Ballfields at $120 Million Randalls Island Largely Unused, Not Attracting Neighborhood Kids by Daniel Beekman - NY Daily News

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If you build it, they will come - but not to Randalls Island.

Dozens of new ballfields in the sprawling park beneath the RFK-Triborough Bridge went unused last summer by the kids who need them most, the city parks boss admits.

And with school almost out for summer, advocates are complaining the $120 million revamp of Randalls Island Park in early 2010 created a playground for the rich and took crucial dollars from neighborhood ballfields.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe cited the low traffic earlier this year to justify plans for a private sports camp.

"Fields on Randalls Island have gone largely unused during weekday daytime hours in July and August, and thus availability should not be an issue," he wrote City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito in January.

The deal called for Florida-based IMG Academies to operate the camp on Randalls Island after donating $200,000 to the Randalls Island Sports Foundation. But plans for the $895-a-week camp fell through in April, with IMG citing low enrollment.

Mark-Viverito (D-East Harlem/Bronx) slammed the pricey park rehab, claiming thousands of trees were cut down to make way for the artificial turf fields.

"Why would you build so many fields and then have a problem in terms of utilization?" she asked. "It was shortsighted and now we're paying the price."

"From day one, we were concerned there was no need to build so many" new fields, said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates. "Now that has come to fruition. The result is the fields are empty."

The park boasts fancy golf and tennis centers, but no basketball courts, he added.

During the rehab, the city took heat for a $2.2 million-per-year pay-to-play scheme involving Manhattan private schools. It was struck down in court after East Harlem and Bronx community groups sued.

"The fields were built mostly to accommodate the private schools," Croft said. And Marina Ortiz, of East Harlem Preservation, called the park "a private playground ... designed to bring in revenue."

There's a move afoot now to try and spread the word about what's in the park. Randalls Island fields go unused partly because they are isolated and more people need to be made aware of the space, said Frances Masrota of Manhattan Community Board 11.

A renovated E. 103rd St. pedestrian bridge is set to reopen soon, while the M35 bus runs between the park and E. 125th St. - but few youngsters make the trip.

The Parks Department has assigned a representative to attend Board 11 meetings and share info related to Randalls Island to try to spread the word on what's there.

The fields are "generally permitted to capacity" in the evenings and on weekends, Parks spokesman Zachary Feder said. The park foundation also offers a free summer program, he noted, and softball leagues.

News From City Council Member Eric Ulrich

NYC Council Member Eric Ulrich Celebrates Opening of Rockaway Beach for Summer

Council Member Eric A. Ulrich (R-Queens) joined Parks Department officials, residents and colleagues in government on the boardwalk at Beach 97^th Street in Rockaway on Friday to celebrate the annual opening of the city’s public beaches. After reminders from Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe to stay safe this summer, the officials and residents sampled some of the food available on the boardwalk this summer and tried their hand at beach tennis.

Ulrich said, “As we all know, Rockaway continues to be one of the city’s best kept secrets. It’s a wonderful place to live, work and raise a family, and to enjoy the beach. There are lots of new and exciting amenities this year, and I encourage everyone in Queens to visit this summer and discover the beauty Rockaway has to offer.”

In all, the City boasts 14 miles of beaches that attracted 19 million visitors last year. New this year will be food concessions run by Rockaway Beach Club, LLC, which will serve tacos, po’ boys, arepas, enchiladas, Italian ices and more at snack bars at Beach 86^th, 97^th and 106^th streets. In addition, a mile of new boardwalk is open this year along stretches between Beach 23^rd and Beach 81^st streets.

NYC Council Member Eric Ulrich: Additional Police Presence Needed at Aqueduct

Council Member Eric A. Ulrich (R-Queens) is asking the NYPD to assign additional police officers to the 106th Precinct in advance of the planned September opening of video lottery terminals at Aqueduct Race Track in Ozone Park.

The new racino is expected to draw more than eight million visitors each year, and local residents and Community Board 10 have already expressed concerns about the current staffing levels at the local precinct.

Ulrich said, “In order to keep our streets safe, we are going to need more cops at the 106^th Precinct. My constituents should not have to worry about any rise in crime that might emanate from Aqueduct. We need to do everything we can to guarantee a good quality of life for the neighborhoods surrounding the track. This request is more than reasonable.”

Ulrich had the opportunity to speak directly with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly during a recent Public Safety Committee hearing and in a May 18 letter to the department. He requested that the new officers be assigned beginning in the new fiscal year so they will have time to acclimate themselves to the area before the racino opens.

In the letter to Commissioner Kelly, Ulrich wrote, “While the new racino is scheduled to open later this summer, many of my constituents are still concerned about the level of police protection the community will receive from the NYPD. Despite the fact that vehicular and foot traffic will increase, it still remains unclear if and when the local precinct will receive additional police personnel. Undoubtedly, more police officers will be needed to patrol the residential neighborhoods surrounding the facility… I believe this request is warranted given the size and scope of the new venue and the necessary planning that will go into maintaining a good quality of life for area residents.”

