Master plan for park starts with markers on maps

What will Van Cortlandt Park look like in 20 years?

That’s a question the Department of Parks and Recreation hopes to figure out with help from the surrounding community over the next year.

Parks, along with the Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy, launched its two-decade initiative on Monday night at the Mosholu Golf House in Vannie, where representatives from local organizations, politicians, community board members and residents gathered to start the conversation. 

Parks says it will collect ideas online and at community board meetings and compile them into a 20-year master plan for Van Cortlandt Park that will serve as a guide for how money will be spent in the park.

“It’s easier to listen to people first than to convince them later,” said Charles McKinney, principal urban designer at Parks.

Attendees sat at tables with large park maps, penning their ideas in magic markers.

Resident Dart Westphal wrote that two lanes of traffic, one each way along the Major Deegan Expressway should be eliminated and reverted to parkland. He also wrote, “BAD!!” in red marker at the intersection of Bailey Avenue and Van Cortlandt Park South, because that’s where park users have to cross the Deegan exit ramp to enter the park.

Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz immediately wrote, “Add Pedestrian Bridge” over the Major Deegan Expressway, a promised piece of the Croton mitigation project, which has yet to be funded by the city. 

Community Board 8 Parks and Recreation chair Bob Bender said the signage in the park could use an upgrade. 

“I‘ve been at the Parade Ground and people ask me where is the Putnam Trail and they are 100 feet from it,” he said.

Friends of Van Cortlandt Park Executive Director Christina Taylor had dozens of ideas covering her map, including creating a youth farm stand and installing a new fence around the museum. 

The evening’s wish lists included getting rid of the Department of Transportation’s salt mountain on the west side of the park, constructing a skate park, converting the golf house and the Van Cortlandt Stadium into community space, removing the gas stations along the Deegan, fixing up the trails to turn Vannie into a hiking destination, repairing the Croton Woods trails for use by mountain bikers, creating a rest room at West 251st Street near the Parade Ground and improving the drainage at the dog run near Broadway.

At the end of the meeting, attendees were asked to write a few ideas on index cards and place them under categories posted on the wall to see which ideas had garnered the most attention. 

Programming, orientation and park operation had the most cards. Not a single card hung under “Economic Development.”

The category “Threats” was also empty, until Friends of Jerome Park Reservoir’s Jane Sokolow wrote “DEP” on a card and taped it to the wall, taking a jab at the department responsible for the controversial Croton Filtration Plant being constructed in the park.

Parks will create an advisory council composed of citizens and officials to work on the master plan. The plans will be posted on www.vcpark.org and residents will also be able to submit their suggestions to the site.