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Oliver and Risse Progress Toward Parkland Goals

By HEATHER HADDON

There is some progress to report on efforts to remake two overgrown and neglected public spaces. Officials have recently renewed attempts to make the Risse Street Triangle, an overgrown plot at the top of the Grand Concourse, more usable.

The Parks Department acquired the space from the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 2002, a move that residents and Community Board 7 (CB7) had pushed for. But efforts to make improvements stalled. While $250,000 was allocated to beautify Risse Street in 2003, the money sat untouched.

The city has cut the Triangle’s grass in the meantime, but the green space is generally overgrown and inaccessible. “The way it’s set up now isn’t too inviting,” said Barbara Stronczer, who chairs CB7’s Parks Committee.

A fence runs around the perimeter of the nearly one-acre plot, and the gate is rarely unlocked. Another gate divides the north side — an open grassy area with benches, trees, and concrete blocks from a previous redesign intended for seating — from the overgrown southern tip. This portion was home to a community garden during the 1980s, but was later abandoned.

The park is rather isolated, surrounded by busy streets and is not a destination in and of itself. Children from the Bronx New School previously utilized Risse as a playground, which the Bedford Park school lacks. The school now blocks off Van Cortlandt Avenue East as a play street during the day.

The Parks Department is holding a scoping meeting this week to start planning how to use the allocated funds. Bob Nolan, the budget director for Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, says that CB7 and residents will play a large role in deciding what work is done at the Triangle. Once a design is selected, Nolan promised that improvements will progress rapidly.

“There is a contractor that’s waiting to work on this,” he said. “We expect a quick turnaround.”

Stronczer would like to see Risse’s sitting area enhanced, along with some additional landscaping. “As the gateway to the Grand Concourse, it should be attractive,” she said.

The park is actually named after one of the Concourse’s original designers, Louis Risse, who helped plan the stately thoroughfare in the early 1890s.
 

Oliver Place Inches Forward

Efforts at transforming another neglected public space, Oliver Place, are not as far along, but making progress nonetheless. Advocates have pushed for years to transform the hilly eyesore into a park, but the city’s Department of Transportation must first hand the street over to the Parks Department. This process, known as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), is still in the early stages.

“We are preparing the required paperwork,” said Sam Goodman, an urban planner at the borough president’s office.

About a year ago, advocates convinced that office to work on de-mapping the street.  Goodman said the process takes time, but promised they were still on top of it. “[The project] is not dormant by any means,” he said. “It’s definitely going somewhere.”

Members of the Masjid-Hefaz Mosque on East 198th Street have campaigned to make Oliver Place a park since 2002. Rafeek Khan, a mosque leader, said that things are progressing, albeit slowly. “It is not going at the speed we would like, but you have to be patient,” he said. “The distance we have gone is very, very far.”

But there are still some miles to go. Once the paperwork is submitted to the city, Goodman estimates it will take another year-and-a-half before improvements begin. Funds also must be raised for the project, which is slated to cost $800,000.

Designs prepared last year by the City College Architecture Center, working with mosque members and the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, include a playground at the top of Oliver Place. A sitting area would be built at the bottom plateau.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” said Pat Logan, a Fordham Bedford staffer who oversees the group’s parks initiatives.

That work would still dramatically transform Oliver Place, a fenced-in slope wedged between Decatur and Marion avenues. The street has always been strewn with litter, tires and other junk.

“People come and dump stuff here in the night,” said John Whyte, who has lived next to Oliver Place for 25 years. The street is also used as an informal car repair shop.

Whyte says he often calls the Sanitation Department about the mess, but little is done to rectify it. “They just give me tickets,” he said.

The mosque, spearheaded by its youth group, organized a cleanup of Oliver Place last weekend as part of It’s My Park Day.

If Oliver Place successfully becomes a park, it will be the fourth time that the street has gone through a transformation. Oliver Avenue, named after a prominent family who lived nearby, once extended into what is now the New York Botanical Garden. It was renamed as Oliver Street, and then finally became Oliver Place in 1893 after it was truncated.

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