Angry Upper East Siders yesterday protested a plan to build a 40-story office building on the site of their neighborhood’s only playground.
Residents of the Ruppert Towers, on Second Avenue at East 92nd Street, said Central Park is too far away, and the change would leave them without a park of their own.
“This is an incredible shame,” Geoffrey Croft, of NYC Park Advocates, said of the plan to demolish the Ruppert Playground. “The quality of life for these residents would sink to a new low.”
In 1983, the city sold the parkland to the developer Related Cos., which promised to keep the park for 25 years. That agreement expired last June.
Croft said the protesters hoped to pressure the owners into selling to a firm that would maintain the popular playground, which includes tennis, basketball and handball courts, and dozens of trees and bushes.
Related Cos. could not be reached for comment.