NYC Council Member Eric Ulrich Statement on Mayor's Plan to Close Engine 294 and Other Fire Companies

Council Member Eric A. Ulrich (R-Queens) released the following statement on the Mayor's plan to close 20 fire companies around the City, including Engine 294:

“The Mayor’s plan to close Engine 294 and other fire companies around the city is downright dangerous. Response times will go up and lives will be put at risk. Woodhaven and Richmond Hill desperately need adequate fire protection and emergency services, especially since many of the homes there are attached, wood-frame structures. We simply cannot balance the budget by putting people in harm’s way. Mark my words - budget cuts like these can be deadly and I will do everything in my power to fight them.”

NYC Council Member Eric Ulrich Co-Sponsors Bill to Prevent Children from Being Exposed to Pornography in Public Libraries Council Members Eric A. Ulrich (R-Queens) and David G. Greenfield (D-Brooklyn) announced bipartisan legislation on Sunday that will protect children at New York City’s public libraries from exposure to Internet pornography. The legislation would make it a misdemeanor criminal offense for any adult to view pornographic materials within 100 feet of a minor in a public library. Ulrich said, “This is a common sense piece of legislation aimed at protecting our children while they spend time at the library. Kids shouldn’t be exposed to sexually explicit content, and taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for it either. This is a serious concern for many people who don’t want their children subjected to this form of public indecency.” Greenfield said, “I am a strong supporter of our public libraries and the value and rich experiences that they provide to New Yorkers. Part of that experience, however, should not be traumatizing children by exposing them to sexual predators and debasing pornography. Our bipartisan legislation would send an unmistakable message to sexual predators: expose yourself to children and you will go to jail.” The legislation would make viewing pornography within 100 feet of a child a misdemeanor carrying fines of between $1,000 and $10,000 and the possibility of jail time, as determined by a judge. Because the proposed legislation is narrowly tailored to protect children, it is expected to pass any constitutional challenges.

NYC Council Member Eric Ulrich Statement on Mayor’s Proposed Budget

Council Member Eric A. Ulrich (R-Queens) today released the following statement in response to Mayor Bloomberg’s FY 2012 Executive Budget:

Ulrich said, “This is a very difficult budget. Even though years of prudent fiscal planning helped the city weather the recession better than most, cuts still seem inevitable. I’m especially concerned about the impact potential teacher layoffs will have on class size in our schools, and I’m also worried about the proposed firehouse closings. As an alternative, I am encouraging my colleagues to seriously consider some of the recommendations that have already been made by the Independent Budget Office. Rest assured, before the City Council adopts the budget, I will do everything in my power to protect vital services and persuade the Mayor to find money elsewhere.”

Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito Stands with Central Park Boathouse Workers - News from Melissa Mark-Viverito

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Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, Chair of the Parks & Recreation Committee, speaks at a rally in support of the workers of the Central Park Boathouse, who have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices and union busting. She is joined by Speaker Christine Quinn, Council Member Gale Brewer and Council Member Elizabeth Crowley.

Melissa spoke at a rally last Thursday for the workers of the Central Park Boathouse, who have filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices and union busting. As Chair of the Parks & Recreation Committee and the Council Member representing Central Park, Melissa has made clear that any union busting efforts will not be tolerated, particularly within our city-owned public parks.

Speaker Christine Quinn, and Council Members Gale Brewer and Elizabeth Crowley also spoke at the rally. You can watch video of Melissa’s speech above.

Melissa was quoted in a Crain’s New York Business article about the event:

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who represents the district the Boathouse is located in and also chairs the City Council Parks and Recreation Committee, called on the Parks Department to do more to pressure Mr. Poll to comply with his contract. She said she “wasn’t really pleased with the response of the [Parks Department Commissioner Adrian Benepe] so far.”

“I interpreted his response as a little dismissive,” she said. “I would hope that we’d have a strong partnership with the Parks Department and this administration on these concessions.”

Central Park Director and Other New York City Park Execs See Pay Jump By Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein - NYPOST.com

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Maybe money grows on trees in Central Park.

Douglas Blonsky, the head of the Central Park Conservancy, got a 20 percent raise, bringing his salary to $433,940, according to the nonprofit's just-released tax filings for 2009-10.

Several other directors also raked in the green.

• Debbie Landau, the head of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, got a $15,000 raise in 2009, plus a bonus of $20,000, bringing her salary to $200,000 during a year in which the conservancy's revenue declined by $246,715.
• Aimee Boden, the head of the Randalls Island Sports Foundation, got a 6 percent hike from $166,274 to $176,200 -- including a $15,000 bonus -- in 2009. The city pays $126,609 of her salary and the nonprofit pays the rest.

The directors of some groups earn more than Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, whose salary is $205,180.* Bryant Park Corp. Director Daniel Biederman's salary for the year ending June 30, 2008, was $220,027, up from $210,374 a year earlier. He also earned $220,027 as head of the 34th Street Partnership.

"Blonsky oversees 843 acres. Our parks commissioner oversees 29,000 acres. It doesn't make sense," said Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates, a watchdog group.

The bulk of Blonsky's raise of $73,766 came from a $69,400 payment for accumulated vacation time, said Kari Wethington, a spokeswoman for the conservancy.

The Madison Square Conservancy refused to comment on Landau's raise. The group also employed Landau's sister, Maggi, with Landau paying her $125,000, plus a $12,500 bonus in 2009. She has since left.

