Steve Cohen, who is vying for a casino license for the CitiField parking lot, which he currently holds a lease for, decided to enter the project into the City’s Uniform Land Use Review Process in the hopes of scoring a “home rule message” so that he can then ask NY State to alienate parkland for the project. He’s thus far gotten the green light from 5 out of 6 community boards bordering the park, with none of the votes even being close, because he wined and dined the members. Only CB4 has yet to weigh in, and they won’t do so until after the comment deadline. None of the boards asked for anything in return for the permanent handing over of public space. Typically, parkland alienation comes along with replacement parkland someplace else. The former Flushing Airport (above), which has been sitting abandoned and has become a reclaimed wetland, would be the perfect area to rehabilitate and provide public access to, but the City has moved forward with a request for real estate interests to apply to develop housing at the site (which is not likely because most of the land is underwater). Why are we ceding scarce open space to a billionaire so he can become even more rich?