STATEN ISLAND — Four community centers — including reopening the former Cromwell Center — would come to the North Shore under a new plan being worked out by the city.
Borough President James Oddo has been working with Mayor Bill de Blasio to bring the centers to the borough since the summer.
The proposals — which Borough Hall dubbed the "Quadrangle Offense" — are still in the early stages of planning, but Oddo said he would work to get funding allocated to some in the next budget cycle to shore up the plans.
"This is how we'll be transformative," Oddo said. "Having positive outlets for young people, those agenda items are progressed and advance through this 'Quadrangle Offense.' All of this is consistent with what [de Blasio] spoke about."
The offense calls for a new community center at Goodhue Park, a $50 million aquatics center at the Michael J. Petrides school, encouraging the Salvation Army to build a community center and senior housing at Bayley Seton and rebuilding the Cromwell Center at Lyons Pool.
The plans were first reported by the Staten Island Advance.
(Borough President James Oddo's Office)
The first part of the plan calls to have the Children's Aid Society build a new community center at Goodhue Park using funds from the purchase of the land from the city, Oddo said.
The proposal also calls to use the $50 million allocated in this year's budget for an indoor pool to build an aquatic center at the Michael J. Petrides school. Oddo credits students from the school for giving him the idea for the location.
The "Quadrangle Offense" also will rebuild the Cromwell Center in Tompkinsville, which will be linked to the rezoning of the Bay Street Corridor, Oddo said.
The community center partially collapsed in 2010 and was demolished three years later, but a group of local residents started working to get the center rebuilt, the Advance reported.
The idea for the offense came from the ashes of the Salvation Army's failed attempt to build a Kroc Center community center in Stapleton after the city failed to get the $20 million it needed to get the project off the ground. The plans call to work with the Salvation Army to build a new center there.
"The City of New York needs to right another wrong," he said at the meeting. "This borough deserves an indoor swimming pool."
The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.
De Blasio held a meeting with Oddo in June to discuss the pool and the Salvation Army site.
At the meeting, Oddo said de Blasio told him "more is more," which spurred the borough president to connect other proposals together in one big plan.
"I think that one of my biggest disappointments with the Kroc facility dying was that there were many 'leaders' who saw it as a zero sum game or pitted Kroc versus the Cromwell Center," Oddo said. "We should not stop with those two, we should have more than the theoretical Kroc Center."
While the plans could take years to come to fruition, Oddo said the city could start immediately by buying the Goodhue land from the Children's Aid Society, who can use the funds to start work on a center there.
He said he'd start work on coming up with more designs and other work to get the plans moving and will push to get funding for them in the next budget.
