Parks and Real Estate Values: The Key to Understanding Why They Want Street Artists Eliminated by Robert Lederman...

When you look past all the lies about congestion, vendors "commercializing parks" and false claims about public safety, you get to the real deal about why the city wants street artists eliminated from it's parks. It's all about real estate values. They want more special events, concessions, Greenmarkets and revenue producing things - at the cost of free speech, artistic expression and public safety. They want to eliminate artists to make room for bars, restaurants, corporate advertising and anything else that makes BIG money. What I mean by BIG money, is not a fee for artists; it's is things like this: "The park [Central Park] added $17.7 billion in incremental value to surrounding properties."

Here in their own words, from a front group for the Parks Department, is a report explaining it in detail:

Excerpt from the report:

Commerce and Central Park (the report goes into many other examples as well) The park added $17.7 billion in incremental value to surrounding
properties; the average value of these properties grew 73% faster than control group properties over the past decade...The relationship between a park that is in good condition and real estate values is a special case that could be used to match some direct benefits to costs. There are clearly direct beneficiaries from what economists would term the positive externalities of parks. Property values are directly impacted by parks, and property owners realize easily measurable gains, including higher lease and rental rates, longer tenure of lessees, and an increase in property values that is realized at the time of the sale...there is a growing body of evidence that there are measurable monetary gains for those who own property within close proximity of a park. In fact, two of the lessons learned through the New Yorkers for Parks/Ernst & Young study [see page 10 sidebar] were that strategic parks investments correlate with an increase in real estate values and that the proximity of parks that are in good condition affects private sector real estate investment decisions.

For the full report see:

Supporting Our Parks - A Guide to Alternative Revenues June 8th - pdf

Or here:

Supporting Our Parks - A Guide to Alternative Revenues - June 8th - scribd