More on the 78th Street Play Street from today's
New York Times:The New York TimesNeighbors Use City’s Street Closings as a Way to Expand Their ParkBy FERNANDA SANTOS
Published: August 4, 2008
While city officials have begun a program to turn streets into car-free zones as a way of increasing open space, a small band of residents in a dense and diverse corner of western Queens have championed their own effort to use a roadway to make more room for their children to play.
The residents wanted an inexpensive and simple way to somehow expand their neighborhood’s only park, the 1.9-acre Travers Park in Jackson Heights, and an effort by the city to close off roadways for car-free use gave the plan some traction.
Receiving a permit to temporarily close a blocklong section of 78th Street on Sundays is the fruit of the group’s effort. Ron Hayduk, a political science professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and a father of two, learned in January that a friend was working for the city’s Transportation Department, identifying neighborhoods that lacked public space.
“And that’s what got things started,†Mr. Hayduk said on Sunday.
The Bloomberg administration started several small-scale efforts to turn streets into car-free zones as a way of increasing open space and reducing traffic and pollution after state legislators defeated its congestion-pricing plan, which would have charged drivers to enter Manhattan below 59th Street.
City officials in July announced the permanent closing of two traffic lanes on Broadway, from 34th Street to Times Square in Manhattan, to make more room for pedestrians and sidewalk cafes. That closing is scheduled to begin later this month. On Saturday, seven miles of roadway along Lafayette Street and Park Avenue will be shut down to cars from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park, and then again on Aug. 16 and 23, in a pilot program.
New York City has more than 28,000 acres of municipal parkland — from playgrounds and neighborhood parks to golf courses, beaches and ball fields. Roughly one-quarter of it is in Queens, though the space is unevenly distributed. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, in the borough’s northern edge, has 1,200 acres, and the Rockaway Peninsula has seven miles of beachfront. But there is only one park in Jackson Heights.
Travers Park is perhaps a bit longer than a football field and rarely empty during the warm months. It has handball and basketball courts that host cricket and softball games on weekends and tai chi classes on weekdays. On Sunday, it had children playing tag while teenagers rode their scooters, not far from where a group of men played soccer.
The park has some bushes, a few trees and hardly any grass. Some parents have nicknamed it “concrete jungle†because the ground is covered with cement.
The grass-roots undertaking in Jackson Heights sprouted from discussions in corner markets, in coffee shops and at meetings of several civic groups. The many ideas to improve Travers Park included buying the land now occupied by a car dealership that abuts it to the south to enlarge it.
Follow above link for complete article.