first proposed in 1930 by Robert Moses, President of the New York State Council of Parks, as part of a $20 million (1930 USD) plan to construct several parks and parkways throughout New York City. This proposal also included proposals for the Richmond Parkway and the corridor of the Grand Central Parkway. The proposal was held at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan during the Park Association of New York City annual dinner, which had an attendance of 500 civic leaders. While the group accepted the idea, there were certain complaints about costs of the new projects, which were centered between Queens and Staten Island. The city had about $400 million in borrowing capacity, and that most of these projects should wait and be dealt with one at a time for funding by their importance. The project for the Cross Island soon became the northernmost part of the "Circumferential Parkway", a new roadway that would start at Owl's Head Park and run along the southern shores of Brooklyn and Queens. The Cross Island Parkway piece would begin at the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (then under construction), cross through the neighborhoods of Whitestone, Bayside and Alley Park and run along the Nassau County border until reaching the Laurelton Parkway, which would connect the Cross Island and the Southern Parkway. In December 1937, Moses, now commissioner of the New York City Parks Department, recommended the Cross Island, along with the other parkways proposed in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and The Bronx would cost about $8,026,182 (1937 USD) to acquire land for and that it would erase numerous bottlenecks throughout the city. In June 1938, the Regional Plan Association proposed 27 new parks throughout the city, including three that would serve the purpose of helping construct the Cross Island Parkway. The first, an approach to the Whitestone Bridge, the city had recently gotten control of, the second; a park along Little Bay, a section of the Long Island Sound that would also connect to the Clearview golf course. The final piece was a section near Willets Point that also included Little Bay, Little Neck Bay and connecting to Alley Park. The Regional Plan Association, in coordination with Moses, requested these new park ideas as urgent, and would help improve the parkway system through New York City. The Circumferential Parkway, which would cost $28,5 million (1938 USD), was accepted on October 13, 1938; the State of New York