FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.timesnewsweekly.com JULY 23, 2015 • TIMES 3 Upgrades coming for Woodhaven’s Mary Whalen Playground BY ANTHONY GIUDICE agiudice@ridgewoodtimes.com @A_GiudiceReport For over a year, Forest Park’s Mary Whalen Playground, located near Forest Parkway and Park Lane South, has been awaiting repairs, but the wait will end next month. On Aug. 18, Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley will be holding a groundbreaking ceremony at the Woodhaven play space in Forest Park to kick off the start of the renovation. Crowley has allocated $1 million from City Council funding for the site, while the Parks Department added another $180,000 from the department’s budget to reconstruct the playground. Mary Whalen Playground was built in the 1940s and sits at the bottom of a large hill that was formed by an Ice Age glacier hundreds of thousands of years ago. The semi-circular park last received renovations in 1991. The park is named after Mary Whalen, who was the vice president of Community Board 9 and a one-time president of the Woodhaven Block Association. She also founded the Greater Woodhaven Development Corporation. Currently, the park’s centerpiece, a spray shower water feature, has cracked asphalt surrounding it. The concrete wall near Park Lane South is eroding, and certain play equipment is outdated, including the 10-foot swings that do not meet American Society for Testing Material standards. The renovations will upgrade the park to include new play equipment, a new central water feature, separate areas for preschoolers and pre-teens, a new teen court play area near the back of the playground, and a secondary ramp into the park from Park Lane South that will adhere to the standards set forth by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The project will also increase the green spaces of the playground by adding more canopy trees and repair the existing drainage system, perimeter walls and curbs. BY ANTHONY GIUDICE agiudice@ridgewoodtimes.com @A_GiudiceReport Rumors have surfaced about plans to erect a two-story, mixeduse building on the site of a longunused gas station in Maspeth. The speculation fl oated on local Facebook pages noted that the proposed building at 58-60 Brown Pl. would be 11,000 square feet in size, including 5,500 square feet of retail space on the fi rst fl oor with a healthcare facility located on the second fl oor. Although the speculation includes details as to what the site will become, they are only rumors at this point, with no confi rmation from the Department of Buildings. According to Community Board 5 (CB 5), the triangular piece of land was once a gas station and currently has a commercial overlay of C1-3, which would allow the construction of a commercial building on the site. The rumored retail space/healthcare facility would fall within the parameters of the overlay. Between 1991 and 2006, the vacant gas station racked up seven building code violations, with most of them concerning the illegal use of the open lot where individuals would sell furniture, according to the city Department of Buildings. The open lot has since been fenced in to avoid any further illegal activity taking place there. However, the most recent building plans were fi led and rejected in 2010, according to the Buildings Department’s online database. CB 5 has yet to receive any demolition notices for the site. RIDGEWOOD TIMES/Photo by Anthony Giudice The abandoned gas station at 58-60 Brown Pl., in Maspeth is rumored to become a twostory, mixed-use facility. RIDGEWOOD TIMES/Photos by Anthony Giudice Forest Park’s Mary Whalen Playground is set to get long-awaited upgrades next month. Rumors swirl over abandoned Maspeth service station
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