Three City Council members have proposed redeveloping the 20-acre, abandoned North Brother Island in the Bronx as a massive public park.
Mark Levine, the parks committee chair, was among the Council members to tour the island along the East River yesterday. Levine said building a park would not require an immediate, sizable financial investment.
“You don’t need to invest $100 million to open it to the public,” Levine told the New York Times. “You build a pier there and do it bit by bit.”
Council member Fernando Cabrera suggested developing the land into “something different,” like a Disneyland, the newspaper reported.
The island was uninhabited for more than 50 years and accessible only via boat and permission to access it is rarely granted by the Parks Department. [NYT] — Mark Maurer