Exclusive | Locals build park in one of NYCs most barren nabes with touching reason behind it

A brand-new park was born over the weekend in one of the city’s most barren neighborhoods thanks to a determined community that refused to quit.Woodsiders paid more than $75,000 out of their own pockets and spent countless hours building Little Manila Park in Queens from the ground up to honor local healthcare workers who risked their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.“This is a product of ‘bayanihan,’ ” said Dori Gamboa, who with her husband Noel made the dream of the park a reality.The Filipino word “means a lot of love, helping out, hospitality, all for free.It’s a community.

It’s a labor of love,” she said.“When you translate it to English, the root word is ‘hero.’ ” The parkspace was built from a trash- and foliage-filled lot wedged between 70th Avenue, 41st Street and the roaring Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that had sat unused for decades.Woodside has one of the smallest amounts of green space throughout the entire five boroughs — with just about 2 square feet per capita of parks in the neighborhood.There have been numerous attempts over the years to transform the state Department of Transportation-owned eyesore into a park, but each buckled under the long bureaucratic process — until the Gamboas stepped up to the plate in 2022.The couple said they were inspired to act after the City Council that summer co-named Roosevelt Avenue as “Little Manila Avenue” to honor the hundreds of Filipino community members and healthcare workers who risked their lives to serve the neighboring Elmhurst Hospital, the “epicenter” of the city’s cases during COVID.“There were a lot of nurses and health-care workers and food-service preparers who refused to work because obviously because of the fear of death,” said Noel, who was raised in Manila.“But not these people whom we are dedicating the park to.“Filipino Americans, we have this tradition that, you know, we’re, you know, we’d like to be known as the very good caregivers.… ...