Scott Schuster taps a ping pong ball with a paddle on a small vacant lot at 48 Central Ave. he is transforming into Postage Stamp Ping Pong Park, which will offer free play of ping pong and chess for youths in an attempt to foster friendships, community and positivity.

Scott Schuster, owner of Servico Inc., a process server company, believes that playing ping pong and chess can help troubled youths build community through positive play to help turn despair into hope.

Scott Schuster, 66, was fed up with drug use, crime and destructive behaviors in a vacant lot at 48 Central Ave. is transforming it into Postage Stamp Ping Pong Park, with an Oct. 2 ribbon-cutting planned.

ALBANY — Scott Schuster believes that if he builds it, they will come.

The Albany business owner hopes to conjure joy and hope from a weedy vacant lot on Central Avenue in Albany, once strewn with drug syringes, liquor bottles, rat droppings and the bloody residue of violence.

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Through the restorative power of playing pingpong and chess, Schuster hopes to provide an urban oasis of friendly play, especially for youth. It is meant to discourage discord, foster positive enjoyment and build community.

The venture is called Postage Stamp Ping Pong Park because of its diminutive size. Roughly the dimensions of a studio apartment, the project will transform a vacant lot at 48 Central Ave. on the south side of the avenue, just up from the corner with Henry Johnson Boulevard.

Empty storefronts and urban decay surround it.

The forlorn patch had epitomized an avenue of broken dreams, where homeless people fought, drug addicts got their fix, prostitutes serviced johns and rodents congregated at an old grease trap from an abandoned restaurant.

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