The city Parks Department in 2009 began paying the bulk of Boden's salary for running Randalls Island, the location of Icahn Stadium and dozens of athletic fields. The Parks Department said it upped her salary to be more in line with her work.

A spokesman for Bryant Park Corp. and the 34th Street Partnership, a Business Improvement District, said the boards of both groups believe Biederman's "salary is justified given the renaissance that both districts have undergone."

Bloomberg Proposes Rise in Recreation Center Fees by Javier C. Hernandez - NYTimes.com

King Bloomberg in an act of utter hypocrisy is doubling fees for recreation across the City after he and Parks Commissar Adrian Benepe wanted to destroy the Ridgewood Reservoir, a beautiful natural area to build baseball fields as a ruse to eliminate teenage obesity...How much longer does his term last..?

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He has implored New Yorkers to cut down on salt, to stop guzzling sugary drinks and to think twice about the calorie content in extra-tall lattes and grande burritos. But Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s latest idea may actually make it harder for New Yorkers to stay fit.

To help close a $2.4 billion budget gap, the Bloomberg administration has proposed doubling the admission fee at the city’s 32 recreation centers and increasing the fee to play on tennis courts and ball fields.

Under the plan, adults would pay $150 each year for access to recreational centers with pools, up from $75. At centers without pools, adults would pay $100 instead of $50. Children under 17 would continue to be admitted free, and senior citizens would face a modest raise, to $25, from the current $10 each year.

The proposed increases are a tiny part of Mr. Bloomberg’s strategy to find new revenue as the city prepares for drastic, across-the-board cuts, including major decreases in the teaching force and cutbacks in services for vulnerable children.

But the higher recreational fees may prompt some of the most visible ire, given that about 174,000 people use the centers. The city must hold a public hearing before the increases go into effect, but it has not yet been scheduled.

Under the plan, the Parks and Recreation Department would also increase the cost of tennis court permits to $200, from $100, and the fee for lighted ball fields would rise to $50, from $32.

The increases would be instituted sometime before June 30, and according to city estimates could potentially generate $1 million for the city this fiscal year, which ends then. In subsequent years, the increases could yield $4 million a year in revenue.

Mr. Bloomberg, asked about the possible increases on Tuesday, said the city faced grim choices and could not afford to pay for everything that served a public need. He noted that free subway rides were not fiscally feasible, even though they might encourage public transportation and benefit the environment.

“Make no mistake about it: we will not be able to do everything that we did in the past,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “There will be no sacred cows.”

Public health advocates and policy experts said the proposal could undermine a hallmark of Mr. Bloomberg’s tenure: turning New York City into the weight-watcher capital of the world, replete with calorie counters and advertisements comparing soda to liquid fat.

Yevgeniya Bukshpun, a policy analyst at the city’s Independent Budget Office, said the effects of higher recreational fees could be particularly severe in poorer communities, where diabetes and obesity are more prevalent.

“The fee increase may seriously undercut access in low-income communities that are likely to be especially sensitive to price increases,” Ms. Bukshpun said.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, said the city should not “pick the pockets of our residents with nickel-and-dime increases,” like the higher fees. “The cost of living in New York is high enough,” Ms. Quinn said in a statement. “Let’s not, as a government, add insult to an already challenging situation.”

The city estimates that membership would decline about 5 percent if the higher fees were instituted. When the city made fees mandatory at all centers in 2006, standard adult membership dropped nearly 40 percent. The fees have not changed since, and membership has climbed steadily. Parks officials emphasized that the increases were still under review and that the city was working to expand its free offerings, like running trails, bike paths and bocce courts, and recreation classes in some low-income neighborhoods.

“Even with the fee increase, recreation centers are still a bargain, and we would rather raise the rates for everyone instead of closing sites” or eliminating programming, said Vickie Karp, a parks department spokeswoman.

At St. Mary’s Recreation Center in the South Bronx on Tuesday, reactions to the proposal were mixed. C. J. Hines, 32, a member for the past year who uses the center’s computers and weight room, said he would probably switch to a private gym if the increases were instituted.

“You can’t say, ‘I’m going to charge double and keep everything the same,’ ” Mr. Hines said. “That’s like saying today a Big Mac is $5 and you go back next week and it’s $10, but it’s the exact same Big Mac. You’d be a fool to buy that.”

But Natlynn Haywood, 62, a retired social services worker who recently joined the center, said she would not mind paying more for its facilities, which include a pool, dance room and basketball court. Still, she added, “for other people, that could be a hardship.”

At the Hansborough Recreation Center in Harlem, Craig M. Woods, 49, a longtime member, said he did not understand the rationale behind the proposal.

“You’re raising the price in the wrong area; we’re all poor here,” said Mr. Woods, a martial arts and fitness instructor. “Mayor Bloomberg needs to take a second look and see what damage could be done.”

Elizabeth A. Harris and Tim Stelloh contributed reporting.

Restrooms Still Nowhere to be Found in Queens Park, $1.3M Planned Funds Flushed Away by City Gov't by Denis Hamill - NY Daily News

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Listen closely and you can hear the sound of your tax dollar flushing down a toilet that doesn't even exist yet.

In the scheme of New York's problems, a park without a restroom is a piddling matter. But as I detailed here last week, the failure of city bureaucracy in getting a restroom built in Little Bay Park in Queens five years after funding was secured is emblematic of everything that is wrong with The System.

