City comptroller and mayoral contender Scott Stringer wants to close 100 streets to thru traffic across the five boroughs — to create new “mid-block playgrounds,” he said Tuesday.
Speaking in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at the city’s first and only such playground, Stringer said as mayor he would double the Parks Department budget to build a total of 200 new recreation spaces — each with a working bathroom.
“I will guarantee that every New Yorker lives within walking distance to a park by 2025, and I promise that every park and every playground will have a clean bathroom and changing station,” Stringer said. “Gone will be the days when you have to launch a search party to find a bathroom or safe place to change your baby.”
New York City has just one park for every 5,000 people, Stringer said — far fewer than most large American cities.
The comptroller’s plan to “give streets back to the people,” in his words, would address that shortage by building out play zones in the middle of residential blocks and dead-end streets — reviving the kid-centered street culture of the city’s past.
“This will be like it was in a different era in the city when parents can look out over the fire escape and call the kids back home for dinner — because they’re going to be playing right in front of the building in these streets,” he said.
A design for Scott Stringer’s proposed mid-street playground.
Brooklyn’s mid-block playground on St. Marks Avenue between Kingston and Albany avenues in Crown Heights was the brainchild of the late US Sen. Bobby Kennedy. The 1970s design features small parking lots on either side of the park.
Stringer concocted his mid-block playground plan using city funds in 2019 under the auspices of the comptroller’s office, which released a report touting the concept.
The program would cost between $300 million and $400 million to implement and be funded through the city’s capital budget, Stringer said.
