CHARLESTON — A park planned for more than a decade on Staten Island's South Shore has been kickstarted back to life with a $4.825 million injection of cash.
Borough President James Oddo and Councilman Joe Borelli allocated the money to help fund Fairview Park, near the Charleston Shopping Center. It will pay for a soccer field, bocce ball courts, tennis courts, pickleball courts and a softball field.
"It’s a happy day. It’s real. It’s going to happen. It’s needed," Oddo said as he announced the funding Wednesday.
"All the time we get inundated with requests for active recreation and the beautiful thing about this is it spans generations."
The $18 million project, which will be adjacent to the planned Charleston Library, will be similar to Bloomingdale Park and help fill a need for sports fields on the South Shore of the borough, Borelli said.
"The South Shore has probably the most acreage of parkland out of any other Council district, but we have a dearth of active recreation," Borelli said.
"This is correcting that. There’s a big demand on our fields and the only way to lessen the demand on our fields is by building more and not telling kids they can’t play."
Borelli allocated $1.325 million for both phases of the project while Oddo kicked in $3.5 million.
The Parks Department expects to put out both phases of the project in one bid and start work in 2018, with construction taking about two years.
Last year, city officials announced that New Dorp's John D'Amato Field, which was destroyed in Hurricane Sandy, would be replaced at Fairview Park using a FEMA grant.
Fairview Park has been in the planning stages for more than a decade after the city's Economic Development Corporation bought the parcel near the shopping plaza.
In addition to the park, EDC plans also call for a new library, a senior center and a school at the approximately 63.5-acre site.
The park was supposed to be built in 2005 but was never completed after the EDC "forgot" to complete an environmental impact statement, the Staten Island Advance reported.
