Forest Park's Flooding Among Worst In The City, Study Finds

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS -- Forest Park is understaffed, underfunded and overflowing with flooding problems that rank among New York City's worst in a new report that claims decades of neglect have put this and other Queens parks in disrepair.

The Center for an Urban Future, a New York-based think tank, released a study Tuesday that found Queens is home to two parks with the worst flooding in New York City: Forest Park and Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

MK Moore, head of Forest Park's volunteer group, said in the report that 14 the 48 catch basins in Forest Park's drainage system have completely collapsed, which causes several roads and paths in the 538-acre park to flood every time it rains.

"The day it rains, the entire street is filled with water," Moore said.

He said one collapsed catch basin has caused a small sinkhole to form along the road with eight feet of water below it.

"If you fell into this hole, you'd die," he said.

Flushing Meadows also sees severe flooding for days after rainfall, with huge puddles engulfing

its baseball courts, parking lots and the sidewalks surrounding Meadow Lake, the report says.

"Flooding is a huge problem here, because the park used to be a marshland and has a high water table," Janice Melnick, the park's administrator, said in the report. "The park acts as a catch basin for the surrounding highways and neighborhoods."

The rest of Queens didn't fare much better in the study, which found the average park in the borough is 72 years old and hasn't seen a major renovation in 26 years - the longest of all five borough's averages.At least 31 parks in need of upgrades haven't gotten them in over 50 years.

The study found six others have gone more than 100 years without renovation, including:

• Corporal Frank F. Fagan Square in Woodside
• Dwyer Square in Astoria
• Middleburgh Triangle in Corona
• Clemens Triangle in Ridgewood
• Daniel Carter Beard Mall in Flushing
• Calvary Monument in Maspeth

The report claims neglect has caused parks across Queens to fall into disrepair, pointing to cracked windows and missing stall doors at a comfort station in Corona's Park of the Americas and sewage problems closing the one in Astoria Park's Charybdis Playground after polluting the East River for decades.

Further, the study found Queens' share of crumbling bridges was the largest of the city's boroughs at 26 percent.

CUF contends part of the problem is a lack of funding and maintenance workers for Queens parks. The borough, which has about 6,600 acres of city parkland, got just $27 million in expense funding for parks maintenance in 2017, according to the study.

To put that into perspective, four council districts covering Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Jamaica neighborhoods have seen less than $50 million invested in their parks since 1996 - just 40 percent of the nearly $125 million Manhattan's District 2 received in that time, the report says.

The study also found Queens is tied for the fewest maintenance workers of any borough, with just three electricians and one cement mason for its entire park system. Forest Park has just two full-time gardeners, which it shares with the entire district, according to CUF.

The report, funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, calls on Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council to "shore up the city's aging parks system" and boost financing in every borough. They also want the city to dedicate funds to address "unsexy infrastructure problems," such as flooding, crumbling bridges and erosion.

“Parks in every borough are experiencing infrastructure problems brought by age and magnified by record usage and decades of under-investment in parks maintenance,” said CUF Executive Director Jonathan Bowles.

The Parks Department issued a statement in response to Patch's request for comment on the study.

"This administration has invested in strengthening the City's park system from top to bottom," a Parks Department spokesperson said.

"Looking forward, initiatives like the newly funded catch basin program and an ongoing capital needs assessment program will ensure that NYC Parks needs are accounted for and addressed in the years to come."

Read the CUF's full report here.

Lead photo courtesy of the Center for an Urban Future.