It is the city of New York in microcosm.

It is a story that explains how after five years we will have a brand-new $500,000 dog run in Little Bay Park opening this month, but no restroom for a human being. No safe and private place for a girl playing soccer to answer nature's call. No hygienic place for a pregnant soccer mom to find relief. No dignified comfort station for a jogger, bicyclist, Little Leaguer, hockey player, picnicker, fisherman, skater, stroller - except for three Port-O-Potties provided by a company from Bridgeport, Conn., which are basically kitty litter boxes for human beings. Yuck!

Okay, this smelly tale all started back on July 12, 2005, when then-local City Councilman Tony Avella held a press conference in idyllic Little Bay Park with Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe to announce that he had secured $1.3 million to build a restroom in the parking area of this 50-acre emerald.

"I can tell you that the reason we are here today," Avella said that day, "is because the Friends of Fort Totten and the Bay Terrace Community Alliance besieged me, literally besieged me, for the last year and a half to get a comfort station."

Benepe, added, "We have a saying in the Parks Department, 'Our business is to help New Yorkers do their business.'"

Funny. No, make that, pee-in-your-pants funny.

Because, flash-forward FIVE years, and the only place you can do your business in Little Bay Park is a Port-O-Potty.

Unless you're a DOG. Then you can do it in a brand-new $500,000 doggie run.

When I spoke to Avella last week, he pointed his finger at the Parks Department for allowing the $1.3 million he secured to get clogged in the sewer pipes of the bureaucracy.

So I spoke to Dorothy Lewandowski, Queens Commissioner of Parks, to get her explanation.

"When Councilman Avella came up with $1.3million in 2005 we also got some federal funding from Congressman Gary Ackerman through the ICE-T [Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation] Program, to expand the parking lot in Little Bay Park," she says. "So there was a decision to join the two projects, so we'd be in construction at the same time."

Sounded like a good idea at the time.

It wasn't.

Lewandowski says there were two reasons for the loooong delay.

"One, because we were close to the water, there were some permits we had to get from the state DEC [Department of Environmental Conservation]," she says. "Second, the ICE-T funding, federal money comes to us through the state DOT [Department of Transportation]. So moving that whole process forward took a while. Anytime you have a federal grant you need a city match. So Avella's money for the comfort station was used to justify the match for the federal funding for the parking lot."

Uh huh...

Meanwhile, you wouldn't wanna be holding in a PEE waiting for the DEC permits and the ICE-T money to reach the DOT for the parking lot. And then have that money clerked, jerked and busy-worked in Albany before it grinds down through the city combine to the Parks Department, where money is re-routed through Alice's rabbit hole behind a big tree in Little Bay Park where Little Leaguers relieve themselves between innings because there's no bathroom.

"The good news is that the final designs for the restrooms are completed," says Lewandowski, five years later. "We're in the final stages with the DOT and DEC and we expect this project to go out to bid this winter, which means we'll be in construction in the summer of 2011."

Which means we'll celebrate Grand Opening Flush of the first toilet in 2012. Seven years after the 2005 news conference announcing the money was in place for a rest room.

Meanwhile, all we have is a $500,000 dog run and three Port-O-Potties from A Royal Flush in Bridgeport, Conn., which Lewandowski says cost taxpayers $5,000 a year.

Why Bridgeport, Conn.?

"Well that's a contract that's put out to bid and awarded through the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

A Royal Flush's main office is in Connecticut but they also have an office in the Bronx."

Now you have a handle on how and why the city is going in the dumper.

Shake Shack $$$: Bad for City Parks? by Arun Venugopal - WNYC

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I've only recently started eating at Shake Shack, and have fallen hard for their frozen custard (the blueberry, so very creamy). And after generally avoiding beef for years, I've made return trips for their cheeseburgers, which I've concluded are superior to those of Five Guys — certainly less unwieldy.

But let us set aside such childish pursuits as all-beef patties, and consider this article by Patrick Arden in Next American City, asking "whether the city’s reliance on private-funding schemes was creating disparities between parks in wealthy and poor neighborhoods."

In 2009 Shake Shack collected revenues of $4.9 million; $220,256 of that went to the city and $348,389 to the park. Concessions in other parks pay as much as 20 percent of their take to the city, but not [owner Danny] Meyer, whose company adds to its profits by catering private parties in the park for $15,000 an hour. When Meyer opened his fast-food stand, he was the director and co-founder of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that oversees the public park.

Just to be clear, I've never eaten at the notoriously over-patronized Madison Square Park Shake Shack, only the UWS and Times Square locations — but I digress.

Arden gives numerous examples of the "big business" that public parks have become:

Few may object to the $364,000 salary paid to Central Park Conservancy president Douglas Blonsky, because his group is responsible for raising 85 percent of Central Park’s $27 million annual operating budget....

But those two parks now exemplify how lucrative the conservancy model can be. The Bryant Park Corporation took in more than $8.8 million in 2007 and its executive director, Daniel Biederman, picked up $210,000 for overseeing its 9.6 acres. Over at the Madison Square Park Conservancy, president Debbie Landau pulled in $185,000 — and her sister Maggi made $114,962.

