DEIS: Neighborhood impacts; Impacts from proposed garages

IMPACTS FROM PROPOSED GARAGES

Draft EIS states:

Parking Garage D would be a five-level above-grade garage (including one level of roof parking) located south of the proposed stadium at East 151st Street between River and Gerard Avenues. The garage would accommodate approximately 949 spaces. Two-way access would be available at River and Gerard Avenues. Parking Garage D would extend over East 151st Street at the third, fourth, and roof levels.

The parking garage to be built north and south of East 151st Street, Parking Garage D, would span over that street, and would also alter streetscape.

A new, five-story structure along the south side of East 164th Street. The garage would be set back from Jerome and River Avenues behind a landscaped buffer of approximately 0.3 acres, and the curb row of existing trees on the south side of 164th Street would remain. These landscape features would soften the change in streetscape on Jerome Avenue.

It is anticipated that they would be of a similar design, e.g., open-air concrete garages, and they would contain other amenities in addition to parking, e.g., tennis courts on the roof of Parking Garage C and possible ground level retail in Parking Garage D. It is also expected that the areas surrounding Parking Garages B and C (Parking Garage A would be underground) would also be landscaped. As described above, Parking Garage B would introduce a new streetwall along the south side of East 164th Street.

The construction of Parking Garage B on the south side of East 164th Street would be expected to alter views on East 164th Street, from John Mullaly Park north of East 164th Street, and from Jerome Avenue, by replacing tennis and handball courts with a five-story parking structure.

The proposed project would retain as many of the curbside row of the mature trees on East 164th Street and on Jerome Avenue as possible, which would partially screen the new structure.

Response:

Parking garages are generally ugly-looking structures – particularly open-air concrete structures which the DEIS references. Whether you landscape them or not, nobody wants one in their neighborhood. Yet the community will get 4 new structures, all of which will be very large...and none of which will be open to the public to use unless they are going to a game. This is a worst-case scenario for residents, who will have to put up with unsightly structures near their homes, but will not be allowed to use them. It is a perverse irony that borders on the discriminatory.