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| Click on image to enlarge |
When: June 26th
Time: 2pm - 6pm
Where: Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto Park
125th Street and Atlantic Avenue
Family Fun Day event is sponsored by NYC Council Member Ruben Wills
7 years ago
Showing posts with label parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parks. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Going Green in Queens Educates Earth's Caretakers by Howard Koplowitz > YourNabe.com
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From making their own compost to Tree Pruning 101, Queens residents learned what they can do to help the environment during Going Green in Queens at the Al Oerter Recreational Center in Flushing.
Fred Kress, the main organizer of the event, said more than 500 people attended the Saturday event.
“Last year the turnout was lower,”he said. “This year was better.”
Mark and Elizabeth Kurtz of Middle Village said they came to the event to learn more about helping the environment.
The couple said they went to the event, where TimesLedger Newspapers was the media sponsor, to learn more about composting and conserving energy.
They said they had tried making their own compost before, but the worms “got so hot [they] ended up dying. We need some tips on how to keep them alive.”
Gina Baldwin, project manager of the New York City Compost Project in Queens, which works with the Queens Botanical Garden, led a workshop on making compost, or decomposed organic matter.
The compost is rich in nutrients that is used to complement soil.
Besides helping plants grow, Baldwin said compost also helps reduce food waste — such as egg shells, food scraps and fruit peels — from going into the garbage stream.
“Compost is like nature’s recycling,” she said.
Baldwin said more than a dozen items can be used to create compost, including hedge clippings, leaves, feathers, corn cobs, hair and nails.
She said the best compost strikes a balance between green materials, such as hedge clippings, and brown materials like coffee grinds and tea bags.
Worms are added to the compost supplies so they can eat the scraps and make the waste that creates compost.
“Fortunately, the worm poop is what we want,” she said, because the waste is high in nutrients.
The event also featured more than 50 informational tables, including companies promoting wind and solar energy and a group of St. Francis Prep students who conducted a project on the ecosystem around the Fresh Meadows school.
“We kind of wanted to take the idea of answering the question, ‘What’s in your backyard?’” said senior Kevin Tong. “What many people don’t know is within the soil are little organisms like bacteria that make the soil have more nutrients.”
“We found a lot of bugs,” said senior Kara Hammond. “You never think about how much is actually around.”
Hammond said the project “was interesting because there’s a lot more than you think is there, but it’s hidden.”
Harlem resident and Oregon native Melody Ross said she went to Going Green in Queens because she is running green volunteer projects for TimeBanks NYC and wanted to network with more green partners.
Ross said she used to do composting in her backyard in Oregon and wants to find other ways to help the environment in the city.
“We’re pretty much green hippies in the northwest so I’ve tried to find green things to do in the city,” she said.
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| Yilmael Diaz (r.) shows the art of correct planting during the Going Green in Queens conference. Photo by Steven Malecki |
Fred Kress, the main organizer of the event, said more than 500 people attended the Saturday event.
“Last year the turnout was lower,”he said. “This year was better.”
Mark and Elizabeth Kurtz of Middle Village said they came to the event to learn more about helping the environment.
The couple said they went to the event, where TimesLedger Newspapers was the media sponsor, to learn more about composting and conserving energy.
They said they had tried making their own compost before, but the worms “got so hot [they] ended up dying. We need some tips on how to keep them alive.”
Gina Baldwin, project manager of the New York City Compost Project in Queens, which works with the Queens Botanical Garden, led a workshop on making compost, or decomposed organic matter.
The compost is rich in nutrients that is used to complement soil.
Besides helping plants grow, Baldwin said compost also helps reduce food waste — such as egg shells, food scraps and fruit peels — from going into the garbage stream.
“Compost is like nature’s recycling,” she said.
Baldwin said more than a dozen items can be used to create compost, including hedge clippings, leaves, feathers, corn cobs, hair and nails.
She said the best compost strikes a balance between green materials, such as hedge clippings, and brown materials like coffee grinds and tea bags.
Worms are added to the compost supplies so they can eat the scraps and make the waste that creates compost.
“Fortunately, the worm poop is what we want,” she said, because the waste is high in nutrients.
The event also featured more than 50 informational tables, including companies promoting wind and solar energy and a group of St. Francis Prep students who conducted a project on the ecosystem around the Fresh Meadows school.
“We kind of wanted to take the idea of answering the question, ‘What’s in your backyard?’” said senior Kevin Tong. “What many people don’t know is within the soil are little organisms like bacteria that make the soil have more nutrients.”
