One of the few nice things about the last year of my life fighting various aspects the SPI plan for Playland park has been that a lot - and I do mean a LOT - of well informed, very concerned people who agree with me that this is not a good idea for the park, Rye or Westchester County have come out of the woodwork behind the scenes and fomented a usually very accurate pipeline of information to me. It's hard to hide what you're doing when you're doing it in the open at a public park frequented by joggers, dog walkers, people coming and going to a wild life sanctuary and, of course, residents living directly across the street in a heavily populated neighborhood adjacent to the park.
One of my little birds informed me yesterday that SPI had people down in the parking lot with a Cherry Picker. In case you don't know what that is, it's a large utility truck with a bucket on an arm that can go to various heights to reach things like trees, roofs, power lines etc.
Apparently on Wednesday SPI had someone in a Cherry Picker stationed in the parking lot raising the bucket up to the height that they are claiming the roof will be. Then they sent someone over to Roosevelt Ave. with a camera to take pics of the Cherry Picker bucket to prove to residents that the proposed 95,000 sq. foot indoor field house 50 yards from their front lawns won't be visible to the neighborhood residents. Of course, from what I'm told, these pics were only taken at street level from in front of a select (and very small) number of houses. Sounds like no one went to either end of the blocks in any direction to take various views from various standpoints. And I didn't hear of any residents living along there letting the photog into their homes to get that view from the second stories of the homes.
Expect to see them roll out these pics in some sort of slick, glossy marketing presentation while they give you their razzle-dazzle, "it's going to be great, you're going to love it, we're going to be sensitive to the community in the area, and we know better than you because we all have uber-impressive professional resumes so TRUST US!" (and don't question our integrity!) spin on it. Ask a lot of questions. Photos taken of a Cherry Picker bucket are not building specs. If they are what SPI is relying on to prove that the visual won't disturb neighbors that would be an insult to everyone's intelligence. Just the premise that the only *real* concern people have about how this thing is how it will *look* is an insult to everyone's intelligence when there are just soooo many more things wrong with it than that.
I have to wonder how much it costs to hire a Cherry Picker and photographer for the day and how SPI paid for that. That might be tough budgeting for a little old group of grass roots volunteers like SPI. (I guess it could potentially be a good thing to have some sort of "in" with their new Board Member Patricia Scofield's boss at the company she lists as her employer....Nelson Rockefeller Jr's "Propact"!)
SPI is holding a "Public Information Session" this coming Tuesday, February 25th, 2014. Hosted by the City of Rye and moderated by Rye's new Mayor, Joe Sack, this will take place in the Council Chambers at Rye City Hall starting at 7:30pm. Let's all hope it goes better than the debacle at the Library back in December. Get there early for a seat. If you can't make it, it will be aired live on Rye City TV, I'm assuming also broadcast live via internet stream (look up Rye City's web site for that info) and taped for future viewing. Presenters *should* include SPI reps, County Executive and BOL reps (and please someone other than/in addition to "SPI is GREAT!" Catherine Parker), Pinnacle Sports, Playland Sports and Central Amusements (who may be talking a significantly reduced financial investment in the amusement park due to the drastic reduction in the size of the parking lot, so hopefully they can be pinned down on that). Format/protocol for the presentation has not been finalized at the time of this writing.
If you'd like to sign a petition either before, or after, the presentation protesting the construction of this Field Zone in the Playland parking lot, you can visit the web site:
www.nofieldzone.org
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