The Gowanus Canal Conservancy held a public meeting in Carroll Gardens this week to unveil renderings for a park and esplanade that would run along the Gowanus canal. The project’s dubbed Sponge Park because planners hope it will help absorb some of the raw sewage that currently contaminates the canal during heavy rainfall. (Brownstoner believes oily runoff from the nearby Gowanus Expressway is another big problem.) The idea is that when the canal is finally......

The pregnant wife of the man who fell from a Shea Stadium escalator to his death spoke to reporters outside her Brooklyn home. Antonio Narainasami, said his wife Ambeeka, was "a great father.... He had so much to look forward to." Newsday reported 14-year-old daughter Emily showed reporters a photograph of her father. Emily, along with her 8-year-old sister and other relatives, saw her father fall and said, "Either he went to turn around to......

Commuting by canoe gets a little easier today as the Parks Department launches the NYC Water Trail Map & Guide. The Parks website features the first interactive map of the citywide water trail system, with detailed information about 28 locations where you can launch a kayak, canoe or retro submarine. Volunteers from various kayak/canoe clubs helped the Parks Department gather information about launch and landing areas throughout New York; the map has detailed info –......

Photograph of a squirrel in a Forest Hills house courtesy of the Parks Department It's a walk-up, but the price is right. City squirrels are enjoying the goodwill of concerned citizens and the Parks Dept., who cooperated to install squirrel houses in City Hall Park. Mark Garvin had five of the boxes, which measure about a foot around, built with soft pine for several hundred dollars a piece--city real estate insanity extends to the......

Rendering of proposed Public Place development by The Hudson Companies. Earlier in the week, the department of Housing Preservation and Development [HPD] revealed renderings for a proposed housing development and park on 5.8 acres of heavily polluted land by the toxic Gowanus canal. Located on the site of a former manufactured gas plant, the city has owned the land, which stretches from Smith Street to the canal, for two decades. National Grid, who took over......

Photograph of someone determined to get around in the snow by Charley Lhasa on Flickr After January hype - which resulted in rain - and a brief moment of snow last week, a winter snow storm finally made an appearance this year. Two weather disturbances resulted in many inches of snow falling in the region: By 2PM, more than 6 inches fell in the city, which is the biggest snowfall in two years and......

Photograph of sledders, inside Prospect Park on the long meadow Convince your boss to let you take an extra long lunch today: The Parks Department just sent out this press release: Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe invites New Yorkers to come out to a neighborhood park for some winter fun. White-capped hills around the city are open for sledding, snowman-making and more. Parks & Recreation will provide sleds and hot chocolate at selected......

It may have looked like simple joyriding on a Friday afternoon, but the Parks Dept. employee careening around Battery Park near Whitehall St. yesterday afternoon was actually a man on a mission, i.e. to kill as many birds in the park as possible. Martin Hightower has been a Parks Dept. employee since 2005, but was arrested after 911 started receiving calls about a man driving recklessly on a golf cart at the southern tip of......

The fate of McCarren Park Pool turned around after being landmarked and given a $50 million gift from Bloomberg, yet its future look is still up in the air. Following the February 4th meeting, last night another Community Board meeting was held to discuss The Pool. This time architects Rogers Marvel and The Parks Department were on hand to present conceptual plans. Curbed has the reveal, but they note the renderings are merely "draft images......

A state judge has shot down Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to rent sports fields on Randalls Island to private schools because the administration failed to follow the legally required land-use review process when it made the deal. The plan was for private schools to pay $2.6 million a year for the next two decades in exchange for use of the renovated fields during peak hours from 3pm to 6pm. The Parks Department had agreed to contribute......

City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. sharply criticized the Parks Department after his office examined the 79th Street Boat Basin's financial statements, finding many discrepancies and possible criminal activity. Thompson said, "During the course of the audit, a number of red flags were raised. The number and magnitude of these red flags raised the question of whether fraud occurred at the Boat Basin.” The Boat Basin has 60 moorings and 110 slips for boat owners, and......

To be a young harbor seal taking some time from swimming to sun! A young seal was seen hanging out at the 79th Street Boast Basin yesterday morning the Parks Department. Sergeant Rakeem Taylor told City Room, "He was moving around pretty fine, yawning and sunning himself," and estimated the seal to be "3 to 4 feet long and about 90 pounds." Taylor said that the seal's appearance means the Hudson is clean enough for......

Photograph of a section of the Texaco map by Sybil Young/NYC Parks & Recreation For the 1964-1965 World's Fair, architect Philip Johnson designed the New York State Pavillion in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Besides the well-known observation towers (think Men in Black) and the Theaterama, he commissioned a "130-foot-by-166-foot terrazzo replica of a Texaco New York State road map." However, after vandalism and weather, the past decades have damaged the map to the point......

The Parks Dept. decided to throw in the towel on litigation that's been going on for three years and conceded to reevaluate its requirement that no more than 50,000 people could gather on Central Park's Great Lawn at one time. Aside from six allotted exceptions (per year) that include four reserved for performances by the Metropolitan Opera and the NY Philharmonic, the city's rationale for crowd-size restrictions was that very large crowds could damage the......

Gothamist reader luzer took some arresting, very "Wild Kingdom"-like photographs of a hawk snacking on a squirrel in Central Park, near the American Museum of Natural History. luzer posted photographs on Flickr and writes that some of the humans who gathered to watch the spectacle "guessed it was Pale Male. I am not convinced (we saw another one later in the park)." While New York is very urban, there are still many places where......

