Where Are All Those Yankee Stadium Parks They Promised?

I don’t know — check the flood plain. Yes, that’s right — flood plain:

Why does the city want to elevate a new riverfront park by five feet?

That was the question this month at a public meeting on replacing parkland lost to the new Yankee Stadium. By raising this parcel, the city replied, people would be able to see over an elevated freight track.

. . .

The land had always been the most peculiar piece of the city’s park replacement scheme. Located next to the Deegan Expressway, it was a mile away from the parkland it’s replacing.

Anger greeted last month’s news that cleaning up this site would cost taxpayers $56 million, three times the previous estimate. When questioned, the city claimed it had no idea the land was so polluted, though contamination had been found there in a stadium project review two years ago.

Capping polluted sites is so prevalent the practice has been derided as “pave and wave.” But why raise the land by five feet exactly?

The parcel was originally part of the Gateway Mall project being built by powerhouse developer the Related Cos. A slice later got pawned off on the city in former Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s failed bid for the Olympics. A 2005 City Planning document for the mall noted the site would have to be “elevated approximately five feet due to the flood plain requirements in this area.”