Yankees Stay Home

The uproar over the Yankee Stadium redevelopment plan continues. The folks at Save Our Parks are dutifully chronically what appears to be the misadventures of the Bronx BP. Adolfo it seems didn't wait even a day to pour cold water on the anti-development vote at CB#4 (16-8). Unswayed by negative community sentiment, he told the NY Post that the Yankee Stadium project would be "the single largest investment in the Bronx in probably more than a hundred years..."

Still we can't help but wonder at the lack of sensitivity to neighborhood folks who are fighting to protect their precious green space. In addition, the discrepancies between the BP's plan and the one that was unveiled last week by the NYC Parks Department should at least be a cause for discretion from the Bronx's highest elected official. It certainly is not a good signal to all of those Queens people who fired salvos at the plan to bring the Jets to Flushing Meadow.

The protection of parkland is not simply a parochial issue. Moreover, the "development at any and all cost" perspective is going to become a hot-button political issue in the next few years, with accountable development legislative initiatives moving to center stage. Carrion cannot advance his own political interests by being seen as totally under the thrall of the development community.