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In a city park nestled among homes with million-dollar views, a troubling trend has emerged: locals are helping themselves to the park’s plants and even its gravel, using them to enhance their own properties. This free-for-all has turned the neglected green space into a source for personal landscaping projects.
Powell’s Cove Park in Queens has become a hotspot for such activities. Residents have taken to chopping down city trees to clear their view, a problem that was previously reported and seems to be worsening as the weather warms, according to frustrated locals.
In one particularly audacious incident, an elderly woman was caught “stealing the path” by removing gravel from a park trail in broad daylight. This occurred right in front of members of a local environmental group, who had recently invested $13,000 of taxpayer money to refurbish the area.
Kathryn Cervino, president of the Coastal Preservation Network, recounted the shocking moment when they realized what was happening. “We were assessing the park for an upcoming cleanup when we heard a noise,” she said. “We turned around and saw someone scooping up the rocks and putting them into her shopping cart!”
Cervino explained that the woman had already managed to fill nearly a quarter of her five-gallon bucket with the park’s pebbles before the group intervened. This brazen act of theft highlights a wider issue of park misuse and the need for increased vigilance and community responsibility.
Cervino said she confronted the woman, who feigned surprise that her actions were illegal and dumped her rocky loot back onto the ground before storming off.
The piles of quarter-inch stone that the would-be thief tried to make off with had only lined the roughly mile-long walking path at the College Point park since last summer as part of a restoration project spearheaded by the CPN.
The group used $13,000 in taxpayer money from a Greener NYC grant allocated from City Councilmember Vickie Paladino’s office for the project — which marked the first time the path had been refreshed since Powell’s Cove Park was created two decades ago.
Sadly, the theft is not a standalone incident at the green space — where some locals are already notorious for chopping down dozens of city-owned trees to improve their million-dollar waterfront views.
“I’ve seen people throw nets over bushes and take all of the berries,” Cervino said. “I’ve seen people digging up plants, like literally going with one of those individual shopping carts and a trowel and bags to put the stolen plants in.
“I’ve seen a lot. Many people in town have seen a lot, too.”
Other neighbors of the park raised similar concerns on social media, with some claiming to have witnessed thieves hauling their plunder back to their homes.
The park is also a haven for vandals and litterers, with graffiti covering benches and decorative rocks that line the peaceful sliver of bay.
The secluded nature of the neighborhood and the park — which doesn’t see typical patrols by city Parks Department officers — provides the delinquents the perfect cover to continue their antics.
A Parks Department rep told The Post the agency has not received reports of such illicit activity.
“If New Yorkers witness any illegal activity in our parks, we ask them to please alert Parks Enforcement Patrol or the NYPD,” the representative said.
Cervino said the damage “leads some people to feel like they can take what they want or do what they want, because nobody’s looking.
“It’s really disappointing. We’re spending City Council funding that we get from our organization to make improvements like this, and then people are just doing what they please.”