Arden also notes that Robert Hammond, executive director of Friends of the High Line, earned $280,000 last year — "$75,000 more than the salary of [Adrian] Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner."

The problem, as Arden sees it, is not so much the fat paychecks in the private sector, it's the continuing cuts in public funding:

In 1960 parks maintenance and operations claimed 1.4 percent of city funds. Mayor Bloomberg’s new $63.6 billion budget would send parks’ percentage to a record low of 0.37 percent, or $239 million. (Chicago spent almost $150 million more last year on 21,000 fewer acres.) The mayor’s cut would drop the full-time workforce below 3,000, less than half the number employed by the Parks Department in 1970. “No other city agency has lost a greater percentage of its workforce over the last 40 years,” says [Geoffrey Croft, president of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates]. “Private money will never make that up."

Arden and parks advocates say the “Golden Age for Parks” that Adrian Benepe claims is more like a Gilded Age, "with wide — and growing — disparities between lavish, showplace parks for the haves and cast-off parcels for the have-nots. For every Madison Square, Bryant Park or High Line, there are hundreds of parks that depend solely on the city, and many suffer from scandalous neglect."

The High Cost of Free Parks by Patrick Arden - Next American City Magazine

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Do Public-Private Partnerships Save Parks or Exploit Them?

On the corner of Manhattan’s Madison Square Park stands a statue of 19th-century politician Roscoe Conkling, the kingmaker of Gilded Age New York. A mercurial manager of the state’s Republican machine, Conkling twice refused appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court, preferring to measure his success in money. The stone Conkling has a hand extended, palm up, as if he’d posed before a payoff.

The statue faces a multimillion-dollar business located under the park’s sycamore trees. Shake Shack, the high-end hamburger chain started by restaurateur Danny Meyer, is one of the best-known examples of how New York City is paying for its most famous parks: Get somebody else to pick up the tab.

Meyer’s formerly seasonal concession has grown into a year-round restaurant that rakes in more than the average McDonald’s. In warmer months, lines barely budge for an hour or more. In 2009 Shake Shack collected revenues of $4.9 million; $220,256 of that went to the city and $348,389 to the park. Concessions in other parks pay as much as 20 percent of their take to the city, but not Meyer, whose company adds to its profits by catering private parties in the park for $15,000 an hour.

When Meyer opened his fast-food stand, he was the director and co-founder of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that oversees the public park. In 2001 the city completed a $6 million renovation of the 6 leafy acres, and the next year Meyer co-founded the conservancy to assume responsibility for the park’s maintenance and programming. That’s the formula followed by the city’s top conservancies, which leverage public land and money to turn parks into self-sustaining enterprises.

Public-private partnerships are widely touted as the new model for cities to build and maintain parkland, but they’re old news in New York. The Central Park Conservancy, founded in 1980, has inspired similar groups in cities from Atlanta to San Francisco. Yet even in a time of leaner government budgets, a cautionary tale can be found in New York’s 36-year experience of putting public parks into private hands. The city says private investment allows it to target limited taxpayer resources to the parks most in need, creating what parks commissioner Adrian Benepe has repeatedly hailed as a “Golden Age for Parks.” 

But others see a Gilded Age instead, an echo of Conkling’s era in the reign of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with wide — and growing — disparities between lavish, showplace parks for the haves and cast-off parcels for the have-nots. For every Madison Square, Bryant Park or High Line, there are hundreds of parks that depend solely on the city, and many suffer from scandalous neglect.
“New York has created a two-tier parks system,” complains Geoffrey Croft, president of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates. “One for the rich, the other for the poor.”

THE EVOLUTION OF A NEW MODEL
 
On a Sunday afternoon Croft and I are driving near Kennedy Airport on Brooklyn’s Belt Parkway. We pass Fresh Creek Park in Jamaica Bay, an 18,000-acre wetland estuary. Amid invasive plants and garbage, we see a few Parks Department signs that brag, “Forever Wild.” “‘Forever Wild’ means ‘forever neglected,’” Croft says. “Whenever you see those words, there’s a good chance no one from the Parks Department has been in there for a while.”

The 44-year-old Croft started his non-profit seven years ago. Since then he’s never raised more than $20,000 a year, but he has become New York City’s leading authority on park issues, working with elected officials and juggling dozens of campaigns. Croft, who has been quoted by local media hundreds of times, has inspected every park in the city, snapping tens of thousands of photographs as evidence to prove his larger points.

No other parks system in America relies as much on other people’s money. Half of the city’s 1,800 parks and playgrounds now depend on some type of private group for maintenance, according to the Parks Department. These efforts range from conservancies responsible for specific parks to gardening clubs and city-affiliated nonprofits. Few of these groups have the resources of, say, a Madison Square Park Conservancy, which raised more than $3.1 million in 2008 from donations, corporate-sponsored events and Shake Shack proceeds (it also held cash and securities worth nearly $8 million). The conservancy employed 28 maintenance staffers, guards and administrators at salaries as high as $185,000, while the entire 18th community district of southeast Brooklyn — with 1,200 acres of parkland in predominantly African-American neighborhoods like Canarsie and Flatlands — had just one dedicated maintenance worker.

