SOME Hudson County Parks, Golf To Open; Not In Hoboken

HUDSON COUNTY, NJ — Hudson County’s Skyway Golf Course will reopen to golfers on Saturday morning following an executive order signed Tuesday afternoon by Gov. Phil Murphy. Also, Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise announced Friday a limited re-opening of some Hudson County parks, including in Secaucus, effective Saturday, May 2 at 7 a.m. Residents are reminded they must wear a mask and practice social distancing.

The New Jersey coronavirus death toll climbed past 7,000 this week and hit record highs for daily death totals. The daily death rate had been decreasing over a week until this past Tuesday, when 402 new deaths were announced. On Wednesday, 329 new deaths were announced. Thursday, a record 460 deaths were announced.

The following county parks will remain closed until further notice:

• Columbus Park in Hoboken
• Mercer Park in Jersey City
• Washington Park in Union City and Jersey City

The following parks will be re-opened from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day:

• Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus
• Stephen R. Gregg Park in Bayonne
• Lincoln Park in Jersey City
• West Hudson Park in Kearny
• James J. Braddock Park in North Bergen

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All open parks will allow passive recreation only—no hoops will be returned to backboards on basketball courts, no open tennis or bocce courts will be open, no use of picnic areas until further notice. The track in Lincoln Park will be open.

All park bathrooms will remain closed until further notice.

Dog runs: The dog run in Stephen R. Gregg Park in Bayonne will remain closed. The dog runs in Lincoln Park in Jersey City and in James J. Braddock Park in North Bergen will be open.

Parking will be limited. All the lots in the re-opened parks will be limited to 50 percent capacity to encourage their use by local residents. All restrictions on street parking in the re-opened parks, such as the circle around the Lincoln Park Statue in Lincoln Park, will continue in place until further notice.

Traffic through some parks will be limited. There will be no through traffic in Stephen R. Gregg Park in Bayonne. Lincoln Park in Jersey City will be closed to traffic on Saturdays and Sundays from 12pm to 4pm and Monday thru Friday from 11 am to 3pm.

Increased Park Attendant staffing will support additional County Sheriff’s patrols in cooperation with local police to enforce social distancing limitations.

If there is repeated, large-scale failure of social distancing rule compliance such as large gatherings or games, or a spike in new COVID-19 cases following this re-opening, re-closures could occur.

“Please remember you are being asked to wear a mask or to avoid creating large gatherings in the parks to protect not only yourself and your family—but also the brave nurses, doctors and EMT’s who are on the front lines of this health crisis and are at greater risk if we do not keep the flow of new cases on a downward slope,” said County Executive DeGise. “We really need to act like adults right now as we take these first baby steps toward recovery. Please social distance and wear a mask.”

Hudson County, NJ is one of the most densely populated, urbanized counties in the United States with more than 600,000 people living within its 46 square miles. The Hudson County Park system provides more than 700 acres of open space to residents of the county’s 12 municipalities. Thus far, there have been 15,863 cases confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Hudson, resulting in 851 deaths.

In addition to the Jersey City golf course, which is operated by the Hudson County Improvement Authority, the county administration is working with each municipality to form a reopening plan for the county’s park system.

This decision will not affect local municipal parks, which will reopen when local mayors determine it's safe to do so.

On Tuesday, a coalition of six mayors in northern Hudson County, the closest New Jersey county to midtown Manhattan, agreed that they will take a regional approach to a gradual re-opening of their municipal parks, when the time is right

The reopening would happen only "when all six municipalities jointly agree that it is safe to do so and the data justifies it," noted a press release.

The mayors are Mayor Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken, Mayor Gabriel Rodriguez of West New York, Mayor Nicholas Sacco of North Bergen, Mayor Brian Stack of Union City, Mayor Richard Turner of Weehawken, and Mayor Wayne Zitt of Guttenberg.

As of Tuesday, more than 1 million Americans had tested positive for coronavirus, and more than 56,000 have died.

In Hoboken, Mayor Ravi Bhalla closed all city parks on March 30.

The six mayors agreed that playgrounds wouldn't open until the last stage of a park re-opening plan.

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