BY T’NEIL GOODEN
Flushing Meadows Corona Park is the fourth biggest park in New York City, filled with soccer fields, an aquatic center, and green spaces that welcome over nine million people every year. But residents see a decline in the park’s condition. So the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park (FMCP) rallied local residents, parks workers, and elected officials on October 27 to demand greater public investment in the park.
. Flushing Meadows Corona Park is a Queens landmark. The park boasts over 898 acres of land, but the Alliance says the park is being neglected. “As stewards of the park, we want to see greater public investment into the infrastructure and maintenance challenges facing this borough’s flagship open space. It has been over 20 years since the last strategic plan was initiated, and Flushing Meadows Corona Park is long overdue for a new coordinated planning effort,” said Rob Carson, media contact at Alliance for FMCP.
But some questioned the Alliance’s loyalty to the park. “I find it ironic,” said lifelong Queens resident Margaret Flanagan. “To give away 25 acres of this park for the Metropolitan Casino, which is being built in a floodplain that maxes out our stormwater infrastructure and sewer infrastructure, and does nothing to add resilience to the waterfront.”
Carson says the Alliance supports the Metropolitan Park development because it will “bring thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investment to Queens.”
The Alliance wants more public and private funding for the park. “Our concern is that the influx of visitors to the new development will not be met with adequate maintenance support for the parkland outside of its footprint,” said Carson.
The Alliance for FMCP wants the next mayor to build a ”stronger, fairer, and more sustainable future for this park and Queens as a whole,” said Anthony Sama, the Executive Director of the Alliance.
Advocates for New York City Parks explained that Flushing Meadows is one of the most overlooked parks within the city. “Chronic flooding, deferred maintenance, and outdated infrastructure are the result of decades of underinvestment,” said Kathy Park Price, leader of New Yorkers for Parks Advocacy and Policy work. “As the Center for an Urban Future found, even a quarter inch of rain can shut down large areas of the park for days, and most of the funding over the past decade hasn’t gone to the unglamorous systems that actually keep the park functioning.”
Shekar Krishnan, the council member for Jackson Heights, shared insights on the unequal treatment of Flushing Meadows compared with other major NYC parks, based on a recent report from The Center for an Urban Future. “I think it’s 277 times more private investment per acre of Central Park than here in Flushing Meadows Corner Park,” Krishnan said.
Krishnan emphasized the lack of green space in Jackson Heights and in Queens as a whole: “In my neighborhood in Jackson Heights, we have the least amount of green space in all of New York City,” he said. “That’s why it’s important when they come here and use the different facilities and play here on the fields, that they feel that our city is treating it as the backyard that it is for millions of New Yorkers.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards called for the city to do more to make “sure that we’re supporting this oasis, Flushing Meadows Corona Park.” With federal support for the city declining, Richares called for greater city investment to send “a clear message to those that seek to divide us. That this is a country and a borough, and a city that will be open to everyone.” He added, “There is no cavalry coming to save us.”