Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why a new report says that when it rains in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, it floods. We’ll also hear why Zohran Mamdani won’t seek to block the licensing of casinos in New York City.
The forecasters had their predictions, and Jonathan Bowles had one, too. All day Wednesday, the forecasters said that heavy rainfall was possible, with a chance of rain and thunderstorms this morning, as the leading edge of Hurricane Erin churned toward the New York area. Bowles, the executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank, predicted that there would be flooding in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, a short walk from where Fan Week at the U.S. Open continues through Saturday with a burst of star power from big names like Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka. The Open “is adept at managing rain and getting play restarted quickly,” Bowles said. “But a few minutes’ walk from the Open, it’s a totally different story.” He said that a quarter-inch of rain would mean that “large portions” of Flushing Meadows Corona Park “will be unusable for close to a week.” “That’s pretty much the case every time it rains,” he said. A new report from Bowles’s group, “The Park Queens Deserves,” put flooding high on a list of 20 ways to make more of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the site of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. The sprawling park covers just under 900 acres, about 55 more than Central Park. And, as the report noted, “all of the opportunities and challenges” facing the park have taken on a particular urgency as officials consider a proposal for a casino on 50 acres of parking lots around nearby Citi Field. The report said that little of the capital funding allocated to the park since 2012 had gone to shoring up “the unsexy infrastructure that is so vital to the park’s everyday functioning.” Looking back, the report said that there had never been a concerted effort to upgrade “inadequate and overstressed” water and drainage systems. Doing so would come at a high price, the report said. Merely repairing the plumbing problems in the park would cost $80 million to $100 million, the report estimated, while “comprehensive fixes” to drainage issues would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more. The report suggested creating a “flood fund” that could tap private revenue and preparing a 10-year strategic plan to guide future investments and decision-making. A spokesman for the Department of Parks and Recreation said the agency was “focused on keeping Flushing Meadows ready for inclement weather conditions.” He said that maintenance and operations teams worked to clear catch basins in bad weather and that $65 million in projects that include flooding resiliency features were underway. But he noted that the park had been built on a salt marsh flanking Flushing Creek, which flows through the park to Flushing Bay. “Wetlands are naturally found at low-lying areas where water collects,” he said, “meaning they remain particularly vulnerable to flooding.” ‘Almost constantly underwater’Bowles said that the park was “underappreciated and underinvested in,” and Jean Silva, the president of the nonprofit Flushing Meadows-Corona Park Conservancy, agreed. The city’s support for the park, she said, “isn’t even the tip of a toothpick.” She also said there had been reports like Bowles’s before. She mentioned one from the early 2000s that outlined a strategic plan for the park. “The only difference is it’s worse now,” she said. Bowles said the state of the park was troubling because “it is one of the most used parks in New York.” “It’s literally the backyard for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, people who aren’t escaping to the Hamptons, people who have no other place to play or picnic,” he said. But he said that Flushing Meadows Corona Park “lacks the cachet of Manhattan or Brooklyn,” where the Central Park Conservancy and the Prospect Park Alliance have raised money to augment what the city provides. Silva said that flooding had been “an ongoing problem” for the 20 years that she has been involved with the park. Bowles, who went running there regularly as part of the research for the report, said a circuit around Meadow Lake could be a soggy slog. “There are a couple of points on the path that circles the lake that are popular and are almost constantly underwater,” he said. Runners cope by staying away from the side of the lake closest to the Grand Central Parkway, he said, even though that means they cannot circle the lake the way runners in Central Park circle the Reservoir. WEATHER Expect a mostly cloudy day with a high near 73 degrees and a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning. Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low near 62. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Sept. 1 (Labor Day). The latest New York news
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Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, said he would not use his political pull to keep casinos out of New York City. Mamdani said he continued to have doubts about the casinos proposed for the city, which are backed by corporate giants. But he said he respected the voters who endorsed a constitutional amendment to expand casino gambling in New York State in 2013. That proposal was championed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the Democratic primary and is now running against him as an independent. As many as three casino licenses are to be issued for the New York City area. “I’ve been open about my personal skepticism,” Mamdani said on Wednesday, “and yet I also know this is the law. The siting and the choices of which casinos will open, that pertains to the state.” My colleagues Nicholas Fandos and Dana Rubinstein write that Mamdani would be hard-pressed to stop the expansion even if he tried. The process is in the hands of the state’s Gaming Facility Location Board, which can choose from among the eight bidders that filed applications in June. The timeline calls for a decision by the end of the year. The money — and the political capital — behind the various applications makes them all but unstoppable. Mamdani, a democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens, made the comments after a rally with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council to support workers fired by a high-end hotel on the Upper East Side. The union, which endorsed Mamdani after his primary win, strongly backs the gambling expansion. Major real estate developers, casino companies and other moneyed interests that Mamdani has campaigned against stand to profit if they win casino licenses. But Mamdani framed his position as supporting the union, which sees casinos as a source of jobs. Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for a second term as an independent, has been an outspoken supporter of casinos. A spokesman for Cuomo declined to comment on Wednesday. METROPOLITAN DIARY Rewarding
Dear Diary: My wife and I had just come from the farmer’s market on what was a hot summer afternoon in Stuyvesant Town. Two young women who appeared to be in their early 20s were schlepping a heavy wooden dresser down the sidewalk, huffing and puffing as they went and stopping every few steps to rest. A delivery man who was unloading a moving truck parked across the street asked where they were headed. One of the women mentioned an address down the street. “Hang on,” he said. He disappeared into the truck, and then quickly reappeared seconds with a cart. He helped the women maneuver the dresser onto the cart. They thanked him and rolled off down the sidewalk. My wife pulled out a muffin she had just bought and offered it to the delivery man. “Thanks for helping them out,” she said. — Santhana Sankaramurthy Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Luke Caramanico and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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