Yadira & Co. Gaslighting on New Rochelle’s Flowers Park - Part III
NEW ROCHELLE, NY (October 28, 2025) — Part II of this series targets New Rochelle’s contentious RFP (Bid 5820) for a “Master Redeveloper” at Flowers Park, which was presented last week by City Manager Will Melendez as a flood mitigation effort but is actually a secretive public-private partnership aimed at handing over control of the park to a private developer. Released on September 12, 2025, with bids due by October 29, the RFP was plagiarized from a Pelham RFQ while bypassing any pre-release public input or council involvement, leaving most council members unaware of its existence until after it was published. Melendez and Corporation Counsel Dawn Warren portrayed the RFP as a non-binding “search for concepts” and a mere “expression of interest,” rather than a direct route to an exclusive MOU, yet the document explicitly outlines plans for a massive sports complex with public participation postponed until after MOU negotiations—projected for Q1 2026 approval hearings or SEQRA environmental reviews spanning March to August 2026—restricting community input to already-finalized terms (MOU) or draft environmental concerns (DEIS) are decided. Assertions of built-in protections, such as uninterrupted park programming and mandated community benefits, are dismissed as toothless and unenforceable, while proposals to retroactively amend the RFP are seen as compromising fairness; the entire process is deemed excessive for what is needed as a 25-year flood remedy, far short of the administration’s claim of a century-long solution.
Councilmember Shane Osinloye’s vehement opposition to rescinding the RFP is condemned as riddled with factual inaccuracies and hypocrisy, including erroneously linking it to earlier flood discussions that never contemplated surrendering the park, misidentifying residential flooding impacts (Flowers Park contains no homes), misrecalling the Wildcliff fire as a morning incident under clear skies instead of a rainy afternoon arson, and overstating deterioration at locations like Five Islands Park (where pavilion repairs are already in progress) or foul odors at Pratt Landing (stemming from natural sulfurous mud, not brownfield contamination). The critique also highlights the suppressed evidence of Echo Bay’s pollution, which could implicate the city as a past polluter, as symptomatic of systemic mismanagement.
Ultimately, city officials engaged in performative “kabuki theater,” potential criminal conduct, and politicizing the issue under Democratic leadership, with calls for immediate RFP withdrawal, authentic community engagement, and law enforcement investigation to ensure taxpayer interests take precedence over preferential treatment for developers.
Whew! I covered a lot in Part II.
I am going to spend the rest of this series addressing the slides presented by Will Melendez which he used to attack and ambush council members and the public who universally oppose the plan for a public-private partnership.
I am going to skip over the first slide for now because it goes with the fifth slide on flood mitigation and start with the second slide which purports to describe significant rainfall events impacting Flowers Park.
Here we go…
