Longtime Residents Oppose Park Avenue Median

By ANNIE KARNI, Special to the Sun
January 4, 2007

A proposal to line Park Avenue's grassy median with blockades to protect pedestrians from speeding cars met strong community opposition last night at a Community Board meeting on the Upper East Side.

Longtime neighborhood residents said they hated to sacrifice the aesthetics of a landmark city street for a safety issue they felt was no big concern.

The proposal is the brainchild of neighborhood resident Glenn McAnanama, a market researcher for Pfizer and President of an environmental group, Upper Green Side. The proposal had been gaining some momentum, but last night, Community Board Eight essentially killed the proposal.

"You can't protect everything," a board member of the Fund for Park Avenue, Judith Steckler, said. She and others worried that concrete barriers would ruin the look of the neighborhood.

"The city has been so inadequate at making aesthetically pleasing urban designs," Mr. McAnanama said after Tuesday night's meeting. "That's where I think the opposition is coming from."

The last pedestrian death associated with Park Avenue's median was in 2004, when a 26-year-old man was killed by a speeding driver at 96th Street and Park Avenue.

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