$20 million in taxpayer funds spent on NYC park, dog run that few use thanks to location, homeless druggies
Millions of dollars in taxpayer money have been spent on a new park and dog run in Queens — now if only residents could use them.
The $17.8 million state-funded Maspeth Park has been a virtual ghost town since opening under the Kosciuszko Bridge last year.
It is in an isolated industrial and manufacturing zone at 54th Road and 43rd Street — over a mile from the nearest subway station —and lacks the proper signage and lighting for passers-by to find it, locals told The Post.
“Nobody even knows about this. I’m the only one here — always,” said Elvis Mazzotta, 36, who was one of three people seen there on a sunny Tuesday afternoon last month.
Mazzotta said he goes there about once a week, calling it “one of the best workout parks in the city,’’ although hardly easily accessible.
He said he is forced to drive to the site and park on the sidewalk, as there is no public parking readily available during the week.
Karen Narvaez, who has lived in Sunnyside with her husband and three young kids for 12 years, resides with her family less than half a mile from the park — but says her children can’t walk to it because of the highway cuts through the area.
“How are you gonna get there? It’s not safe for kids to walk the path to get to the skatepark,” said Narvaez, 38.
The park drew similar criticisms from the local Juniper Park Civic Association when the site opened last year.
Though Gov. Kathy Hochul claimed in a press release that the new park is “located within walking distance from surrounding residential neighborhoods, including Sunnyside and West Maspeth,” the civic group argued that strolling through an industrial zone first “is quite an adventure from any direction.”
“We need to do more advertising,” acknowledged Thomas Mituzas, who serves as secretary of the nearby Blissville Civic Association in Long Island City.
“More can be done. … We need to improve the 43rd Street underpass and make it more inviting to people [with] better lighting and better access,” he said.
The park lacks much green space but does come with basketball courts, exercise equipment, game tables and even professional sports lighting for after-dark recreation.
While some locals lamented that they’ve waited decades for a park — only to have it be mainly concrete — Mituzas said the site is still a great addition to the neighborhood.
“We’ll take a park, whatever you want to call it,” he said. “It’s a pure joy for me.”
Blissville is “one of the safest neighborhoods” for children to walk through, and the park draws up to 20 or 30 people on a good weekend, Mituzas said.
One of its more popular attractions is its concrete skateboarding park – which draws a crowd of a whopping half-dozen skaters on weeknights, said a skateboarder who declined to give his name.
The 27-year-old skater said he isn’t bothered by the lack of public transportation to it because the park is worth going the extra mile — or two — to access it since it is near a popular street spot to skate and film.
Meanwhile, just over a mile from Maspeth Park is the L/CPL Thomas P. Noonan Jr. Playground in Sunnyside, which opened a $2.5 million dog run to fanfare last month.
But that park has faced its own accessibility issues for years, local families told The Post.
The biggest concern surrounds a group of homeless men who live on the grounds and shower in the kids’ splash pad and trash the bathrooms and pass out — naked and high — in the toddler playground, residents said.
Maria, 43, said a gang of homeless men moved into the children’s playground after the dog park where they used to sleep was renovated.
A park employee told The Post the half-dozen men have been “using the bathroom all around the park” – and their messy business has prompted park workers to close the women’s bathroom.
Illicit gatherings grow up to 25 people on the weekends and consist of the men fighting, doing drugs around young residents and littering the park with crack pipes and needles, locals said.
“It’s bad,” said Sunnyside resident Cristian Humala. 39. “They use the sprinklers to shower all the time, even when there are kids.”
Alyssa, 35, who lives a block from the park, says the homeless at the park got worse after the pandemic, and as a result, she doesn’t go there anymore without her husband.
Anna, a 42-year-old babysitter who comes to the park every day, said she witnessed a man pull a huge knife in broad daylight during a fight over a woman.
“The kids were all here,” she said.
City Council member Julie Won, whose district includes both Maspeth Park and Noonan Playground, told The Post that individuals sleeping in parks is a “pervasive citywide issue and is not isolated to Noonan Playground.”
“Our city is in an affordable housing crisis,” Won said in a statement.
She added that her office is currently working to identify and accept recommendations from locals to build more parks.
