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More greenery, brighter lights, better signs highlight park plan

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Van Cortlandt Park may see some big changes coming—$4.2 million worth of landscaping and design changes, to be precise.  

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation is forging ahead with its plan to spend the millions in budget funding on redesigning a 3.5-acre area of the park near its W. 242nd Street entrance and along Broadway. After gathering community suggestions last year, the Parks Department presented its preliminary plan at a meeting of Community Board 8’s parks and recreation committee last week. 

The goals of the design project so far include making the entrance more inviting and visible, replacing the current slanting chain-link fence along the edge of the park with a better-designed barrier, creating a welcoming plaza and a gathering place for visitors, opening up views into the park, planting more greenery, installing brighter lamps and putting up signs to designate paths and trails. In essence, the intention is to make the area a more pleasing place to look at and stroll in, and also to improve safety with brighter lights and new security cameras. 

“I’m perfectly happy to say I’m pleased with what they’ve done so far,” Bob Bender, the chair of the parks and recreation committee told The Press. 

New features

One of the projected gathering places would replace the concrete expanse of the current little-used tennis courts along the edge of the park, between its stadium and Broadway. Another expanse of concrete would stay, however—the paved-over ball courts along the same edge. 

“That’s a functional thing that people enjoy,” Will Harris, a landscape architect with the Parks Department, told the community board meeting on Jan. 25. “It has to stay.” 

Another gathering place envisaged in the design would be set further into the park, near the edge of the swimming pool and “away from the hustle and bustle” of Broadway, Harris said. Both the pool and the stadium—the park’s popular, if less than exquisitely landscaped areas—would be shielded from view by new “buffer plantings,” according to the draft design. The smaller plaza may also be outfitted with a new “water feature,” such as a small pond, he said. 

When Harris and his fellow designers from the Parks Department met with local residents to gather their suggestions last November, the most popular proposal was for more amenities, he said. Those include benches surrounded by more plantings, a new fence, a plaza, or possibly a farmer’s market or a cafe. 

More benches may also appear near the bus stops on Broadway. 

“We have lots of bus stops and no place to sit, no place to wait really,” Harris told the meeting. “We would really like to address that.” 

Landscaping ideas local residents proposed at the Nov. 10 meeting mostly involved calls for more plants and shrubs. The Parks Department would heed those, Harris told the meeting in January. More ambitious ideas called for an “edible orchard,” but that has a slimmer chance of happening, he said. 

“Edible orchard? Maybe. Maybe not,” Harris said with a grin. 

Based on another popular suggestion, the Parks Department is looking to design a plan that would make the park easier to navigate. This would mean adding new signs designating the park’s paths or directing to its facilities. 

Bob Bender, the chairman of the community board’s parks and recreation committee, told Parks Department officials at the January meeting they could also consider adding a few more signs to offer a glimpse into the rich history of Van Cortlandt Park—a former estate and home to the oldest surviving building in the Bronx. 

“There’s a tremendous amount of history in this park,” Bender said. 

Security

Along with brighter lighting in the park, the project envisages installing a few security cameras—an aspect of the design that has drawn keen interest from the police. The NYPD may like to incorporate the park’s cameras into the police system of Argus security cameras that is being installed around the city, Deputy Inspector Terence O’Toole, the commanding officer of the 50th precinct, told the meeting. 

Although the project is a long way from being complete, a likely location for a camera would be at the park’s entrance at W. 242nd Street, according to the meeting. 

Another aspect of the design that has drawn interest from the NYPD is the new fence with which the Parks Department wants to replace the current chain-link structure. The Parks Department wants to make the fence low. The NYPD wants to make sure it is not so low that skateboarders would be able to roll over it—and into the car traffic on Broadway. 

“Please don’t put the fences too low, because these fences would be skated on,” Capt. O’Toole told the meeting. “They’re very wild and thrill-seeking young people.”

Schedule

The Parks Department is still gathering information for its project. It is expected to present a more detailed plan to the parks and recreation committee in March and then offer it for approval to the full community board, Bender said. 

Then, the project is scheduled to go for approval to the city’s Public Design Commission, the drafting of contract documents will begin, bids will be solicited and reviewed, contracts will be awarded and approved by the comptroller—and finally, construction will begin in the fall of 2018. After a further series of reviews, approvals, changes and inspections, the project is scheduled to open in winter 2020. 

The $4.2 million allocated for the design project seems like a large chunk of money, but it may not stretch far enough to cover all aspects of the plan—especially if designers throw in some of the more ambitious features, like a new water feature, Harris said. 

“We all know that [the money] could get eaten up quickly, especially when spread over 3.5 acres,” he said. 

Van Cortlandt Park, Parks Without Borders, NYC Parks, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, CB8 Bronx, Community Board 8, parks and recreation committee, Will Harris, Bob Bender, landscape design, Anna Dolgov

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