Is Parks cutting down a fence to spite its field?

The Department of Parks and Recreation will replace the fence at Conrad “Cooney” Grauer baseball field, but it will do so at the expense of its batting cage. 

Parks has drawn up plans to replace the third baseline fence separating the field and the Major Deegan Expressway because the upper chain-links are leaning and Parks officials fear foul balls may hit cars below. The new fence will stretch to 20-feet, which is four-feet taller than most portions of the fence it’s replacing. But Parks Design Supervisor Steve DesNoyer said at the Sept. 12 meeting of Community Board 8’s Parks and Recreation Committee that the Parks did not have enough money to replace the newly spruced up batting cage. 

Instead of reinstalling the old one the Parks will “donate” the raw materials to the Kingsbridge Little League, which has used the field for five decades, because it doesn’t have enough money to reinstall it “up to Parks standards,” according to Mr. DesNoyer.

The plan to replace the fence, reroute the scoreboard so all electrical lines are below ground, repave the concrete behind the third base fence and sod the surrounding grass seemed to be “an unobjectionable project, with the caveat of the batting cage,” CB8 Parks Chair Bob Bender said. But the most recent announcement didn’t go over well with Councilman Oliver Koppell’s office or the Kingsbridge Little League. 

Andrew Sandler, Mr. Koppell’s director of community affairs, said the councilman’s office would have allocated more than the $250,000 it directed to the project if Parks had mentioned the batting cage could be a casualty of construction. 

Kingsbridge Little League President Chris Navarro was also taken aback by the news. 

Keywords