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Mayor Launches Parks Spending Spree at
St. James

By JORDAN MOSS

In his second appearance at St. James Park in six months, Mayor Bloomberg announced last Tuesday that the park would be the first to benefit from $200 million in park improvement monies made possible through the sale of water bonds.

The unprecedented infusion of money for Bronx park projects was the incentive offered to the borough’s politicians in exchange for their support of building the water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park.

“Today, we kick off the largest investment in Bronx parkland since the 1930s,” Bloomberg said at the event.

The city will pour $3.75 million into a renovation of St. James over the next few years. Four of the park’s crumbling staircases will be restored in the first phase of the project, which will cost $750,000 and include new lighting and lawn areas at the entrances.

The second, to begin in 2006, will cost $3 million and will include the reconstruction of park pathways, the perimeter retaining wall, and fencing, plantings, lawns and benches. A small multi-use “turf field area” will also be created to address a shortage of local open space available for multi-purpose recreational activities.

While the announced facelift is likely to please area residents, some veteran park advocates who are still waiting for the completion of previously promised renovations are reserving judgment.

Cat Milland, president of the Friends of St. James Park, said he and other park users are still waiting for the city to complete a restoration of the park house, which has been fenced off for over two years and was scheduled to be finished last summer. Contractor defaults on the project have led to significant delays.

“If by [the mayor] coming … it hurries along the work that is being done right now, it would be greatly appreciated,” Milland said. “Because it’s taken two and a half years for that park house to be finished and it’s not near finished.”

Milland said that, because the park house has been off limits, the park no longer serves as a base for district park supervisors and doesn’t receive the attention it used to. The lack of bathrooms also makes the playground less of a destination, he said.

The city also should soon be at work renovating a central staircase with monies unrelated to the filtration windfall.

“They claim that these things [the park house and staircase] will be done by the middle of the summer, so let’s see if that’s true,” Milland said. “Seeing is believing.”

The St. James restoration is one of 70 Bronx park projects the city plans to complete over the next five years. Before summer, the city will break ground on four more, none of which are in Community District 7. However, the Parks Department said initial work on a $15 million restoration of Williamsbridge Oval in Norwood will begin this summer. That work will include the “reconstruction of pavements, fencing, curbing and paths located at the intersection of Reservoir Oval and Van Cortlandt Avenue East.”

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