The residents include parents of public school students who have criticized the agreement between the city and the private schools as being unfair to the area’s public school children who also use Randalls Island’s ball fields.
The arrangement, reached in February, calls for 20 private schools, including Dalton and Spence, to pay the city $52.4 million to create new baseball, softball, soccer, lacrosse and other fields and to renovate existing ones on Randalls Island. In exchange, those schools will be given control of two-thirds of the more than 60 fields between 3 and 6 p.m. on school days for the next 20 years.
The lawsuit, filed yesterday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, requests that the deal be annulled. The suit claims that the city failed to properly follow its own guidelines as part of the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, which requires major projects to be reviewed by the local community board, the City Council and the borough president.
Instead, the Randalls Island agreement was approved by the city’s Franchise Concession and Review Committee, a majority of whose members were appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. The mayor supported the plan.
Norman Siegel, the lawyer representing the residents, said the group had concerns not only about the plan not having been properly reviewed by the city, but also that public parkland was being monopolized for private purposes.
“One of the important questions here is, are we giving up public land to people who can afford to pay for it, but for private use,” Mr. Siegel said.
The city’s Law Department, however, said that the plan had been properly approved.
“The city’s Franchise Concession and Review Committee voted for a necessary sports complex that will provide important benefits to New Yorkers in both public and private schools,” said Connie Pankratz, a Law Department spokeswoman. “A full and fair public hearing appropriately addressed citizens’ concerns prior to the approval. While we have not seen the lawsuit, we intend to vigorously defend the decision to approve the sports complex, as it was entirely lawful and in the city’s best interests.”
The Randalls Island Sports Foundation, the conservancy that operates much of the island on behalf of the city Parks Department, has said the idea for the sports fields deal arose out of the need to expand and improve its sports facilities. Many of the fields are in poor condition, in part because of overuse.
Private schools have used the island’s fields for years, because many lack athletic fields on school grounds.
Although Randalls Island is situated near East Harlem and the South Bronx, many public school students in the area have a difficult time getting to the fields because of limited public bus service. The private schools, which are among the most expensive in the city, generally provide their own buses.
“The Parks Department never met with the parent associations of District 4 in East Harlem to discuss their plans,” Eugenia Simmons-Taylor, president of the Parent and Teacher Association of the Young Women’s Leadership School, said in a statement.
“Our PTA presidents voted unanimously to be part of this lawsuit because it’s wrong to deprive public school children of these fields, in their own district, for the next 20 years.”
