Hopes for Harlem River Park in the NW Bronx Tied Up in Red Tape

A view of the Harlem River waterfront where Regatta Park is supposed to be created. (Adi Talwar)

Editor's note and update: This story appears in the latest edition of the Norwood News, which hits streets today. The update is that Parks Department spokesperson Jesslyn Moser told me today that the agency is, in fact, going to go ahead with a scoping for Regatta Park. Previously, Moser had said a decision had not been made on whether to hold a scoping. The decision to hold a scoping is news because Councilman Fernando Cabrera had requested a scoping in December, but Parks has not responded. Perhaps our inquiry spurred them into action. Also, just to be clear, the creation of Regatta Park is called for in the city's new comprehensive waterfront plan, but there is no money allocated for the project in the three-year "action" plan.

By Alex Kratz

Regatta Park does not exist. It is an idea. A collective vision — shared by Harlem River enthusiasts, Bronx water access advocates, a community board and a local politician — to see a public, usable green space on the Harlem River waterfront in the northwest Bronx.

Ozzie Brown can see what Regatta Park is now from his Fordham Hill apartment, which looks down at the Harlem River waterfront, just north of the historic University Heights Bridge. “It’s a dump,” he says of the area, which is also known as Fordham Landing.

The creation of Regatta Park is called for in the city’s recently released comprehensive waterfront plan and is a vital cog in advocates’ dream of creating a continuous greenway that would travel along the Harlem and Hudson rivers from Westchester County to the south Bronx.

But the city money once allocated for Regatta Park has all but evaporated, forcing residents like Brown and other park advocates to keep hope and the vision of waterfront access alive.

Harris Clean-up Costing Other Parks

Construction at Harris Field, this October (file photo by Layza Garcia)

Editor's note: this article is from this week's Norwood News, our special 2010 year in review issue, which hits the streets today.

By Alex Kratz

There’s a new twist to the saga that has become the remaking of Harris Field in Bedford Park.

Last year, the Norwood News uncovered the Parks Department’s finding of heavy lead contamination underneath the soil at Harris, which caused delays and cost the city $5.2 million to mitigate.

While the city searched for a company to do the clean-up work, residents continued to use the contaminated site, but it wasn’t until a decomposing dead body was found inside the park’s weak fencing in July that the Parks Department got serious about keeping people out.

Now apparently free of contamination, construction of the new ball fields has re-started and Parks is hoping to complete them in time for youth baseball leagues to start using this spring.

The twist is that it is now clear how the problems at Harris are affecting other parks that were in line to receive funding from the Department of Environmental Protection, which injected more than $200 million in capital funding for Bronx parks in exchange for taking public parkland (in Van Cortlandt Park) to build the Croton Water Filtration Plant.

Regatta Park, which sits on the Harlem River and is more of an idea than an actual park, was supposed to receive $1.6 million to help transform it into something public and usable. But now, the clean-up at Harris has sapped all but $93,000 earmarked for the project.

Councilman Fernando Cabrera is working with the DEP, Parks Department and the Department of Transportation (which currently controls the Regatta Park space) to see if they can still get the project going forward.