В парке Бейсайд начнут восстановление тропы, разрушенной ураганом Айда

Sept. 1 will mark five years since the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida brought devastation, including 11 deaths, to Queens. The borough and the city still are working to prevent the worst from happening again. And next week, the Parks Department will begin repairs to a stark physical reminder of Ida in Bayside’s Crocheron & John Golden Park. Work will begin June 27 to replace a paved, 250-foot long walking trail that was largely washed away during the storm, which deluged many Queens neighborhoods with several inches of rain. What was left of the path was immediately blocked off with metal barricades and has become largely overgrown. The nearly $180,000 cost will be covered by a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Parks also said in an email that its Operations Team later this summer will be assessing an area near Golden Pond in the southeast corner of the park, which sustained damage since Ida caused the partial collapse of a retaining wall on private property adjacent to the park. “I’m glad to hear that,” Jessica Burke told the Chronicle Tuesday. She is the founder and president of Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park. She said the group had begun to worry that the project wouldn’t come through. Burke first told the Chronicle back in the spring that there was talk on the city level of just leaving the trail as it is and allowing the nearby woods and brush to reclaim it. She also said it appeared to have had been removed from an online list of pending projects. “There was a lot of frustration,” she said. The trail is on a hill, curving around a heavily wooded area of the park. The top of the trail sits near the park’s tennis courts. The lower end guides visitors to or from the pond. At a Friends-sponsored community fair last Saturday, Burke’s father, Greg Burke, said the walkway was a connection between the higher-elevation John Golden section of the park, and the pond in the lower Crocheron section, and its loss eliminated what he said was the easiest path for seniors and people who might have limited mobility. “It shouldn’t have to be that way,” he said. Remnants of the trail bed and slabs of broken asphalt are clearly visible to one approaching the barricades close enough to look. Copies of documents provided by the Friends state that the grant was awarded in April 2024, part of a $366,000 package that included work in Forest Park and Alley Pond Park. Jessica Burke and Bonnie Bromberg, a volunteer with Friends of Crocheron & John Golden Park, showed the Chronicle where the retaining wall near the pond had partially given way. It is located up a steep, wooded hill that has a good deal of poison ivy growing on its lower slope. They reiterated that the wall is on private property. But as a result of Ida, debris, soil and more can stream downhill in a heavy enough rain and enter the pond, upsetting its natural ecological balance and affecting water levels. During a visit in May, a number of residents told the Chronicle they hope Parks will continue repaving the existing trails, showing a number of places where new paving was recently applied, only to stop near clearly cracked or broken asphalt. Burke and Bromberg hope so, too.