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.
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