Results tagged “theparksdept”

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 trees!

More than 200 years after its construction, preservationists aren't sure which direction Alexander Hamilton's country house should be facing. Hamilton Grange, located in Harlem, has already been moved and reoriented once, but that was just a temporary relocation undertaken in 1899. Now preservationists want to give the Federal-style country house a more permanent and less cramped site, but can't agree on what axis to place it.

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 Manhattan.

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.

Even as Astroland is on the verge of losing its lease, City officials are looking to collect $200 million from various sources to overhaul the Coney Island boardwalk. The New York Post reports that funds are being sought from New York State, the federal government, and even Brooklyn real estate owners who will benefit from a refurbished seaside walkway.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a triple shooting on East 21st St. and Caton Ave. in Brooklyn, a missing child on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and a mass casualty incident at Castle Hill Ave. and the Cross Bronx Expressway.
• Many New Yorkers donned black this Thursday in solidarity with the Jena 6.
• Cops are looking for a man who applied for a job at the Duane Reade on 34th St. and 5th Ave., only to return to the store a few minutes later brandishing a silver-colored gun and demanding money.
• The Parks Dept. has officially ended the bid for a company to build a 26-acre water-park on Randall's Island.
• A 45-year-old bachelor is striving for independence from the bedroom in his parents' home, where he's organizing a campign for an independent Long Island Nation. He wants Brooklyn, Queens, and the rest of the island to break off not just from NYC, but to secede from the United States.
• A kayak and canoe ramp opened in the Idlewild Park Preserve on Jamaica Bay in Queens, but not all residents seemed that enthusiastic.
• Former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey was ordered by a judge to pay his ex-wife $2,500 a month in alimony.
• New York City and State have agreed on a set of safety protocols that will be enacted at the Deutsche Bank building in the next two to three weeks.

Kate Gilliam heads up Trees Not Trash, a group whose name pretty much explains it all. Gilliam builds planters, plants trees and makes her industrial neighborhood a little more green each day. Oh, and she's a seed bomber, too. We're betting East Williamsburg could use a lot more patches of nature, so help out by volunteering or going to their benefit show this Saturday.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a church shooting on Schenectady Ave. in Brooklyn, a pedestrian struck on West 17th St. and Union Square West in Manhattan, and a water rescue in Raitian Bay between Staten Island and Sandy Hook, NJ.
• City Councilman Charles Barron's chief of staff, Viola Plummer, was suspended for six weeks from the City Council and by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who she's also heckled, with a promise of reinstatment if she promises to behave herself. Plummer is in her 70s, but threatened another Councilman with assassination on a contentious vote.
• A grand jury in a federal court case voted to indict four alleged plotters that wanted to blow up JFK airport, kill thousands, and cripple the U.S. economy with a harebrained scheme to take out a pipeline that runs towards the airport.
• "...the red, white and blue leader of the Avengers was felled by an assassin's bullet on the steps of a New York federal courthouse." Captain America got capped, by Marvel Comics no less.
• A 21-year-old White Plains worker at the Rye Playland Amusement Park was killed when thrown from a gyrating ride. Gabriela Garin had changed shifts with another ride operator and then got on the ride to make sure visitors were properly secured, when her replacement started the ride.
• The new rules against noise and trans-fats go into effect tomorrow. Somehow we feel that NYers will remain louder, skinnier, and better looking than the rest of the country, regardless of what laws are passed.
• The City has a list of all the designated grilling areas around the five boroughs. The Parks Dept. says "Designated Barbecuing Areas," but frankly, we don't want to get into all that right now.
• We've pretty much given up on listening to radio, but this blog may point us to something it's possible we'll want to hear. Thank you New York Radio Guide.
• The Staten Island Advance points out that Mayor Bloomberg's ambitious plan to make all yellow cabs hybrid in a few years overlooks the livery cabs that service the outer boroughs. Car service owners and drivers would prefer to keep it that way.

Sen. Chuck Schumer appeared in Red Hook yesterday to support the plight of the vendors that serve the people who come to watch and play sports at the Red Hook ballfields. The vendors have been cooking up ethnic food that appeals to their mostly Hispanic clientele for several years under a series of temporary permits from the city. The Parks Dept. wants to put an official vending permit up for bidding, and the current vendors who sell relatively low-priced food to their customers are not assured of winning the contest over a business catering to newer and more well-heeled Red Hook residents.