The Parks Department has been letting a concessionaire charge drivers $18 per car to park on grassy playing fields in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and some people in Queens are mad. Well, one person, at least; a park advocate named Greg Godfrey. He's outraged that the parkland is being gobbled up by cars on days when the U.S. Open overlaps with Mets games, which will happen for the last time tonight when the Mets play the Marlins at Citifield, adjacent to the tennis center. So taxpayers who use the park for cricket and soccer have been relegated to dusty fields, and Godfrey gripes to the Daily News, "When you constantly compress open space and green space, you're reducing the oxygen in the fields and that's where you're losing grass growth." Queens Parks Commissioner Dorothy Lewandowski calmly responds that, "You need to give and take, and we all make room for each other," and promises that the USTA reseeds the parking areas. But Godfrey won't be satisfied until somebody builds a multi-level parking deck for sports fans, which Lewandowski acknowledges as a nice idea, it's just that paying for it is "a stumbling block."
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