| U.N. Park To Reopen The United Nations Garden – a favorite Turtle Bay park that’s been closed to the public for most of the past three years – will reopen next year, according to U.N. officials. The park is currently undergoing a massive $26 million project to upgrade security. Upon completion, now scheduled for next June, the park will again be available for neighbors to enjoy. “The United Nations is extremely pleased that we’ll be able to once again open up the park to greet our neighbors,” says Farhan Haq, a U.N. spokesman. Mr. Haq describes the ongoing project as an effort to “balance public access with security needs.” Security enhancements will include a new higher fence and entrance gates running along the First Avenue side of the United Nations, as well as improved lighting and sophisticated, state-of-the-art surveillance systems. The new fence and entrance gates have been designed to be compatible with other park fences in the neighborhood and were approved by New York City’s Art Commission, the agency responsible for reviewing architectural designs of city-owned property. Mr. Haq says the fence design was also personally approved by Secretary General Kofi Annan. The black steel fence will be installed on an 18-inch granite foundation. Including the foundation, total height of the new fence will be 8 feet. A new lighting system includes specially designed light poles to be installed along First Avenue, as well as in the park’s interior. They, too, have been approved by the Art Commission. The lights’ intensity is in accordance with the standard for other city parks, says Joe Martella, project manager overseeing the security upgrades. The core of the new security system, sophisticated surveillance equipment, is incorporated along the perimeter and interior of the park so as to be unnoticeable to the public eye, Mr. Martella says. The original flagstone sidewalk running along First Avenue, dismantled during construction, will be re-installed once the fence is in place. And the location of the visitor’s entrance on First Avenue across from 46th Street will not change, he says. The project to upgrade security around the U.N. perimeter originally was part of the United Nations’ capital master plan, a long-range program to refurbish the entire U.N. complex to address deteriorating conditions in the aging buildings. But when security became an increasingly greater concern over the past few years, the United Nations decided to move forward immediately with the security upgrades. Work began last June, when neighbors may have noticed trailers moving into a construction “staging area” on the North Lawn directly across from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. This equipment will be removed before the park reopens. However, Mr. Haq notes that once the later stages of the capital master plan are underway – expected to be some years from now – there may once again be a need to use the park as a construction staging area and, he says, “This could result in a future closure of the park for a period of time.” Meanwhile, when Turtle Bay neighbors “reclaim” the park next year, they’ll be pleased to see that the United Nations has continued to maintain the gardens meticulously during construction. “The gardeners have kept a close eye on the construction crews,” says Martella.
The Turtle Bay Association is a nonprofit (501c3) community organization.
224 East 47th Street, New York City 10017 |
