By Joe Anuta
Queens kids hoping to ride bikes at day camp in Flushing Meadows Corona Park this summer will have to make other plans after a nonprofit discovered that all the cycles were stolen the day the program was set to begin.
“You try so hard to offer great programing for kids and the general public, but then something like this happens,” Emilia Crotty, educational operational director for Bike New York, said in a blog post.
Instructors from the nonprofit arrived at Flushing Meadows at 10:30 a.m. July 7 for the first day of the free program designed to instruct children in safe biking habits, only to find the large, green container where the bikes were stored nearly empty, according to Geoffrey Croft of New York City Park Advocates.
“We are a nonprofit organization, and these bicycles are part of a fleet that Bike New York uses to offer free bike education for adults and children,” President Ken Podziba said in a statement. “The theft has had a direct impact on our education program.”
The nonprofit has no plans to replace the 35 bikes, 40 helmets, clothing and a bike pump valued at $10,000 that were taken from the container, citing lack of funds, Croft said.
As a result, the program at the Queens location had to be canceled for the summer.
“The theft of the 35 bicycles from the Bike New York Program is a complete outrage,” said a spokesperson from the city Parks Department. “We are working with NYPD to track down and arrest the heartless thieves and we will work with Bike New York to try to get the bikes replaced.”
The nonprofit runs several other bike programs throughout the city, but Crotty said the other locations probably would be too far away for the Queens children to attend, according to Croft.
The program was designed to serve some 120 kids age 9 or older per week through the beginning of September by partnering with other nearby camps and the YMCA. Instructors would provide two-hour sessions three times a day to children. Bike New York would have also provided weekend classes to roughly 100 adults.
This is the first year the nonprofit had tried storing bikes in this manner and kept the cycles there in what looked like a green shipping container that sat right beside the 1964 World’s Fair site for three months before the theft was discovered.
When the instructors arrived July 7, they found the lock missing. Some bicycling waivers for the kids and discarded New York City cycling maps were the only bike-related paraphernalia still in the container.
But even after the bikes were taken, it appeared that the storage facility did not go entirely unused, according to Crotty.
“Now we’re learning that not only were the bikes stolen, but now people are possibly camping out,” she said in the blog post.
Instructors found evidence that the container was being used as a shelter in the absence of the cycles.
Bike New York is asking for donations, which can be made at bikenewyork.org/about/donate
“We are working with the Parks Department and the NYPD to devise solutions for more secure storage in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park so we can resume our programming in Queens,” Podziba. “And we are confident that we will be able to do so.”
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
