By Josh Rogers
Construction on sites 23 and 24 may lead to closing the ballfields for a year.
The Battery Park City Authority is considering closing the neighborhood ballfields for a year to construct two residential buildings.
“It’s a possibility,” Jim Cavanaugh, authority president and C.E.O., told Downtown Express. “We don’t know if it will happen. Obviously, we hope that doesn’t happen.”
In a telephone interview, Cavanaugh said he has told Milstein Properties, developers of the two sites adjacent to the ballfields, to determine quickly how the project will affect the safety of the fields and to look for ways to minimize the impact to the Downtown Little and Soccer Leagues, which each have about 700 players a season. “Whenever you start [construction], a season is going to be affected,” he said. “We’re going to minimize the effects.”
The authority named Milstein the developer of the sites last Wednesday and construction is expected to begin next spring. Cavanaugh said he did not know how long it will take Milstein to come up with a construction plan, but he wants to meet with community leaders soon and also set up direct meetings with the developer when the firm has more information.
He said the impact to the soccer season may be less because the league can set up fields further from the construction. The baseball backstops are at the west end of the fields and Milstein may have to dig up the area right near the diamonds’ home plates.
Cavanaugh called Julie Menin, chairperson of Community Board 1, last week to tell her of the possible closing. “We cannot have a situation where those ballfields are closed even for a short time,” Menin said.
She thought Cavanaugh was being sincere and would try to find a way not to close the fields.
For many years, the ballfields were considered a temporary neighborhood amenity that would someday be replaced by several apartment buildings. At the beginning of 2001, the authority, C.B. 1 and the city agreed to make the fields permanent, but build two apartment buildings and a rec center at the west end of the sites.
Two community leaders who helped negotiate the agreement five years ago said the authority never hinted the fields might have to close to build the buildings.
“It was discussed,” said Don Schuck, president of the Downtown Soccer League. “We were assured they would be permanent ballfields with no future closings… There was no discussion the fields would ever be closed again — either temporarily or permanently.”
He didn’t think construction should pose a problem. “Life goes on with construction anywhere else in the city,” he said.
David Feiner, who headed C.B. 1’s ballfields task force and is now an aide to City Councilmember Alan Gerson, said: “Definitely it was never mentioned before — the possibility of the fields being closed for any extended period of time.”
Cavanaugh said the authority’s recent experiences supervising the construction of buildings near Teardrop Park has led to more caution. Much of the park was closed late last year and part of 2006 because the construction precautions were not enough to protect the park from falling material.
“It wasn’t what we expected to happen, but it is what happened,” he said.
Josh@DowntownExpress.com
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