The president of College Point’s soccer club said his teams would have faced extinction if…
By Ayala Ben-Yehuda and James DeWeese
The College Point ballfields will open for Little League baseball play Saturday for the first time in more than six years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.
The president of College Point’s soccer club said his teams would have faced extinction if they had not had a home field to play on by July.
In a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Esquire Diner in Ozone Park, Bloomberg said the College Point ballfields would reopen Saturday until September. The fields’ closure in October 1997 occurred because of an illegal dumping scandal that left 1,300 children without a place to play sports.
After keeping the ballfields open during the spring and summer, the city will temporarily close the fields in September to put the finishing touches on the park’s landscaping, he said.
“It was a very cold winter and workers were not able to finish all the plantings,” Bloomberg said. “I want to make sure the Little League can play.”
He added, “It’ll be workable by this year and great by next year.”
A Parks Department spokeswoman said that weather permitting, Saturday was the target date for reopening a Little League ballfield. An adult baseball field was scheduled to open the following Monday and a new roller hockey rink was set to open in June, she said. A comfort station has also been completed.
A soccer field was planned for the second phase of construction, and a Parks Department spokeswoman said the money for the next phase had been allocated for fiscal year 2005, which begins July 1.
The ballfields were closed in 1997 during renovations by Enviro-Fill, a Flushing company, after illegal construction debris was found on the 22-acre site. Enviro-Fill officials and demolition company owners were later convicted and sentenced for dumping the waste.
Responsibility for testing the land for contaminants, cleaning up and building the fields has since passed among several government agencies and contractors.
Jerry Castro, president of the College Point Little League, called the fields’ reopening “fantastic.”
“I just hope the right job has been done,” Castro said. “The College Point Little League has been really hurting for fields for many years.”
Castro expressed gratitude to Councilman Tony Avella (D-Bayside), state Sen. Frank Padavan (R-Bellerose) and Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn (D-Flushing) for working to get the fields open.
“We didn’t have a home base field that we could call our own. It’s an exciting prospect that these could be open,” said Castro, whose teams have been playing on borrowed fields in Whitestone and Bayside.
But still without the home field advantage was the First Sport Club of College Point. The soccer club’s president, Tony Cusenza, said its membership had been decimated by the College Point ballfields’ closure.
“We kind of got destroyed,” said Cusenza, whose club has gone from a membership of 350 to just 50 players.
Cusenza said he received a letter last week from the Long Island Junior Soccer League stating that his club would be booted from the league if it could not produce home field permits by the July registration. Cusenza’s teams have been borrowing a field from the organization in Plainview, L.I. since the College Point ballfields were closed.
An eviction from that league would mean “our whole program will go down the drain,” he said.
A second phase of construction on the College Point ballfields was set to include a soccer field,
“Soccer is still being viewed as an immigrant sport, not the American national pastime,” said Cusenza, explaining that soccer was the most-played sport by American children.
Avella, who was president of the College Point Sports Association at the time of the dumping and held a rally April 3 to press for the fields’ opening, said there was enough money in place to at least begin the design work on the second phase, which includes the new soccer field.
“From the community’s perspective, we don’t want to hear any more excuses.”
Reach reporter Ayala Ben-Yehuda by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 146.
