Legal Questions Emerge About Citi Field Mall – City Limits Magazine – CityLimits.org

Here’s an interesting read for you. I don’t know city law well so I can’t judge, but the article is well written and definitely interesting. The basic premise appears to me be that you can’t build a mall in a park, and the Citi Field parking lot is a park.

I’m not smart enough to understand all this, but here’s a link for you to all check out and decide for yourselves.

The proposed shopping mall west of the stadium may face a larger hurdle: The parking lot is part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. State law requires the alienation of parkland before it can be used for non-park purposes.

…

“Yes, this area is parkland,” says Benjamin Branham, a spokesman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation, “but development is permitted under the 1961 law that authorized the construction of Shea Stadium—known as Administrative Code 18-118—which also allowed for additional uses to be built on the parking lot. It’s important to be clear the authorization comes from this law as opposed to a contract or other agreement of some kind.”

Yet, as recently as 2001, New York’s highest court ruled parkland can’t be taken, even for temporary use, without an explicit act of alienation passed by the state Legislature and approved by the Governor: “[O]ur courts have time and again reaffirmed the principle that parkland is impressed with a public trust, requiring legislative approval before it can be alienated or used for an extended period for non-park purposes.”

via Legal Questions Emerge About Citi Field Mall – City Limits Magazine – CityLimits.org.

The mayor seems in favor of the mall, and this mayor seems to get what he wants. Remember back when we had that pesky term limits law that we even followed weeks after 9/11? I’m going to go have a Super Big Gulp and wonder why there’s a bike lane on 8th avenue.