On the weekend of January 5th and 6th, dozens of spots in all five boroughs will be thick with the powerful aroma of fir tree mulch. Yes, it's time once again for the Parks Department's MulchFest! This year's twelfth annual MulchFest looks to be mulch bigger than last year, with almost a hundred different locations where New Yorkers can bring their discarded Christmas trees to be ground into wood chips. The Parks Department encourages people......

A Gothamist tipster emailed us this photo of a prohibitively tall bench on the median of East Houston Street near Suffolk. Is this guerrilla art or city-sanctioned furniture? The new cool “Bench Club” for East Village scenesters? A lawsuit in-waiting from the city’s more vertically challenged residents? A prototype anti-homeless bench? A photoshop hoax? Lots and lots of phone calls to the City Council representative, the Community Board, the Parks Department and D.O.T. have......

The family of late Detective Dillon Stewart was joined by Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and other city officials in the dedication of a Prospect Park playground in Stewart's honor. The Parade Ground Playground, at the corner of Caton Avenue and Parade Place, near East 16th, was renamed the Dillon Stewart Playground. Stewart was killed on November 28, 2005, when he and his partner stopped a car for a traffic violation. Someone......

Yesterday, Deutsche Bank and the Parks Department unveiled a 9/11 memorial fountain on Wall Street. Four Deutsche employees died on September 11, 2001, and the CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas Seth Waugh said, “Wall Street is Deutsche Bank’s home in the Americas, and this fountain will be a beautiful focal-point for the neighborhood as well as a reminder of the family, friends, neighbors and colleagues we lost on 9/11." Deutsche Bank security guard Francisco......

It's that time of year again, when pumpkins take center stage. The Parks Department is taking the big orange gourds seriously with Camp Sunshine's First Annual Pumpkin Festival on Saturday. There will be a pumpkin patch, farmer's market, puppets, and entertainment like the Big Apple Circus and Chris Barron. All proceeds will go towards Camp Sunshine, a retreat for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families The centerpiece of the festival will be the......

We love Open House New York - it's a wonderful opportunity to venture into usually off-limits buildings and places and learn more about them. We tried to take advantage and managed to go to six different sites this year across three boroughs. We would have done more, but the weekend subway work threw a monkey wrench into things. Given what we wanted to see, we skipped everything that needed reservations, since we knew that......

There are many fun events today, like Ecofest at Lincoln Center and Atlantic Antic in Brooklyn, but for those interested in our fine feathered friends, we recommend you head to Central Park to check out the Parks Department's Falconry Extravaganza with the Urban Park Rangers. The Urban Parks Rangers are bringing a number of falcon species, such as the Saw-whet Owl, Screech Owl, Eurasian Kestrel, Peregrine Falcon, Barn Owl, Turkey Vulture, Harris Hawk, and Adrian......

The engines fueling Jane Jacobs' legacy are at full throttle, with the Municipal Art Society's new exhibition, titled "Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York." The show, opening this week at the Urban Center Galleries, delves into how today's (and tomorrow's) city fits into Jacobs' ideas and also examines how the public can draw on her values, given the major developments and rezoning now in progress. In case you've been sleeping for the past......

People planning weddings - or people wondering why they've seen so many weddings outside lately: Theres a nice article about the trend towards weddings in parks and other public spaces in the city in today's NY Times Style section. With parks - complete with dazzling views - getting cleaner and safer, couples are getting married in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn and Gantry Plaza in Queens. The most important thing to investigate is......

Jeffrey's Hook Lighthouse, better known to many as the Little Red Lighthouse, is located right under the George Washington Bridge, in Fort Washington Park. And the Parks Department is having the 15th Annual Little Red Lighthouse Festival today between 12PM and 5PM, with hayrides, face painting, the antics of a stiltwalker, live music, and tours of Manhattan's only lighthouse. The lighthouse was erected in 1880 and stood in Sandy Hook, NJ until 1917. In 1921,......

That shark that washed up on Rockaway Beach yesterday and briefly caused lifeguards to close the beach was not much of a threat. The shark, which seems to have beached itself, was pushed back into the water by a beachgoer and was seen swimming offshore for about an hour afterwards. WCBS reports that, according to an Animal Department Supervisor at the New York Aquarium, the shark was a thresher shark, not known for attacking......

If you were looking at the Gothamist Newsmap, you might have noticed this alert: "Shark Sighting | Beach 108th St X Ocean Side Queens, NY | 9/1/2007 11:41 a.m." Well, we guess the sharks wanted to make an appearance before the beaches closed for the year! Swimmers were evacuated and the Parks Department closed the beach and bay (for how long, we're not sure). WNBC says the police and Coast Guard are at the......

This Labor Day weekend is not just the unofficial last weekend of summer - it's the official last weekend to enjoy the city's beaches and pools. After Monday, the 14 miles of beaches and 52 outdoor pools (including the Floating Pool - which will be heading to the Bronx for the summer of 2008) will be closed. Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says, "There’s no better way for New Yorkers to wrap up the summer than......

According to the Post, the Parks Department has confirmed that the "Floating Pool Lady" will be towed to another borough next summer. About 70,000 swimmers will have enjoyed the barge-borne pool on the Brooklyn Heights waterfront by the time it closes on Labor Day. Having opened during the rainstorms of July 4, it became a popular attraction reminiscent of the Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City. Its creator also sees it as a revival......

Two years ago, we wondered if there was a big list of all the fountains in New York City. We haven't made that much progress with the list, but at least now we have a list of the "display fountains" the Parks Department maintains. And it's interesting - Brooklyn only has three while Staten Island has eight. Of course, there are many fountains outside of the Parks Department's jurisdiction (for instance, the fountain outside......