“We found a lot of bugs,” said senior Kara Hammond. “You never think about how much is actually around.”
Hammond said the project “was interesting because there’s a lot more than you think is there, but it’s hidden.”
Harlem resident and Oregon native Melody Ross said she went to Going Green in Queens because she is running green volunteer projects for TimeBanks NYC and wanted to network with more green partners.
Ross said she used to do composting in her backyard in Oregon and wants to find other ways to help the environment in the city.
“We’re pretty much green hippies in the northwest so I’ve tried to find green things to do in the city,” she said.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
NYC Needs Runways, But 'Ghost Airport' Quiet by Chris Hawley - msnbc.com
Read original...
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| A National Park Service hangar emblazoned with the name Floyd Bennett Field glows orange at sunset March 11 at New York City's "ghost airport" in Brooklyn, N.Y. |
Two airports sit less than five miles from each other, their wide-open runways tracing big Xs along the same stretch of Atlantic shoreline.
At John F. Kennedy International Airport, air traffic controllers herd a procession of airliners in what has become a chronic choke point in the nation's air transport system.
At nearby Floyd Bennett Field, things are more laid back. Recently, the one-man control tower, John Daskalakis, leaned against a pickup truck with a portable radio as an ancient C-54 cargo plane lumbered toward Runway 24 for takeoff. Cyclists and joggers hung out on the taxiway to watch.
As planners lament the lack of space for new runways in a region plagued by air delays, Floyd Bennett's wide, inviting runways sit just across Jamaica Bay within a federally protected park.
The old airfield opens a few times a year for special flights, but most of the time it sits idle — its hangars, runway and control tower intact but off-limits to air traffic.
The perfectly preserved former Navy base was once frequented by Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart. Today, in the cavernous Hangar B, aviation buffs gather to restore old airplanes and swap stories. Some of them wonder whether turning Floyd Bennett into a commercial airport is a realistic, achievable way of easing congestion in New York.
"That would be a dream — that would really be something," said Dante Dimille, a volunteer. "This would make a great civil aviation field again."
Some experts say it's not unthinkable: a new traffic-control system being installed by the FAA could enable planes to fly into Floyd Bennett without conflicting with those headed to JFK. But others say it would be too costly to realign and lengthen its runways. And getting the airport back from the National Park Service, which now controls it, would be near impossible.
"Physically, it would work, with limitations," said Thomas Chastain, an airport planning consultant. "Practically and politically, I don't see them ever using Floyd Bennett Field again."
Too close to JFK?
Still, he said, it's a tantalizing prospect.
New York desperately needs more runway space. JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York, plus Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, together handle about 3,500 flights per day, and passenger demand is projected to increase from 104 million to 150 million by 2030.
In bad weather, the number of flights that air traffic controllers can put on each runway drops. As a result, nearly one-third of flights in New York were delayed or cancelled in 2009, according to a November report released by U.S. Department of Transportation.
The three main New York airports have nine runways between them but haven't built a new one since the early 1970s. Meanwhile, 17 other major airports have added runways just in the last decade, including Chicago O'Hare, Atlanta Hartsfield, Boston Logan and Washington Dulles.
In January, a report commissioned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the region's airports, said any expansion would be difficult. Three of the five options it recommended would require filling in parts of Jamaica Bay to build runways at JFK.
Floyd Bennett has four existing runways, the longest of them 6,000 feet. But it has space for an 8,500-foot runway, longer than any at LaGuardia.
But experts with the Regional Plan Association, which wrote the study for the Port Authority, decided that the distance between such a runway and JFK would cause airspace conflicts.
"We dropped that early on," said Jeffrey Zupan, one of the authors. "It's just too close to Kennedy."
But not everyone believes that's an obstacle.
A new satellite-based air traffic control system, known as NextGen, will soon allow airplanes to make better use of tight airspace, said Paul Freeman, head of flight testing for ITT Corp., which is building the system.
"That's not really a valid excuse anymore," said Freeman, who in his free time runs a website about defunct airports. "We're working on technology that will really free up a lot of the traditional limits of air traffic control. It definitely would allow something like a Floyd Bennett Field to be active again."
Frozen in time
Floyd Bennett wouldn't be the first New York-area airport to close and reopen. Newark airport closed in 1939 after LaGuardia was built, only to reopen in World War II. Flushing Airport in Queens closed in the 1970s, later reopened and then closed for good in 1984.
