Yankee Stadium Plan Bad for the Bronx;
Community, Planning, and Environmental Groups Vow Opposition

 

At a news conference called outside a meeting of the City Planning Commission at 22 Reade Street today, dozens of parks, planning, and environmental organizations members, along with Bronx residents, voiced their strong objections to the current Yankee Stadium plan. While they do not oppose the general concept of a new and improved stadium, they have come together against this particular plan, which they say holds no benefit for the community, human health, or the environment.

 

The Yankees are a first-class ball club, and their interest in a new stadium offers an unprecedented opportunity to create a first-class, winning plan for the team, the residents of the South Bronx, and all New Yorkers, advocates said.  But health and community consequences must also be considered.

 

“We urge the City Planning Commission to vote no on this project,” said Joyce Hogi of Save Our Parks! “The plan seeks to destroy Mullaly and Macomb’s Dam Parks – two beloved parks that have become indispensable to this neighborhood.” 

 

Gregory Bell, Co-Chair of Bronx Voices for Equal Inclusion, added that “in a neighborhood with the nation’s highest asthma rates, the taking of parkland for parking is unthinkable.”  Advocates pointed out that in a community with city’s lowest car ownership rates, the plan would increase parking by approximately 75% - a strategy sure to exacerbate game-day traffic congestion.  But it offers no mass transit component.
 

“The Yankees and the city have no justification for this huge increase in parking. It is simply unconscionable that the plan does not include building the long-awaited Metro-North station at Yankee Stadium, which could help to alleviate traffic and pollution,” stated Jon Orcutt of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

 

“While we strongly support the Yankees’ desire to stay in the Bronx, the community has not been meaningfully included in the planning process. We hope that the commission hears the concerns of the community today and sends this project back to the drawing board,” stated Menaka Mohan of Sustainable South Bronx.

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 The Tri-State Transportation Campaign is an alliance of public interest, transit advocacy, planning and environmental organizations working to reverse deepening automobile dependence and sprawl development in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut metropolitan region.