With Any Luck It’ll Be Off Limits For Years While Environmental Agencies Conduct Studies . . . But The Only Thing Better Would Be If It Cost Millions Just To Clean Up

A deal that looks better and better with each passing day:

Now that the old-growth trees have been felled and the earth-moving machines have started to dig up Macombs Dam Park, what will the residents surrounding the $1.3 billion new Yankee Stadium project be left with for replacement parks?

Polluted land, according to city and federal documents.

Under the current stadium are two 15,000-gallon oil tanks, which were found to be leaking, and soil in all of the replacement parkland contains “semi-volatile compounds and/or metals at concentrations exceeding [New York State Department of Environmental Conservation] Cleanup Objectives,” noted National Park Service executive Jack Howard when he signed off on the city’s park-swap plan.

Though the contaminated land is cited in this NPS go-ahead as well as the city’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, it’s not mentioned in any of the appraisals performed to comply with federal and state laws.

Build Your Own No Parking Zone

Renegade signage causes havoc in DUMBO; DOT flummoxed:

A “No Parking” sign mysteriously appeared on a stretch of Front St. in Brooklyn this week, prompting the police to ticket and tow cars left there.

The only problem, the city Transportation Department said yesterday, is that there are no parking restrictions on the south side of Front St., between Washington and Main Sts. — and they have no idea who put up the official sign.

“This is crazy,” cried towing victim David Bourgeois, a 38-year-old freelance writer who lives in the neighborhood.

It was the latest twist in a Twilight Zone-like week for Bourgeois, who parked his Mini Cooper on Front St. Sunday night when the sign — barring parking from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays — wasn’t there.

When he went to check on his wheels Wednesday morning, the sign was there — and his car was gone.

He found his Mini in a police tow pound in Brooklyn Wednesday night. He paid $205 to drive it to freedom. Adding insult to injury, a $60 parking ticket was on the windshield.

“It’s just outrageous,” he said. “I’m definitely going to fight this.”

DOT spokeswoman Kay Sarlin said the agency would work with the city Finance Department to dismiss the ticket. An NYPD spokesman said officials were looking into waiving the towing fee.

Traffic Cops Really Need Something Better To Do

A priest gets a ticket for double parking while trying to administer last rites:

A Brooklyn priest got slapped with a $115 parking ticket after he rushed into a hospital to administer last rites to a dying woman, the Daily News has learned.

But even after the Rev. Cletus Forson pleaded his case to a traffic judge, the city refused to throw the summons out.

“If the sanctity of the law won’t bend for the needs of a dying person, I feel really sad,” Forson said yesterday.

“It disturbs me as a priest and as a human being,” added the priest, who has served at St. Andrew the Apostle Church on Ridge Blvd. in Bay Ridge for nearly three years.

Forson got hit with the ticket July 26 about 9:30 p.m. for parking in a No Standing Anytime zone in front of Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park.

The 42-year-old Catholic priest, who is originally from Ghana, said he knew the spot was technically illegal but felt he couldn’t risk wasting time continuing to look for a better spot.

He had just received a call from a panicked parishioner desperate to find a priest to administer last rites to her elderly mother. Forson, who was sick in bed with the flu at the time, said he even checked in with a nurse before leaving and was told there was no time to spare.

“I couldn’t get any parking,” said Forson. “It is my obligation to get there and administer to the needs of the sick.”

Forson placed his official clergy parking permit on the dashboard — which reads “Clergy on Call” — and said he was inside for less than 20 minutes.

“It’s not about the money,” said Forson. “It creates the feeling that if somebody is sick, nobody should go. I don’t think that’s right.”

Forson appealed the ticket, but Administrative Law Judge Michael Ciaravino refused to back down.

“Respondent’s claim that vehicle was parked while he, as a pastor, was attending to a patient at a hospital is not a valid defense to the violation,” wrote Ciaravino in the July 28 decision. “Guilty.”

The only thing better would have been if an ambulance pulled up and got a ticket for being double parked.

Congress Must Raise Taxes On The Rich . . . The Country’s Social Fabric Depends On It!

There is way too much disposable income out there:

Thousands of New York men are resorting to offering cash and prizes in return for noncommittal relationships.

The men are advertising their offers on sites like suggardaddie.com, under handles like “nice guy, bad boy.” The site describes itself as “the foundations of a great relationship.” It claims the sugar-daddy relationship “can eradicate the issues of financial stress that modern living can bring.”

