By Jeremy Walsh
Work on the new park at the former Elmhurst Gas Tanks site is moving ahead, city Parks Department officials announced last week. Phase 1 of the project is now finished, with Phase 2 expected to start next year.
The six−acre property, which begins at 57th Avenue and 80th Street, will be reborn with new terrain and more greenery, landscape architect Nancy Prince told a Community Board 5 meeting last week.
The park is slated to open sometime in 2010, Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski said. The $20 million project will not be affected by the city’s budget crisis because the funds have already been allocated, she said.
The new park’s design includes adding gentle hills to the site and preventing all the runoff from eroding the edges of the property, which was originally fairly flat, Prince said.
“We wanted to make it seem larger,” she said. “We did what [famed architect Frederick Law] Olmstead did with Central Park.”
Phase 1 included grading the land, putting in topsoil and planting nearly 500 trees. Phase 2 will include paving the park’s pathways and installing the various playground structures.
The park will include a sitting area for older people, a restroom facility, a playground, a spray shower−fountain installation for children to play in during the summer, an orchard of crab apple trees and a hill that could be the location of a future memorial to Vietnam War veterans.
“This community has a history of market gardens and orchards,” Prince said. “The Newtown pippin apple is from here, so we thought we would bring something of history back to the site.”
When the playground is completed, it will have a toddler area, jungle gyms and even stationary bicycles that power nearby lampposts — a passing reference to the site’s decades as a Keyspan property, Prince said.
The property actually sits within Community Board 4, whose members also favor the project, District Manager Richard Italiano said.
“It looks great,” he said. “They did really good work on it.”
Italiano said CB 4 can always use another park.
“If you can find another six acres in the district, we’ll take it,” he said.
The park also got a thumbs−up from one neighbor. Mario Spotorno, 69, who lives on 84th Street, hailed the park as a good use for the land.
“Before, they were going to put houses there,” he said. “This neighborhood is already congested.”
KeySpan’s 200−foot−tall red and white natural gas tanks were built in 1910 and 1921 and became area landmarks. They were torn down in 1996.
When KeySpan announced it would sell the property in 2001, the community board and the Juniper Park Civic Association advocated for a park instead of a mall or big box store like Home Depot.
KeySpan later sold the property to the city for $1..
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e−mail at jwalsh@timesledger.com or by phone at 718−229−0300, Ext. 154.