“It’s racist,” Croft says. A ringing cell phone brings calls from reporters and community groups, interrupting his commentary on the decimation of the city’s Parks Department in the decades following the rule of Robert Moses, commissioner from 1934 to 1960.

In 1930 Moses unveiled plans for the Belt Parkway, a boulevard stretching 36 miles along the shore of Brooklyn and Queens, with a series of “ribbon parks,” promenades and paths intended to spur home-building. FDR’s New Deal paid for public works, and the city stood ready to cash in. When Moses took over the Parks Department, the city had 119 playgrounds. By the time he retired, there were 777. Moses built 15 outdoor swimming pools, 17 miles of beaches, three zoos, dozens of recreation centers, several golf courses as well as miles and miles of parkways. Total parkland nearly tripled to 35,000 acres, giving New York the nation’s largest urban parks system. As Moses prepared to step down at the age of 72, he must have sensed his empire in peril. He made this case to Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, chair of the Citizens Budget Commission: “Now that the park system has been created, it is the responsibility of the next generation to maintain it.”

Though Parks Department funding has gone up since then, it’s lagged dramatically behind increases to other agencies, and the department has never recovered from the drastic cuts in its workforce beginning in the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. In 1960 parks maintenance and operations claimed 1.4 percent of city funds. Mayor Bloomberg’s new $63.6 billion budget would send parks’ percentage to a record low of 0.37 percent, or $239 million. (Chicago spent almost $150 million more last year on 21,000 fewer acres.) The mayor’s cut would drop the full-time workforce below 3,000, less than half the number employed by the Parks Department in 1970. “No other city agency has lost a greater percentage of its workforce over the last 40 years,” says Croft. “Private money will never make that up.”

Former mayor David Dinkins had slashed the Parks Department’s payroll by 41 percent in order to deal with deficits in 1991 and ’92, but rather than restore the agency’s budget when times improved, the administration of Rudolph Giuliani used capital funds to fix maintenance issues and welfare recipients to clean parks.

It’s illegal to borrow money for maintenance, a practice that nearly bankrupted the city in the 1970s. But the city will use bond proceeds for improvements and then not maintain a park, requiring it to borrow capital funds again to rebuild. In the long run, of course, building is more expensive than maintenance. Bloomberg has continued down this path, making greater use of capital borrowing and conservancies. “Public-private partnerships are a priority of the mayor,” says a Parks Department spokesperson, “as they were for the three previous mayors.”

Croft played a primary role in organizing community opposition to the new Yankee Stadium project, in which America’s richest sports franchise grabbed 25 acres of parkland in one of the nation’s poorest congressional districts. In return, Bloomberg administration officials have repeatedly sought to discredit Croft. At a March event highlighting the city’s progress on replacing the parks, a spokesperson from the city’s Economic Development Corporation, speaking out of Croft’s earshot, sarcastically announced his presence to reporters: “Geoffrey Croft, the most quoted and least credentialed person I know.”

“They’re going to dismiss him because he’s a thorn in their side,” explains Melissa Mark-Viverito, the new chair of the City Council’s Parks Committee. “But if you check into the information he gives, it’s fact. He does his research.”

Croft has a knack for unearthing information. He’s working with residents of Brighton Beach to battle a $64 million amphitheater that’s replacing a small band shell in a neighborhood park. He learned that a city law forbids amplified music within 500 feet of religious institutions, courts and schools. Two synagogues — one with a night school — are within 302 feet of the arena. “We’re lucky Geoffrey is on our side,” says Al Turk, president of the Temple Beth Abraham. The fight’s been vintage Croft, a moral crusade with a bit of gotcha for officials who dare to ignore the grassroots.

THE FOR-PROFIT PARK
 
Back in Manhattan, some conservancies have become big business. Few may object to the $364,000 salary paid to Central Park Conservancy president Douglas Blonsky, because his group is responsible for raising 85 percent of Central Park’s $27 million annual operating budget. New Yorkers remember when that park’s 843 acres had gone to seed. The same goes for Bryant and Madison Square parks, which were both known as “needle parks.”

But those two parks now exemplify how lucrative the conservancy model can be. The Bryant Park Corporation took in more than $8.8 million in 2007 and its executive director, Daniel Biederman, picked up $210,000 for overseeing its 9.6 acres. Over at the Madison Square Park Conservancy, president Debbie Landau pulled in $185,000 — and her sister Maggi made $114,962.

When the first leg of the $152 million High Line opened last summer on an abandoned railroad embankment in the Meatpacking District, news reports focused on the $1.2 million founder Robert Hammond pocketed over a 10-year period. Last year he took home $280,000 for overseeing 2.8 acres of the partially completed park as executive director of the conservancy Friends of the High Line. That was $75,000 more than the salary of Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner, who’s responsible for 29,000 acres.

The money-making systems have grown more elaborate. In 1984 a group of Brooklyn Heights residents came up with a plan for putting a park on a 1.3-mile stretch of piers, warehouses and parking lots on the East River. City officials said capital funds were available, but money for maintenance would be tough to secure. When the plan stalled, residents raised funds; they hired a landscape architect who formulated a $3.4 million annual maintenance plan, and paid consultants to figure out ways to raise more than $4 million a year, mostly through a restaurant and a small hotel with a conference center. In 2002 Gov. George Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg committed $150 million to build Brooklyn Bridge Park.

