The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation is proposing alternatives to the long-anticipated Van Cortlandt Pedestrian Bridge project, after re-budgeting to discover an approximate $15 million shortfall in funds.
During a Bronx Community Board 7 parks, recreation and cultural affairs meeting last Wednesday, Matthew Donham — the director of ecological design at the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation — presented what he said were more affordable iterations of the pedestrian bridge project, which would now cost approximately $38 million.
One of those alternatives is to revamp the existing pathways from the Allen Shandler parking lot — at the intersection of 233rd Street and Jerome Avenue — by improving sidewalks, accessible trails and forest restoration “to create a more park-like experience” at that corner, according to NYC Parks. The department maintains this would “provide safer access and minimize impacts on the forest.”
The second major substitute for a new pedestrian bridge, Donham said during the CB7 meeting, would be to build an elevated ramp in place of the steep staircase coming down from the Jerome Avenue Bridge. That way would be more cost effective, he said, since the city would be utilizing a bridge already in existence.
According to reporting by the Gothamist, community members have been pushing for a bridge across the Major Deegan Expressway since 1999. Some park users are still advocating for the project — sending around a petition in support of the original plan, which had been signed by 189 people as of Tuesday.
The most recent pedestrian bridge plan, approved in 2019, set to connect the Allen Shandler Recreation Area on the northbound side of the Major Deegan Expressway near Exit 13 to the southbound side directly across the freeway by constructing a bridge 17 feet above the roadway.
Even before the project surpassed what the Gothamist reported was NYC Parks’ budget of $12 million in 2015, Donham said the original design had negative environmental implications.
“There was a lot of effort to find a location where the bridge wouldn’t conflict with below ground infrastructure, and find the best location to limit impacts on trees,” he said during the CB7 meeting.
The original design would have required the removal of 86 large trees in the urban park forest, Donham said, most of them on the west side of the proposed bridge site.
But the project really hit a wall during the COVID-19 pandemic, as supply chain issues increased both the demand and prices of materials.
“The effects of the pandemic on construction projects cannot be understated – they have been felt across the board in every sector, and severely impacted the prior Pedestrian Bridge project,” NYC Parks Press Officer Dan Kastanis said in a statement to the Bronx Times.
One of the first alternative proposals was a bridge over Jerome Avenue, but Donham said that after gathering community feedback the department concluded that connecting the pathway that far north in the park “didn’t meet people’s desire to get across the Major Deegan and start heading south to connect up to amenities in the southwest corner of Van Cortlandt Park.”
Visitors to the park have also expressed concern about the alternative proposals, according to NYC Parks, saying the new routes seem much longer and much more out of the way. But Annie Weinmayr, a landscape architect and forester at NYC Parks, said during last week’s meeting that the newly proposed routes are similar in length to the original pedestrian bridge proposal — all of them clocking in between about 1.6 and 2.8 miles long.
Many CB7 members voiced their support of a connector between the west and east sides of the park during last week’s meeting, but some said they had concerns about lighting, ADA accessibility and pedestrian traffic crossing safety with different aspects of the new alternatives.
The Parks department plans to repurpose the funds already collected for any new project that gets approved.
“In the event that an alternative can be identified, the city is supportive of using any leftover funding from the prior project in Van Cortlandt Park and the immediate vicinity for additional park and pedestrian safety improvements,” according to NYC Parks.
No action was taken regarding the pedestrian bridge project at the CB7 meeting.
Reach Camille Botello at cbotello@schnepsmedia.com. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
