redevelopment
January 5th, 2006 Posted in Projects
Our members do not support the taking of public parkland for private profit. The earlier Bronx precedent of taking parkland (in Van Cortlandt Park) for the “public benefit” of clean water, while specious, was (in concept) for some greater good. We should note that the Bronx residents employment have not materialized as only one quarter of the current workers at the Croton Filter Plant site live in the Bronx (based on the NYC DEP statistics) – much less than what was promised. Moreover, that decision was based on the premise (which may turn out to be false) that the parkland would be returned to the people.
The present case is not at all the same. This is a taking of public parkland from a densely populated, low income area, with little or no promise of recompense. It does not matter that the benefit is for the fifty or sixty thousand fans per event attending Yankee Stadium; for that is no competition when measured against a million or so Bronxites that can not view the game on public television, or the hundreds of thousands of children who, each and every day find that they have no place to play, no trees to shelter, and no clean air to breathe.
If the Yankees weren’t making decisions based solely on their bottom line, then they might have some empathy with a community numbed by years of having no effective voice in the fate of their own neighborhood. They would be part of the neighborhood, instead of just carpetbaggers. BCEQ Members think there is a reasonable alternative to steam-rolling over the interests of those most affected. As environmentalists we believe in the three R’s – reduce, reuse and recycle. It’s been done before, and should be done again, e.g. renovate the old stadium on that hallowed ground.
Below you will find a copy of BCEQ’s letter to the City Planning Commission on the FEIS, as well as a memo adopted by BCEQ Board of Directors, and a letter jointly signed by Transportation Alternatives and NRDC.
More letters, memo’s and links will follow.
Parkland and Yankee Stadium 051206.pdf
YankeeStadiumLWCFComments.pdf
BCEQLettervs.Parkland4YankeeStadium010506.pdf
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