Parking Up the Wrong Tree

Juan Gonzalez continues today with his exposing of the shameful way in which the community around Yankee Stadium has been dealt a bad hand by both the Yankees and the Bronx electeds. This time, it's the Little Leaguers who've gotten shafted: "When they televise the All-Star Game from Yankee Stadium Tuesday, the cameras will show dazzling shots of the team's majestic replacement home rising across the street - the most expensive sports venue in America.
One thing you will not hear from the announcers is how hundreds of South Bronx youngsters have lost their parks and baseball fields so the Yankees can erect a new palace geared to the corporate elite."

Let's not forget that it's the same mayor who's threatening to become as green as Kermit the Frog who instigated all of this: "Then, in 2005, Mayor Bloomberg rushed a bill through the Legislature to give 22 acres of Macombs Dam Park and part of John Mullaly Park as sites for the new stadium and its parking garages. The city promised to replace the lost parkland, but all the new baseball fields won't be completed until 2010 at the earliest. When stadium construction started in August 2006, four different youth leagues at Macombs Park were forced to look for temporary fields."

So the sustainability nonsense is theoretical, while the loss of the parkland is all too real: ""Hundreds of millions to subsidize a new stadium, but still not enough ballfields for neighborhood kids. That picture you won't see at the All-Star Game." What Bloomberg should do is reach into his own pocket and insure that the parks are ready when his administration claimed they would be. That would, however, be an indication that he really gave a crap about this poor, asthma-challenged, neighborhood and its loss of green space-a stretch for sure!