Soccer teams play on unsafe Vannie field

The Van Cortlandt Park Stadium turf field has fallen victim to years of patches and quick fixes.

That's not a playable surface, and it's not safe for kids”

Matt Seeman

For years, the soccer field at Van Cortlandt Park Stadium has deteriorated under heavy use, riddled with holes repeatedly patched through makeshift fixes. This month, following safety concerns flagged by the Riverdale Soccer Club, Bronx Community Board 8, or CB8, urged the Parks Department to move forward with a long-funded turf replacement approved years prior.

In a sharply worded letter sent to Parks Commissioner Iris Rodriguez-Rosa on Jan. 13, CB8 expressed “dismay” over the continued delay of a state-of-good-repair turf replacement funded in January 2023, now stalled until at least 2027. Despite mounting risks, the city has continued issuing permits for play, even as referees have canceled matches on a field they deemed unsafe.

“The band aids are just not enough,” said Debra Travis, chair of CB8’s Parks & Recreation Committee. “We don’t need another band-aid, we need surgery.”

The deterioration of the 13-year-old field has accelerated in recent years, despite the city’s decision to fund a state-of-good-repair replacement — a designation typically reserved for urgent, like-for-like fixes. In some areas, the turf has peeled back entirely, exposing the stone sub-base beneath. The worst damage is concentrated directly in front of the goals, where players routinely dive, slide and fall.

“Holes are opening up to the point where you can see the gravel underneath,” said Matt Seeman, president of the Riverdale Soccer Club. “That’s not a playable surface, and it’s not safe for kids.”

Founded nearly three decades ago, the Riverdale Soccer Club serves more than 500 children each fall, with roughly 100 playing or practicing weekly at Van Cortlandt Park Stadium, according to Seeman. As conditions worsened last year, he said the club raised concerns repeatedly with the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance in the spring and summer. After additional complaints in early fall, minor repairs were made that allowed the season to proceed, but those fixes quickly came undone.

“They’ve made so many repairs that they actually left a roll of turf to the side so they can use it to make repairs,” Seeman said. “At first, they were making small repairs, maybe one or two square feet. Then this past year it was so bad that they repaired like 20-by-10-foot sections.”

Referees, Seeman said, have increasingly intervened, canceling games after inspecting the field — a dynamic that has heightened frustration among parents and coaches.

“When referees are calling games because the surface is unsafe, but permits are still being issued, something is clearly wrong,” he said.

The soccer field sits inside Van Cortlandt Park Stadium, a 3,000-seat facility constructed between 1937 and 1939 as part of the federal Works Progress Administration. While the stadium itself has undergone periodic upgrades — including concrete repairs in the 1990s, reconstruction of the quarter-mile running track in 1998 and installation of a synthetic turf infield in 2009 — Community Board minutes note that the soccer surface has steadily deteriorated, outpacing routine maintenance.

Frustration has been fueled not just by the field’s condition, but by the timeline. Although the artificial turf replacement was funded as a state-of-good-repair project in 2023, Parks officials now say construction is not scheduled until 2027.
Instead, Parks has proposed large-scale interim repairs in 2026 — replacing major sections of turf to keep the field playable until the full replacement occurs. Board members argue that approach would only compound disruption while failing to resolve underlying safety issues.

“Closing the field to do ad hoc repairs and then closing it again in 2027 doubles the harm,” the CB8 letter states. “It is difficult to imagine how an ad hoc repair is going to create a uniform, safe surface for matches.”

In a statement, a Parks spokesperson said the department’s in-house services team will make short-term repairs to patch areas of the field “to improve the quality and safety of the playing surface,” with work anticipated to be completed by May 2026.

The department added that a $3 million state-of-good-repair project to replace the artificial turf field and track is currently in the procurement phase, with construction expected to begin in 2027.

Perhaps most troubling to advocates is that permits remain active even as Parks acknowledges the field’s deteriorated condition. In response to questions from The Press, the Parks Department did not directly address concerns about continued permitting or liability.

After complaints escalated this fall, Bronx Borough Parks Commissioner Jessenia Aponte toured the site with staff. According to CB8 meeting notes, Parks officials acknowledged that “very, very large swaths” of turf may need to be replaced even as a short-term fix.

Community Board 8 is now pressing Parks to accelerate the project timeline and provide a clearer explanation for the delay.