A Major Soccer League stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park — for the benefit of a private, for-profit business and seating up to 25,000 people with a potential expansion to 35,000 — is another nail in the coffin of destruction that has been and is being perpetrated on the second most-used park in New York City, primarily by the less privileged.
Added to what is the theft of the people’s park is the possibility the recipient of this giveaway may be an Abu Dhabi oil multibillionaire whose wealth was not earned the hard way but directly related to a repressive government whose policies are not ones Americans would tolerate. (“Sheik’s soccer stadium plan draws pols’ ire,” May 3-9).
The fault lies at the feet of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in the almost 12 years he has held office has not only never lifted a finger to reverse the neglect inflicted on FMCP, but has actively participated in giving up FMCP land a non-renewable resource to private interests.
First the expansion of the United States Tennis Association in the park, then the 1.4-million-square-foot shopping mall on the Citi Field parking lots, which were built on FMCP land, and now an MSL stadium. Bloomberg fails to understand parks are the lifeblood of an urban society, or if he does understand he is contemptuous of the people who need and use the park.
Benjamin Haber
Flushing
