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All It Has Taken Is $1 And A Dream

A rough concept of what the new park may look like.

By Ellen Thompson

Thanks to a $1 transaction between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Keyspan President and CEO Robert Catell two years ago, Elmhurst is now home to one of the largest parks developments in Queens since the creation of Flushing Meadows.

That mere dollar bill bought the city 6.1 acres of land to be developed into a park that could turn out to be a little bigger than Madison Square Park in Manhattan and may very well be the city’s biggest park expansion since the 1930’s.

Though the borough of Queens is generally well served by parkland, the Elmhurst site where landmark gas tanks once stood lays in an area that currently lacks open-space amenities and is in one of the most densely populated area of Queens.

“It’s not very often that you get to start a six-acre park from scratch in a busy neighborhood,” Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said.

With the looming red and white Elmhurst Gas tanks torn down to the gravel-laden ground nearly a decade ago, the Parks Department pulled out the blueprints in January for a new park, offering sketches up to the community.

Since there are no drainage systems on the site yet, Parks Department landscape architect Helen Ogrinz said the plan would work in phases, scheduling the park to open in two or three years.

Currently, the plans call for a green park with circular loops for walking and jogging, a playground for tots, a comfort station, a sitting area, a water feature, and a small crabapple orchard with a mixture of fast and slow growing trees surrounding a lawn and rolling hills. But as different phases are completed, the plans could change.

The Parks Department said the project is proceeding on time and that it is in the process of preparing contracts for bids. After a contractor is chosen, phase one – a yearlong process – will begin where the focus will be on the green park. Clean fill will be added along with horticulture, permanent sidewalks, street trees, fences and gates. Future phases will include the amenities and a synthetic turf, but no completion date has been set as of yet.

“We want to get phase one rolling,” Ogrinz added. “We have nothing there now; we want to get some soil in, because right now we can’t grow anything. So that is our first goal.”

Since the $1 transaction the city has committed $20 million in capital funds over the next three years to create the new park. Additionally, the Parks Department is investing $1.38 billion over the next two years to parks citywide, the largest sum ever invested in city parks.