In 2004 the city and state released a different plan for the newly created Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation (BBPDC), governed by a board of directors appointed by Bloomberg and Pataki. Gone were the playing fields, pools, skateboard half-pipe, recreation center and amphitheater. In their place was a kayaking area, “dune landscape” and berths for 180 yachts. The new plan had high-rises in the park, with 1,250 luxury condos, as well as a hotel, retail and restaurants — all meant to pay for upkeep. The cost has since ballooned to $350 million.

The operating budget jumped to $15.2 million. An itemized maintenance list included 15 dune buggies, 16 Toyota Priuses, 40 sit-down lawnmowers, seven pickups, two garbage trucks and a $100,000 street sweeper. A worker weeding by hand would make $44.01 an hour. A one-hour job to “touch up lines and markings on pavement” would be paid as a $20,000 lump sum. A 31-person security force included eight armed guards. “We’re talking about park maintenance — mowing the lawns, painting the benches — not the cost of the Marines to protect against an invasion,” scoffed Tony Manheim, a retired investment banker who headed the residents’ group that originally pushed for the park. “They ginned up the cost to justify the housing.”

Sen. Hillary Clinton agreed: She called the building of the condos to fund the park “disingenuous” on a visit to Brooklyn. One news report claimed politically connected developers stood to see $700 million from the project, before expenses. “Public land should be public land,” Clinton said. But within days, she backtracked. “Although I believe public revenues should support public assets,” she wrote in an apologetic letter to the BBPDC, “I understand that cities across the nation, including New York, have had to struggle to find dedicated revenue sources to fund park maintenance.” A local paper accused her of bowing to political pressure. “Shillary!” the headline screamed.

At a ribbon cutting for the park in March, Bloomberg said the city would commit another $55 million in capital to start construction on two of the six piers. He mentioned a committee would be formed to study alternatives for financing the park, though one condo building is already open and he seemed ready to accept more private housing to pay for park maintenance. “I think this is the model for a lot of things going forward, where if we’re going to have to fund it ourselves we’re not going to have it,” Bloomberg said. “We’re going to make the capital investments — we’ll continue to do that — but for operating we’re just going to have to look elsewhere.”

Bloomberg called on Croft, mistaking the activist for a member of the press. Croft asked whether the city’s reliance on private-funding schemes was creating disparities between parks in wealthy and poor neighborhoods. Bloomberg threw up his hands: “The city does not have the money to have new parks and fund them.”

“The city just announced it’s no longer obligated to fund parks,” Croft said.

The conservancies at Bryant Park or the High Line can raise millions of dollars to essentially privatize their parks and hire all the right people when they need them. That’s not so much an option for a group like ours.”
Anne Saxon-Hersh, Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

SAVING A HAVE-NOT
 
Growing up in the 1970s, Croft was one of the last white kids on his South Bronx block. The children played a more menacing version of hide-and-seek called Ring-a-leavio, with players on one side ganging up to hunt down the other team. When his family moved to Manhattan, Croft had to adjust to more organized sports. “The Yorkville kids didn’t understand Ring-a-leavio,” he says. “No one would crawl under a car to hide.” The neighborhood held some advantages, however: He loved to play roller hockey at a rink in the shadow of the Stanley Isaacs housing project near 96th Street and the FDR Drive.

A high school dropout, Croft found success as a professional photographer for magazines including Rolling Stone, Elle, Time and Life. “But I wanted to do something socially redeeming,” he says. In 1994 he began working with low-income kids at the Stanley Isaacs Community Center, which brought him back to the tiny park on 96th Street — this time as a roller hockey coach.
Though the park had been renovated by the city five years before, it hadn’t been maintained. “The rink was in a terrible state,” Croft says. “The boards were broken, and rusty nails stuck out. Crack vials and dog shit were scattered everywhere.” Prostitutes set up shop in the bathroom. “I’d have to ask them to leave so the kids could change into their uniforms.” He wrote to the Parks Department and received an apologetic reply from then-commissioner Henry Stern. “Unfortunately,” Stern wrote, “the city has no money.”

In 1996 Croft started a nonprofit to repair the playground. He approached celebrities he had met as a photographer, including Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, who lent star power to one of his charity auctions. He hired an architect, who drew up plans for a refurbished playground with a new rink. He went back to the city after raising more than half of the renovation’s $550,000 price tag. Stern took one look at the blueprints and agreed to match what Croft had collected. The playground was rebuilt.

THE ALTERNATIVE: VOLUNTEERS
 
On warm days, the after-work crowd descends on Madison Square Park, with nearly everyone heading to the Shake Shack, which sells beer and wine. “They call this a park amenity, but it’s a destination restaurant,” says Croft, standing in the seating area. Six blocks south, Danny Meyer is trying to put a high-end restaurant in Union Square Park. The project, part of a $21 million redevelopment of the park’s north end, has received a $7 million gift from an anonymous donor. As co-chair of the Union Square Partnership, the area’s business improvement district, Meyer has vowed not to bid on the concession, though he says a fellow board member is interested.

