DCR knocks down long shuttered recreational area for kids with disabilities in Stony Brook Reservation

With Angelo Scaccia no longer in power to block its removal, DCR has taken down what was once a state-of-the-art play area for kids with disabilities but which over the decades after its closure had turned into a bunker used mainly by local graffiti artists to highlight their skills and drug addicts to shoot up, as Jake discovered on a walk in Stony Brook Reservation today.

An area group of dog owners once raised money for plans to turn the feces-strewn Thompson Center into a state-of-the-art dog park, in an area of the city that does not have one, but in 2017, then state Rep. Angelo Scaccia blocked the plans, citing a 1967 law that required the Thompson Center could only be used for children with disabilities, and never mind that that law had long been obsolete due to federal and state laws requiring all playgrounds eventually be equipped with facilities for such kids.

Scaccia retired in 2020.

The spot might at first appear to offer new parking for people looking to wander the 475-acre Stony Brook forest, but that would prove contrary to DCR's decades-long policy of blocking off parking spaces in the reservation with large boulders and the odd log.