Berizzi stops in front of one of the few patches of nature in the neighborhood, the J.D. Wilson Community Garden on West 122nd Street. A piece of it, owned by a private developer, has already been bulldozed and surrounded by fencing. Berizzi wants to make sure the rest of it doesn't follow, so kids from the neighborhood can continue to attend a nature program in the garden. He's asking New York State to help him purchase vacant land for small neighborhood parks, using the money that it usually spends on Adirondacks woodlands and Hudson River vistas. New York City has an average of 3.82 acres of city parkland per thousand residents, woefully less than other high-density cities.
Parkland is even more limited in many low-income neighborhoods.
In the Bronx, Hunts Point has just 0.55 acres per thousand residents. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, it's 0.2 acres. Central Harlem is nestled between Central, Morningside and Mount Morris parks, but the neighborhood has just 1.2 acres per thousand residents. Getting the money wouldn't just be a coup for the project, dubbed Greening Gray Neighborhoods. It would also mark a significant change of course for the state.