A restaurant would make money for the city’s general fund, not the park; this year the Parks Department’s revenue division will hand over $110 million from user fees and park concessions. Some conservancies, such as Madison Square’s, get to keep a portion of concession revenue. The Bloomberg administration has negotiated other special arrangements with favored groups that assume responsibility for park maintenance. Friends of the High Line will keep all of the money from concessions in its park. “That’s a huge deal,” Croft says, “because 99 percent of parks don’t have any dedicated funding.”

Consider Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where an all-volunteer group raises $80,000 a year to maintain the block-long park, across the street from the United Nations. A service picks up the trash, and members tend to the garden, clean fountains and perform other chores. Anne Saxon-Hersh, one of the founders of the group Friends of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, thinks her park deserves a share of proceeds from its concession, just like the big conservancies. But many fear the city would open the floodgates to concessions to fund parks and to make up for budget cuts. “The conservancies at Bryant Park or the High Line can raise millions of dollars to essentially privatize their parks and hire all the right people when they need them. That’s not so much an option for a group like ours,” says Saxon-Hersh, who adds that “fatigue” has set in among her fellow board members. “The volunteer model is not sustainable.”

“It’s an awful lot of work,” agrees Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, which takes care of a 55-acre park in Middle Village, Queens. His group is proud of its three state-of-the-art baseball fields. The city once told the group to sign a maintenance agreement. “It was supposed to lay out what they were responsible for and what we were responsible for,” Holden says. “But when it came back to us, we were responsible for everything. We’re volunteers, and they were trying to make it legal to hold us liable for problems. They wanted slave labor, so we didn’t sign it.”

TIPPING THE SCALE
 
The idea of a citywide tax for parks — like systems in Chicago and Minneapolis — has been floated by civic groups in the past. Croft wants funding for our public spaces to come from a place where most think it’s hopeless: government. “I don’t think anyone has a problem with people chipping in to lend a hand, but by neglecting these essential services, the government is forcing its residents to assume responsibility if they want a decent, safe park,” he says.

The Bloomberg administration is relying more and more on the private sector, but a growing number of New Yorkers are concerned about accountability and unregulated money in the big conservancies. The City Council recently passed legislation mandating greater financial disclosure and at least one community member on each board. The requirement for community representation was prompted by the controversy over the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation’s agreement to sell 20 private schools exclusive afternoon use of park athletic fields.

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at the “pay to play” deal was the failure of the conservancy — and the city — to engage the East Harlem and South Bronx neighborhoods, whose residents have long used the island not only for sports but for barbecues, picnics and walks. The legislation’s sponsor, Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, says the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation had no interest in the concerns of East Harlem. “They became very territorial about that piece of public property: ‘We’re raising all this money, so we should be the one to determine what happens here and you shouldn’t question us,’” she says. “This is my concern: Overreliance on private money tips the scale. It’s almost like the community loses control of its park not because they want to — it’s forced upon them.”

At a City Council hearing on conservancies last October, former councilwoman Carol Greitzer, a longtime parks advocate who represented Midtown, Greenwich Village and Chelsea from 1969 to 1991, found she was one of only two people to testify in favor of Mark-Viverito’s bill. Twelve organizations urged the measure’s defeat, including the Parks Department, a soccer league and several of the largest conservancies. Most of the partnership groups already have neighborhood residents on their boards, they said, and all of them must comply with tax and city disclosure rules. They claimed the community-representation bill violated state law and squelched entrepreneurial spirit. “The Parks Department trotted out all these people who said the world will come to an end if they pass this one little bill,” says Greitzer. The bill made the conservancies and the Bloomberg administration nervous, she explains, because it was a precedent: After nearly 40 years the City Council was enacting legislation affecting conservancies.

Greitzer is a big fan of the High Line, and consequently she’s conflicted about its special arrangements with the city for concession revenue and additional security (11 patrol officers for 2.8 acres, twice the number responsible for 6,970 acres in the Bronx). “I understand why people are angry at the money going into the High Line,” she says. “It’s right to question the inequities, but if it hadn’t been for the people who organized the thing and spent years raising money and getting everyone interested in it, we wouldn’t have had it.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT MAINTENANCE
 
When Croft finished renovating the Stanley Isaacs Playground in 2000, the city urged him to lock the rink.
 
“I said, ‘We’re doing this for the people of New York City, not for any private gain,’” he recalls. Yet after an initial burst of satisfaction, he became uneasy. “I suddenly realized it wasn’t over yet, and it was never going to be over: If I didn’t keep raising money, the park would all fall apart again. That’s not right. It’s about the city’s responsibility to its citizens, not my responsibility,” he says.
Stanely Isaacs Playground was eight blocks away from Gracie Mansion, the official residence of every New York mayor since Fiorello LaGuardia. “I began to wonder,” Croft says, “if this can happen eight blocks away from Giuliani’s house, imagine what’s happening in the South Bronx and East New York. What are the parks like in these neighborhoods?”

That’s when he picked up his camera again and began his inspection of city parks. He regularly returns to the same locations to find conditions have grown worse. Walking around the Stanley Isaacs Playground on a recent evening, he examined what’s become of his park. “Every single thing here was brand-new,” he said, fiddling with a broken gate to the hockey rink. Holes in the rink’s boards are patched up with electrical tape. “See, it all comes back to maintenance. If you don’t take care of things, they’ll fall apart.”

This article appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of Next American City magazine.