City leaders have announced a $24.4 million investment to transform Ittner Place, a stretch of underused lots wedged between Webster and Park Avenues in the Bronx, into a new public park. The plan calls for three basketball courts, volleyball courts, a playground, a skate park and green open space carved out from asphalt that currently sits in the shadow of the Cross Bronx Expressway.
The funding breaks down into $14.2 million allocated by City Council Speaker Julie Menin for Fiscal Year 2027 and $10.2 million committed during the previous mayoral administration's Fiscal Year 2026 budget, according to the New York City Council. Pairing those two funding streams lets the city's Department of Parks and Recreation move from site planning straight into full design and construction. As News12 Bronx reported, officials said the area has long been neglected.
A Neighborhood Plan Rides Along With the Park
The Ittner Place funding arrives alongside the launch of the Park-Webster Neighborhood Plan, a new city study covering the Park Avenue and Webster Avenue corridors from Claremont Parkway north to East 188th Street. The plan leans on the area's proximity to the Tremont Metro-North station, which offers a 20-minute rail link to Midtown Manhattan, according to the council's announcement. City officials launched the plan with the stated aim of reimagining what the neighborhood could look like, per News12 Bronx.
The council's release frames Park-Webster as the first in a series of neighborhood studies meant to pair infrastructure and park investment with early community engagement ahead of potential housing growth. That approach follows the council's approval of more than 7,000 new homes citywide in 2026. City leaders are effectively betting that bundling green space with transit-oriented planning will make future housing conversations easier to sell to residents who have watched highway construction reshape their blocks for decades.
Decades of Disinvestment Beneath the Expressway
The Cross Bronx Expressway, built between 1948 and 1972 under urban planner Robert Moses, displaced an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 residents and physically split South Bronx communities, according to Segregation by Design. That legacy of trenching through the street grid has been tied to long-term disinvestment along corridors like Ittner Place, sitting directly beneath the highway's path.
The city has separately been studying ways to soften that legacy. The Department of Transportation completed a 2025 study titled Reimagine the Cross Bronx Expressway, backed by a $2 million federal USDOT grant awarded in December 2022 to examine partial capping and green deck concepts over highway trenches. Turning Ittner Place into park space fits into that broader push to cap and re-green sections of the corridor.
A District With a Park Deficit
Ittner Place sits within Council District 15, represented by Oswald Feliz since an April 2021 special election. The district covers central Bronx communities including East Tremont, Bathgate, Fordham, Belmont and Mount Hope. Feliz said officials will continue fighting to convert Ittner Place into the community residents deserve, with walkable, safer streets and more, per News12 Bronx.
That fight plays out against a citywide equity gap. Research from the Trust for Public Land shows New York City residents in neighborhoods populated predominantly by people of color have access to 30% less park space per capita than the citywide average, even though nearly 99% of New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of some park.
Building on Recent Bronx Park Investments
Ittner Place is not the only nearby project. Neighboring Webster Playground at East 188th Street, between Webster and Park Avenues, previously underwent a $1.45 million reconstruction financed through Croton Water Filtration Plant environmental mitigation funds, as Hoodline previously reported. And in March, the city allocated $19.5 million to upgrade three other Bronx playgrounds, Mott Playground, Fountain of Youth Playground and Morris Mesa Playground, under the Community Parks Initiative, according to the Bronx Times.
Together, the projects mark a borough-wide wave of capital spending aimed at parks that have gone decades without major upgrades. For Ittner Place, the test now shifts from funding announcements to execution, as the Parks Department moves toward design and construction on lots that have sat as asphalt in the highway's shadow for generations.
