It’s a free-for-all at a city park surrounded by homes boasting million-dollar views — with locals brazenly swiping plants and even gravel from the long-neglected green space to beautify their own properties.
The illicit activity at Queens’ Powell’s Cove Park — which has included homeowners chopping down city trees to improve their vistas, as The Post previously reported — has only surged as warm weather creeps in, outraged residents said.
In one of the more brazen daylight thefts, an elderly woman began “stealing the path” in the park lined with gravel — right in front of a local environmental group whose same volunteers had recently performed $13,000 in taxpayer-funded work to refurbish.
“We were doing an assessment for a cleanup that we were planning, and we heard this noise. We turn around, and it’s somebody scooping up the rocks and putting them into her shopping cart!” said Kathryn Cervino, the stunned president of the Coastal Preservation Network.
The scofflaw old lady had nearly filled up a quarter of her 5-gallon bucket with the pebbles when the group caught her red-handed, Cervino said.
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.”