Single, divorced, married — they’re all trawling for young women to shower with their millions. In return, most want their girl to be at their beck and call.

Logging onto the site using the name Maria Benson, I had some upping their bids within minutes.

Donny (all names have been changed) was looking for a “sexy woman who can go from jeans to stilettos in a flash.”

The self-employed, attached 35-year-old said he would give me $2,000 a month for dates in his first e-mail.

John, a divorced 43-year-old looking for love and claiming his yearly income is “more than you can spend!” said, “I’m tall, rich and enjoy the role of sugar dad. You have to be willing, attentive, and appreciative of me . . . I get off on being generous.”

Jay, whose picture revealed six-pack abs, said his yearly income was more than $1 million but moaned, “I am stuck in a boring, lifeless, and otherwise unrewarding marriage.”

Within 24 hours, I was sitting at an outdoor cafe on the Upper West Side meeting Scott, a boyish-looking 47-year-old who owns his own financial-consulting firm in Manhattan.

He said he was “in search of a discreet relationship with the right woman.” And he was ready to pay to make it happen.

Dressed in a suit and tie on what must have been his lunch hour, he said: “I’ve never done this before. I’ve been married 23 years, and we’re just going through a rough patch right now. I’ve gotten close but never went through with it. I’m ready to now.”

Fifteen minutes later, he agreed to pay the $1,500-a-month rent on my apartment, fund shopping sprees and take me on world-class vacations. The apartment, he said, would be for trysts.

“I just don’t want to deal with the checking in and out of hotels,” he said. “But I’d also give you the money that I would have spent on a room.”

“I don’t want to drag a hooker around town,” he told me. “I like that you seem normal, what are you looking for?”

Then he interrupted, “Just so we’re clear, I’m not leaving my wife, and I don’t plan to . . . I have to be home at night and on the weekends. I have to coach my son’s Little League games.”

Upper East Side Infestation In Chelsea; “Hetero Outposts” Torn Down Too Soon

The so-called last “Hetero outpost in Chelsea will fall to the wrecking ball”:

Phil Alotta pulled down the heavy metal gate outside his restaurant Chelsea Grill last Sunday afternoon. Then he and his wife, Carolyn, attached several heavy padlocks to secure it. They would only close up one more time. An auction of the place’s contents was scheduled for Monday, after which Chelsea Grill’s 15 years at the location would come to an end.

A new six-story, residential building with upscale retail on the ground floor is slated for most of the block on the west side of Eighth Ave. between 16th St. and 17th Sts., extending back through the block to Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly Playground. Several one-story buildings, as well as three early 19th-century, four-story houses will be razed to make way for the new building.

. . .

Tim Gay, a former Democratic district leader who lives in the corner building at 17th St. that isn’t being torn down, said the strip of restaurants was one of the places straights congregated in Chelsea.

“Chelsea Grill was a major hangout for the heterosexuals,” he said.

But in an odd twist, the forces of gentrification mean that a new hetero outpost may be needed sooner than expected:

But Alotta said his customer base in Chelsea was a 50/50 mix of gays and straights. Priced out of Chelsea, gays have already been leaving for a while already, Alotta said. He said he hears that, after Hell’s Kitchen, the next gay exodus will be to Washington Heights.

. . .

Passersby who were reading the farewell sign on the door of Chelsea Grill last Friday evening said they just hope the new building won’t resemble the high-rise across the street — the Grand Chelsea — the design of which most consider an abomination. The neighborhood keeps upscaling and affordable stores that sell things people who live in the neighborhood need are disappearing, said Lee Fergusson, who lives around the corner.

“It’s not good because the whole neighborhood is becoming generic,” said Fergusson. “The deli on the corner just had its rent raised from $10,000 to $30,000. So the neighborhood loses its deli and what goes in there? Gay T-shirts . . . .”

Three other old buildings on 18th St. were also recently demolished. State Senator Tom Duane said the hope was that the Chelsea Plan, which was passed in 1998, would preserve low-rise buildings on Eighth Ave. by downzoning Eighth Ave. and allowing taller buildings on Sixth Ave. and 23rd St. But, clearly, the downzoning isn’t stopping the wrecking ball.

“The Grand Chelsea was the one that spurred everyone into action,” Duane said. “That’s when people realized, ‘My God, Eighth Ave. could turn into the Upper East Side with towers.’ These new buildings will be low-rise — but they’re still destroying buildings.”