City Hall maintains a 34,000-seat cricket stadium in Van Cortlandt Park

The Adams administration has approached Bronx officials about an ambitious plan to build a 34,000-seat stadium at Van Cortlandt Park to host games in next year’s edition of one of cricket’s premier global tournaments.

The temporary and modular structure will host matches next June in the International Cricket Council’s T20 World Cup 2024, according to local officials briefed on the plan by the Adams administration and the ICC proposal obtained by THE CITY.

Cup will be held for the first time in the West Indies and the United States next year, m the aim of growing the relatively small US audience for the world’s second most popular sport.

While the Dubai-based ICC has yet to announce the host cities for next year’s event, its confidential proposal for Van Cortlandt Park says it is likely that one or more of the tournament’s highest-profile matches will take place in the proposed NYC. .

While they don’t oppose it, Bronx elected officials told THE CITY they have serious concerns about a plan they heard from the Adams administration that would call for giving up parkland to a ticket booth that could hold nearly as many people. like Yankee Stadium or the city’s two professional basketball arenas combined. The stadium should be erected in less than five months, starting in January, in the immediate vicinity of the enslaved Africans’ graves and likely to displace the park’s 12 cricket fields that New Yorkers use today.

A spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams gave general support for hosting the T20 World Cup in the five boroughs, but did not respond to a list of specific questions about the proposal.

New York City hopes to be selected as one of the host cities for the International Cricket Council, Mayor Adams’ spokesman Brad Weekes said. told THE CITY. Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world and it only makes sense to host their tournament in the melting pot of New York,

Weekes added that if the International Cricket Council chooses New York, we will explore all venues to host this once-in-a-generation tournament.

ICC did not respond to CITY’s request for comment.

A significant improvement

Wildly popular in the footsteps of the former British Empire, cricket is played with bat and ball on a pitch where batsmen try to drive in runs and are stopped by bowlers and fielders. Bowlers, like baseball pitchers, throw the ball to hitters.

Is three forms of cricketT-20 is the fastest version where a match can be completed in a few hours. In Test matches in their original form, the match can last up to five days.

Crickets have grown in popularity in New York. In 2008, the New York City Department of Education made cricket a university sport, which involved 14 teams, now 30, and 650 kids in every borough except Staten Island. In 2021 New York State Legislature enacted the law for the official promotion of sports.

According to the ICC’s proposal, construction of the stadium and the adjacent fan zone with multiple food/beverage options, merchandise shops and entertainment would take place between January and May next year, when nearly 20 hectares of parkland would eventually be fenced off. that. The group estimates up to 400-600 active employees for the construction and 1500-3000 employees for the event itself.

The entire modular stadium and all building elements will be built above ground and designed to protect VCP’s existing underground irrigation and drainage facilities. [Van Cortlandt Park]according to the document.

The stadium is said to be similar in design to the weekly PGA Golf events that are well-known in the metropolitan Tri-State area and is located in a corner of the park, which it claims will ensure no harm is done to those who exist. irrigation or drainage in VCP.

According to the report, the stadium would be demolished in July, and the post-World Cup legacy for New York City will be a state-of-the-art outfield along with a new synthetic turf field, a significant improvement over the synthetic field. lawn there now.

Let’s try to get this out

Two local elected officials briefed on the plan by City Hall said they were not opposed to putting the stadium in the park, but the path there would likely be longer and more complicated than the proposal or the Adams administration has acknowledged. .

They cited the potential need for state law to keep the section off-limits to the public for months, and potential damage to the park, including Enslaved African Cemetery where Africans who were enslaved on Van Cortlandt’s plantation are believed to be buried.

“I believe that building a temporary 34,000-seat stadium in Van Cortlandt Park, the city’s largest park as we all know, would require legislative approval to alienate parkland,” said Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-The Bronx). , who met with administrators twice in the past two week to discuss the plan.

Dinowitz said the parade ground is immediately adjacent to the burial grounds. And he said a project of this scale would have to go through an environmental review, or EIS, and possibly even the city’s land use review process, known as a ULURP.

That’s a significant legal issue that I don’t think the administration has addressed to my knowledge. I think other measures should be taken: ULURP, EIS, he said.

All these things take time, he continued, and I think a decision on this needs to be made very quickly.

As for the idea that the administration could potentially avoid those processes by claiming the stadium would be a temporary structure, Dinowitz said I don’t think they can.

They can try to argue that, but I doubt it will lead to lawsuits, especially the need to alienate the parks.

Still, he added, I commend the administration for trying to pull this off. I really.

Councilman Eric Dinowitz (D-The Bronx), who is Jeffrey’s son, highlighted deep community input as the most critical part of the plan, which the Adams administration had discussed with local officials but was not publicly acknowledged.

City Hall says the park will be renovated, but I think it’s a lot to lose your park for six months and then have so many people come into the community, Dinowitz told THE CITY.

The site has not been finalized, Weekes, a spokeswoman for Mayor Adams, said in response to a question about whether the city actually plans to restore the park after the tournament. If the city is chosen, we always do our due diligence with the local partners, follow the policies and leave any space better than when we arrived.

Michael Ivory, a spokesman for Borough President Vanessa Gibson, said the Borough President and elected officials have been provided preliminary information on this proposal and are awaiting further information and guidance on next steps from City Hall officials. We also emphasize that each proposal must have a process that is inclusive and inclusive of all community stakeholders before final decisions are made.

The Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, which collects funds and organizes volunteers to maintain the park, has not been involved in the process so far and requests more information about this proposal, a spokesperson told THE CITY.

Karen Argenti, board secretary for the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, who has worked on several projects in Van Cortlandt Park, said her group opposes the proposal, which it earned from Assemblywoman Dinowitz, and she said she blasted City Hall for it. failure to obtain community input.

Whether we like what someone has decided to do isn’t really the issue. The question is, where is the transparency? said Argenti.

You’re just not the king, you know. When you become a mayor or a manager, you are not a king. You have to follow the rules,