So when the Bloomberg administration proposed a plan last year to allow 20 Manhattan private schools to pay millions of dollars to renovate and rebuild the fields in exchange for exclusive control over some of the fields during after-school hours, the city thought it had arrived at a tenable, if imperfect solution.
But while some have applauded this unique approach to finance a public parks project, the proposal has generated strong opposition from a variety of interested parties: parents of public school children; parks advocates; residents of East Harlem and the South Bronx; William C. Thompson Jr., the comptroller; Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president; and members of the City Council.
They complain the plan would establish an unfair pay-to-play policy in public parks for the 20-year length of the agreement.
“Exclusivity for any one group for such an extended period of time sends the wrong message and sets a bad precedent for how to use our parks moving forward,” said Councilwoman Melissa Mark Viverito, who represents the island in the City Council.
Despite the criticism, however, the plan was expected to be approved on Tuesday by a panel most of whose members were appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
The proposal calls for the private schools, including Dalton, Buckley, Spence and Chapin, to pay the city $52.4 million over 20 years to build or refurbish 63 baseball, softball, soccer, football, rugby, lacrosse and other fields on Randalls Island. The city would finance the balance of the $70 million project.
In return for their contribution, the schools would be allowed to use at least two-thirds of the fields from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., when their sports teams typically practice. Many of the 20 schools, which are among the most expensive in the city, have used the island’s fields for years because they lack playing fields on their campuses.
There are currently 36 playing fields on the island, most of which are in poor condition because of heavy use for school, adult and youth league games and practices. As many as 14 of the new fields would be built with artificial turf rather than a natural surface, which would help prolong their lifespan, said the city’s Parks Department.
Adrian Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner, said that because of a Parks Department’s traditional policy of giving preferential use of playing fields to regular users, private schools already have exclusive permits for 34 of the 36 ball fields from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The proposed deal would actually open up more playing fields to other users, he said.
“The fact is that private schools will be subsidizing use by a lot of different people,” Mr. Benepe said.
Richard J. Davis, chairman of the board of the Randalls Island Sports Foundation, the conservancy that operates the island for the Parks Department, said the genesis of the private school plan was a desire to expand the island’s recreational facilities and the search for money to do it.
“We knew we needed more and better fields and that we didn’t have a natural constituency, like the Central Park Conservancy, so we went to the independent schools,” Mr. Davis said.
The proposal, however, has not won the support of the local community board in Manhattan and is opposed by others who say they are concerned that public school children would not have enough access to the new fields. Private schools have traditionally been able to use the fields on the island because they provide buses for students — a cost that has typically been prohibitive for the city’s public schools, who rely on the limited public bus service.
“We’re basically carving out these fields as a time-sharing concept you’ve seen with vacation homes and now we’re bringing it down to public fields,” Mr. Stringer said. “We can’t have a pay-to-play system that locks out three generations of children.”
Mr. Stringer acknowledged, however, that opponents lack enough votes on the six member Franchise and Concession Review Committee to block the plan. Four of its members were appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, who supports the proposal.
To try to increase use of the fields by people who live in the neighborhoods around the island, which is in the East River next to Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens, Mr. Stringer and others have proposed providing bus service from 125th Street in Harlem and by expanding the Randalls Island board of directors, which currently has no members who live in East Harlem or the South Bronx.
Last year, the city approved plans for a $168 million water park to be built on the northern end of Randalls Island.
Mr. Benepe said the ball fields agreement with the private schools was probably the only way to improve the playing fields. He said he believed much of the opposition was due to the Parks Department’s willingness to try new forms of public-private partnerships.
“It doesn’t make them good or bad, it just makes them a different kind of public space,” Mr. Benepe said. “If you leave things exclusively up to government, you end up where we were in the 1970s, because the city would not be inclined to invest all the money in this.”
