It’s My Park!

Golf course as mafia front:

The Department of Parks is involved in talks with a business that has possible ties to organized crime, a letter released by the city’s comptroller said yesterday.

In January of last year, the city chose East Coast Golf for a $9.6 million, 20-year contract to renovate, maintain, and operate Marine Park Golf Course in Brooklyn. East Coast Golf is led by Domenick Logozzo, who has lent money to Craig Marino, a reputed Colombo family soldier, according to federal court papers filed in March.

Marino was indicted on federal racketeering charges for defrauding investors of more than $20 million in a scheme by which cheap stocks were sold at high prices by Mafia-controlled brokerage firms, court papers say.

A lawyer for Marino didn’t return phone calls yesterday, and Mr. Logozzo could not be reached at home or at his business. The numbers listed for East Coast Golf are disconnected.

This comes on the heels of a recent bust of a drug-running ring at another Parks concession:

Jerome O’Rourke, 42, who retired from the New York Police Department in the late 1980s, and the others were charged with several counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance and conspiracy, Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan reported.

A six-month long investigation recorded 48 sales of cocaine, heroin, crack, ecstasy and marijuana to undercover narcotics officers at the Dyckman Street Marina or in the vicinity since May of 2006, Brennan said.

The prosecutor said O’Rourke brokered many of the deals, turning the marina into a place where large-scale dealers could meet with drug buyers who were actually undercover officers.

O’Rourke’s lawyer, Stacey G. Richman, did not return calls for comment.

Brennan said the undercover officers made 21 narcotics purchases, in amounts ranging up to 80 grams of cocaine, at or near the marina in upper Manhattan. She said they also bought “purple haze” marijuana and ecstasy pills.

O’Rourke’s family has been operating, maintaining and managing the marina, a concession leased from the city, for many years, Brennan said.

Police with warrants searched the marina and a number of the defendants’ homes where they found cocaine, marijuana and heroin, the prosecutor said. New York City park rangers participated in some of the searches at the marina.