Eight public parks spread throughout the city are set to undergo renovations to the tune of $40 million, the New York Times reports. It's part of a new effort by the city's Parks Department to make these areas more accessible to the public and to make them better integrated with their surrounding neighborhoods.
Several of the parks set to undergo renovation were fitted with high fences when the city was still grappling with high crime rates — at some of the eight parks selected, those fences will now come down.
Additional improvements proposed so far include new benches, integrating sidewalks along the parks into the park space, sprucing up deserted patches, and creating dedicated walkways within the parks.
Here are the parks that have been selected:
- Seward Park on the Lower East Side
- Faber Pool and Park on Staten Island
- Jackie Robinson Park in Harlem
- Van Cortlandt Park
- Hugh Grant Circle
- Virginia Park (all of the above three in the Bronx)
- Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens
- Fort Greene Park
- Prospect Park (both of the above in Brooklyn)
The parks were selected after an extensive public engagement process conducted by the Parks Department. Of the city's 1,700 parks, 690 were chosen for improvements. More details on these improvements are set to be unveiled later today, at which time Curbed we will update this post accordingly.
UPDATE 6/25: The Prospect Park Alliance released details of its plans, which will be concentrated on Flatbush Avenue. The park will add two new entrances along Flatbush between Grand Army Plaza and Empire Boulevard—there are currently no entrances on this stretch of the avenue—and a third entrance near the Children's Corner at Ocean Avenue and Empire will be restored.