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Read the press release here.

Greenpoint Park's Renovation Fully Funded With $850K From Borough President

By Serena Dai | August 3, 2015 1:47pm
 More than $2 million will go toward renovating a playground in McGolrick Park.
More than $2 million will go toward renovating a playground in McGolrick Park.
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MPNA/Evelyn Matechak

GREENPOINT — A renovation for a Greenpoint playground is finally fully funded after some three years of fundraising.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams' park funding announcement last week included $850,000 for McGolrick Park, a Greenpoint park south of Nassau Avenue and Russell Street.

The money, which was allocated as part of the 2016 fiscal year budget, brought the McGolrick Park Neighborhood Alliance to its fundraising goal of $2 million to renovate the playground.

"We're just really elated at the fact that the borough president and the city council completed funding to get it all done," said Martha Holstein, a member part of the alliance.

Neighbors initially spearheaded the idea of renovating the park during Councilman Steve Levin's participatory budgeting in 2013, pitching it as one of several ideas to fund.

The project ultimately received enough votes to receive $750,000 from Levin in both participatory budgeting and discretionary funding. Last year, Adams kicked in $500,000 for the project.

This year's funding allows the renovation to happen all at once, instead of in phases, Holstein said.

"It’s really been a long time since it was rehabbed, and there were safety concerns," she said. "Equipment really is falling apart and missing. It’s time."

Holstein said that the Parks Department would be showing designs later this fall. Construction is scheduled to start in the next two years, she said.

Adams' park funding announcement last week also included cash for other North Brooklyn parks.

The borough president, in partnership with Councilman Rafael Espinal, allocated $500,000 for Hope Ballfield in Bushwick. The money will go toward nighttime lighting, restoring existing natural turf and creating a better safe passage, Adams said in a statement.

And he allocated $1 million for BQGreen, a project to make the area around the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from South Third Street to South Fifth Street more green. Last year, he also gave $1 million to the project.

"Parks are our great equalizer, the backyard for all New Yorkers who don't have one," Adams said in a statement. "This year’s capital budget enforces that investment in Brooklyn’s parks is not just good for our environment, but for the health of our children, our families, and our neighborhoods."