Young children in Hell’s Kitchen have been yearning to play in their neighborhood park, but the gates at Ramon Aponte Park on West 47th Street near Ninth Avenue are chained shut.<\/p>\n
After parts of the scaffolding from a building next door collapsed into the park in February, the city shut down the park.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The city shut down Ramon Aponte Park on West 47th Street near Ninth Avenue after parts of the scaffolding from a building next door collapsed into it in February
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The Department of Buildings says the contractors are working with the Parks Department to develop a plan to protect the playground that city engineers will have to approve before the park can reopen
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The Parks Department\u00a0says it is working to ensure that the playground can be safely reopened as quickly as possible
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NY1 wanted to talk with the owner of the building, but the phone number the city has does not work, and his business is no longer located at the address listed with the city<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s been such a heartbreak,” Hell’s Kitchen resident Maria Solorzano said. “My son coming out of school hoping to go in, and just crying and sad.”<\/p>\n
Solorzano, who grew up in the neighborhood, is now raising her own family there: a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love this park. This park is very close to our hearts,”\u00a0Solorzano said. “I live in a New York City apartment, with very small space, and the park is just where we go, for an oasis of a sprinkler, slides, swings, eat outside for the nice weathers, for lunch and dinner.”<\/p>\n
The park is usually packed with children from nearby day cares and students from P.S. 212, a pre-K to fifth grade school next door.<\/p>\n
The city Department of Buildings issued a partial stop work order after the scaffolding collapsed. Some of the debris still remains a month later. The scaffolding that collapsed was only installed in January, but there has been a sidewalk shed in place since 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Macarry Pobanz,\u00a0the mom of a 2-and-a-half-year-old, was grateful no children were hurt when the scaffolding fell. But she is worried her son’s day care class won’t be able to access the playground for the rest of the school year.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m so frustrated,\u201d she said. “This is a child\u2019s space, and it’s something we should protect, and I feel like we don\u2019t have advocates in the city helping this situation.”<\/p>\n
The DOB says the work at 343 W. 47th St. is a permitted construction project to create a seven-story residential building. And on Feb. 11, after the scaffolding collapsed, the city issued a partial vacate order for the playground area, and then a stop work order to the construction project.<\/p>\n
The agency also issued five violations to contractors, along with emergency orders to clean up and make the site safe.<\/p>\n
According to the DOB, the contractors are working with the city’s Parks Department to develop a plan to protect the playground that city engineers will have to approve before the park can reopen.<\/p>\n
In a statement, a DOB spokesperson told NY1: “In the interest of public safety, DOB will be closely monitoring the site, and will not allow construction to proceed unless we are confident the contractors can continue work in a safe and fully code compliant manner.”<\/p>\n
The Parks Department, meanwhile, says it is working to ensure that the playground can be safely reopened as quickly as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NY1 wanted to talk with the owner of the building, but the phone number the city has does not work, and his business is no longer located at the address listed with the city.<\/p>\n
Anca Mulvey has been bringing her two daughters to this park since her oldest, now 7 years old, was an infant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had my kids\u2019 birthday parties happen right there, right in the place where the scaffolding fell,\u201d Mulvey said. \u201cI\u2019m not even sure if it’s gonna happen, if it’s gonna reopen this year, and it’s going to be a big loss, because again, this is the place where we get together, and this is the place where we build community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Violation hearings for the building, which carry a maximum fine of around $64,000 total,\u00a0have been scheduled in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Young children in Hell’s Kitchen have been yearning to play in their neighborhood park, but the gates at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[2296,25,231,75,84,83,9,24,12,6019,63,27,200],"class_list":["post-177663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-top-stories","tag-human-interest","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-noorulain-khawaja","tag-nyc","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}