By all measures, the radical transformations at Southpoint Park in 2020-21 have drastically eroded the picturesque shorelines. Resident requests for enhancements were dismissed. Aside from the beloved animal sanctuary, few venture there unless en route to Four Freedoms. Mere seating on a small number of benches hardly is a visit.

The park needs an imagination injection…

by David Stone

The Roosevelt Island Daily News

An Imagination Injection…?

Adjoining Southpoint Park are meadows set aside for Cornell Tech expansion. Wild grasses and shrubs fill the spaces between worn down tracks. Beginner trees also grow there. Rivulets form after every rain, spreading seeds and top soil.

It has a beautiful scent, like nothing you experience elsewhere in New York, not even in Central Park. Nobody cuts the grass because nobody needs to. What would be the point?

But take the short hike over to Southpoint’s east entrance. To the right, let’s be clear, it’s disturbing.

Christina Delfico, iDig2Learn‘s founder, worked with RIOC, creating a tiny pocket forest and drawing nationwide attention. You can see it on the other side of a much larger meadow. The meadow is inspired by the idea that open space should be like a suburban backyard.

It doesn’t work here, and it’s worse than inappropriate because it’s barren. Bald areas abound where mowers raced through for some unidentifiable purpose. Maybe it’s just “how we’ve always done it.”

So, stop it.

Getting Past It

If any area ever needed an imagination injection, it’s the east side waterline path in Southpoint. It was intended as the southernmost extension of the East Promenade, but there’s nothing promenade about it. It’s a harsh rocky lane. It is lightened by a few isolated bushes and grasses. However, it doesn’t even have places to sit… unless you like sitting on rock. If you do, this is for you. Don’t worry about any competition.

But Southpoint has unintended bright points. At the last minute, Wildlife Freedom Foundation founder Rossana Ceruzzi persuaded RIOC to make space for its animal sanctuary evicted by the shoreline excavation.

Geese, pigeons and cats share in harmony. Behind the cat hotel are cages for injured opossums and whatever injured animal the authorities drop off. It’s the only place in Southpoint where visitors stop, watch and ask questions. It’s the most human thing inside the park.

We Need an Imagination Injection

Round the corner and over the small slope, we see where nature begs two things.

• Stop mowing like it’s your lawn. This is a park. Get it?
• Give nature a chance because this isn’t attracting anyone.

Shaving meadows down to bare earth is sorta sickening, but maybe some people are just used to it. They shouldn’t be. What, after all, is the value in whacking away nature? Where’s the gain? You can come by here, day after day, and find no one using this space except the geese and squirrels.

What are we thinking about here? Are we thinking at all?

• RIOC Proposes the Worst Possible Future Dog Run
• Habitat Devastation, Two Years Later, in Southpoint Park
• RIOC folds, finally inviting residents to the FDR Hope Memorial opening, but you must sit on the grass
• Beautiful Along the East Promenade. Why Not More…?
• Love at First Sight: Is it Real or Imagination Gone Wild?

This is done the right way. Up this slope, the Central Park Conservancy cut a walking path that zigzags to the top. There are benches where you can sit an enjoy the wild grasses and fresh air.

Roosevelt Island was designed as The City of Tomorrow, but until we learn to do things like this, we’ll be The City of Yesterday, falling farther and farther behind.

Why can’t we have this… except of course for the lethargy of “how we’ve always done it?”

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