By WILLIAM MATHIS 

Community Board 7’s efforts to see the building a new park in a rundown lot on the outskirts of Bedford Park advanced some, albeit minimally, during a meeting with representatives from various city agencies Wednesday night.

And behind the slowdown of work are unseen hindrances that could explain why the empty lot has remained untouched for decades.

The vacant lot rests on the corner of Oliver Place and Decatur Avenue, a T-shaped intersection with the surrounding area being mostly residential buildings. The lot has long been considered a blight to the community, rather than a resource. “It has become a site of drug use, dumping, graffiti, you name it, it’s there,” said Barbara Stronczer, the chair of Community Board 7’s Parks and Recreation Committee.

But ironically the lot is also the only local recreational site for young people, given the long distance to the nearest park. During warmer months, organized basketball games are held inside the angled lot, despite heavy discarded debris strewn about.

Despite a massive effort by the community last December to clean up the lot and convert it to a playground, city officials at the meeting listed a number of barriers that stand in the way. The obstacles include an unknown amount of infrastructure located underneath the site, encroachments on the site by neighboring buildings and, of course, cost.

The committee would ultimately pass a motion to send two letters to begin to resolve these issues.

It will send one letter to the city Department of Environmental Protection to request information about the locations and delve into how deep the extent of the department’s infrastructure goes. Without that information, the committee cannot begin to develop a park proposal. Any potential park installations cannot impede the DEP’s 24/7 access to its infrastructure, said Shane Ojar, Director of Community Partnerships for the DEP’s Bureau of Communications and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ojar agreed to respond to the committee in about a month.

The committee also resolved to send a letter to the Department of Transportation, which currently owns the site, to request an assessment of encroachments. Property owners in two neighboring houses have built additions that go beyond their property lines and onto the city-owned land. The property owners will have to remove these before the Parks Department will even consider taking on a park building project there, said Larry Scoones, a representative from the Parks Department who attended the meeting.

Once the board resolves these issues, the community will need to make a formal proposal for the park that’s to be approved by the DEP and the Parks Department.

Committee members expected more substantial progress than information requests to emerge from the meeting.

“I am disappointed,” Stronczer said. “I thought we would have more information from the two agencies.”

Once these issues are settled, the park’s future will come down to money. After a meeting between the committee and community members last December, the Parks Department and DOT each conceived rough cost estimates for a project at the site. Each estimate came out to $4.5 million and neither plan included a playground, a primary request from the community.

But community members remained optimistic and vowed to keep fighting for the park that will best serve their community. “We’re gonna tell them what we want and put the pressure on them,” said board member William Francis.

For now, the DOT will install a locked fence around the property by early next month to prevent it further misuse, according to a department representative at the meeting.