New York|LANDFILL IN BROOKLYN BECOMES SPORTS COMPLEX
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September 12, 1982
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Section 1, Page
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''It took seven years of planning and pushing to turn this dump into a field,'' Carmine Santa Maria said yesterday. ''We consider it a miracle.''
The ''miracle'' is the Narrows Verrazano Youth Program Sports Complex in Brooklyn - 34 acres of park and playground that once was a landfill. At dedication ceremonies, Mr. Santa Maria, a member of the group that built the park, and 75 residents and politicians gathered near home plate at one of the baseball diamonds and spoke of the cooperation needed to transform the site.
''This should be called Perseverance Park,'' said City Council President Carol Bellamy. Miss Bellamy also congratulated the Parks Department, which owns the land, ''for finally getting it back together,'' and authorizing the park's construction.
John Sovgente, a member of the park group, said: ''The city never had the money to develop this land. We raised it.'' Landfill Reminders Remain
The park stretches across part of the 72-acre landfill on Gravesend Bay north of Coney Island. Discarded easy chairs and heaps of garbage - reminders of the land's previous use - still clutter the dirt patches between the freshly cut grass of the playing fields.
The marshland where the park now stands was originally filled with debris from the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. In 1976, a group of residents from the Gravesend section, seeking a place for their children to play, asked leaders from other parts of Brooklyn's southern section to help them build a park.
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