Floyd Bennett Field was built between 1928 and 1931 and quickly became the preferred launching site for record-setting flights by Hughes, Earhart, Wiley Post and other aviation pioneers. The airport sported unusual innovations, like a turntable for rotating aircraft and tunnels under the tarmac that passengers used to reach their planes.
The Navy took it over in 1941. Most of the airport closed in 1971, though the New York Police Department still uses a corner of it as its helicopter base.
Unlike other airports that have been ripped up to make way for housing developments and shopping malls, Floyd Bennett remains frozen in time.
The hangars are rusting and missing some windows but still standing. The old terminal is being restored and will reopen as a museum later this year. Runway 33 is now a road, but the others are mostly untouched. The Park Service even mows the grass between the runways, part of an effort to accommodate migrating geese.
In 2007, the Park Service opened the old runways for a fly-in of World War II fighter planes, biplanes and a modern Air Force C-130 cargo plane.
In Hangar B, Dimille and other volunteers with the Historical Aircraft Restoration Project show off their collection of old planes to school groups and aviation buffs. A hulking Boeing Stratofreighter, one of only two such airplanes still flying, looms over the other planes like a condor in a nest of sparrows.
The Stratofreighter and a former Navy C-54 cargo plane dubbed "The Spirit of Freedom" are owned by the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation, which keeps them at Floyd Bennett under an agreement with the Park Service.
One March afternoon, the C-54 took off, beginning a summer of visiting airshows around the country. A dozen aviation enthusiasts turned out to take pictures of the takeoff.
Daskalakis listened on his radio as the old cargo plane rumbled to the end of the runway and called for takeoff clearance from controllers at JFK. He had filed a special flight permit with the FAA a few days before.
The huge, piston-powered engines roared. The Spirit of Freedom surged forward, past the joggers and the cyclists and the geese. Then it raised its nose skyward.
For a moment at least, Floyd Bennett Field was an airport again
Thursday, January 27, 2011
New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli Releases Audits
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced today the following audits have been issued:
New York City Department of Education, Non-Competitively Awarded Contracts (Follow-Up) (2010-F-26)
The New York City Department of Education must comply with applicable procurement requirements when awarding non-competitively bid contracts. In audit report 2008-N-1, DiNapoli’s auditors examined whether the department complied with requirements and found that it didn’t. When auditors followed up, they found that department officials had made significant progress in correcting the problems identified in the initial report.
Department of Health, Inappropriate Medicaid Payments for Dental Services Provided to Patients With Dentures (Follow-Up) (2010-F-33)
The Department of Health administers the Medicaid program. In audit 2008-S-125, DiNapoli’s auditors reviewed claims for a five-year period and found that dentists may have been overpaid as much as $2.9 million for services provided to patients with dentures. Auditors determined that the Medicaid claims processing system, eMedNY, lacked the controls necessary to detect and prevent such overpayments. Auditors recommended that appropriate controls be developed and implemented. When they followed up, auditors determined that department officials made some progress in correcting the problems they identified but improvements were still needed.
City University of New York, Kingsborough Community College: Selected Financial Management Practices (Follow-Up) (2010-F-39)
The City University of New York consists of eleven senior colleges, six community colleges, and several other specialized and professional schools. In audit report 2008-N-9, DiNapoli’s auditors examined whether one of the community colleges (Kingsborough) complied with requirements relating to payroll, procurement and waiving of tuition, and found certain instances of non-compliance in all three areas. When auditors followed-up, they found that officials had made progress in correcting the problems they identified.
State Education Department, St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf: Selected Financial Management Practices (Follow-Up) (2010-F-40)
St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf is one of 11 private schools that receive operating aid directly from the state to provide educational services to disabled students. In audit report 2008-S-160, auditors identified a number of internal control weaknesses in the areas of procurement, cash disbursements and payroll. Auditors also found that the school’s board of trustees was not providing effective oversight of financial operations. When auditors followed up, they found that officials had made significant progress in correcting the problems identified, but improvements were still needed.
Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Natural Heritage Trust, Sources of Trust Revenues (2009-S-11)
The Natural Heritage Trust maintains over 200 custodial accounts for account holders, including the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. DiNapoli’s auditors examined whether Office of Parks revenue was incorrectly deposited into the custodial accounts of the trust. They found that more than $3.5 million in revenue was deposited into trust accounts incorrectly. Auditors recommended the Office of Parks recover the funds and improve controls over revenue.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise Reporting (2010-S-9)
State agencies and public authorities are required to promote the participation of minority-owned business enterprises (MBEs) and women-owned business enterprises (WBEs) in state contracts and procurement opportunities. Specifically, agencies must establish annual goals for such participation and make a “good faith” effort to achieve these goals. DiNapoli’s auditors examined the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s performance and found that it was establishing annual goals and making a good faith effort to reach them. However, the MTA’s goals were unreasonable, and as a result, they have consistently fallen short of their goals. Auditors also found that the MTA was not accurately reporting results of its efforts and was overstating its procurements. Auditors recommended improvements to comply with contract requirements.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Ex-Parks Chief Aims to Protect System by Bill Bleyer - Newsday.com
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After Gov. David A. Paterson threatened earlier this year to close as many as 90 of the state's 213 parks and historic sites, parks Commissioner Carol Ash decided she could best protect the system from the outside.
Ash, who quit last month, is starting that effort by helping create the Alliance for New York State Parks, a nonprofit advocacy group that will also raise funds for projects in the nation's oldest parks system.
In her first public comments since leaving the administration, Ash told Newsday the Albany-based Alliance hopes to raise $10 million in private donations over the next few years while pushing hard for no further cuts.
Carol Ash will help create a nonprofit advocacy group that will also raise funds for projects in the nation's oldest parks system.
After Gov. David A. Paterson threatened earlier this year to close as many as 90 of the state's 213 parks and historic sites, parks Commissioner Carol Ash decided she could best protect the system from the outside.
Ash, who quit last month, is starting that effort by helping create the Alliance for New York State Parks, a nonprofit advocacy group that will also raise funds for projects in the nation's oldest parks system.
In her first public comments since leaving the administration, Ash told Newsday the Albany-based Alliance hopes to raise $10 million in private donations over the next few years while pushing hard for no further cuts.
We sustained cut after cut after cut of key personnel including police and maintenance workers," said Ash, who became commissioner of the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in early 2007. "One of the things we will be advocating for loud and clear is the parks department simply cannot sustain more people cuts. If you include seasonal workers, we're down nearly 1,500 people" in two years.
Paterson plans to cut another 90 park employees by the end of the year. Ash said more cuts would result in deterioration of facilities that would drive away visitors. Long Island has more parks and more park visitors than any other region.
"I realized I could talk to the new administration much more fully" if she made it clear she was not interested in remaining as commissioner, Ash said.
She was encouraged by her discussions with the staff of incoming Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who announced in a pre-election position publication that "Keeping our parks open for eco-tourism, environmental education and recreation has obvious financial benefits."
Cuomo also said the agency must rely more on partnerships with not-for-profit organizations. "We're going to help him figure out ways to keep the parks open," Ash said.
The alliance is part of the nonprofit Open Space Institute, a land trust that has purchased more than 100,000 acres in the state to protect them. The initial staff consists of Ash, who will work part-time as an "adviser," and Erik Kulleseid, previously Ash's deputy commissioner for open space protection and now the alliance's director.
The group will fight future park funding cuts by helping to develop friends and users groups, and working in conjunction with the existing statewide park advocacy group, Parks & Trails New York. It will also identify a dedicated funding mechanism similar to Montana's vehicle registration surcharge or a plastic shopping bag surcharge in Washington, D.C.
After raising at least $10 million from corporations, foundations and individuals - something Ash is confident of doing despite the weak economy - she said "we will choose one, two or three projects around the state where we can actually make a difference."
Robin Dropkin, executive director of Parks & Trails New York, which advocates but does not provide funds for parks, welcomed the new group. "Parks are in such desperate straits that we need all of the advocacy organizations that we can muster," she said.
"We welcome the alliance's efforts to raise private support for park operations and rehabilitation of deteriorated public facilities," said acting parks Commissioner Andy Beers.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Noose Found at School Playground in Ozone Park - NY Daily News
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Hate crimes detectives were investigating a noose found hanging from a tree in John Adams Playground in Ozone Park, Queens, Tuesday, cops said.
A city employee cleaning the park spotted the noose about 1:40 p.m. near Centerville St. and Sutter Ave. and called police, police sources said. The park is a block from John Adams High School.
Meanwhile, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein yesterday condemned the third apparent hate crime to hit city schools in two weeks. A Brooklyn principal became the latest victim Monday when she received a piece of cloth fashioned like a hangman's noose along with a letter packed with racial slurs.
"Like all New Yorkers, I was appalled by this cowardly act," Klein said.
Erin Einhorn, Michael White, Ethan Rouen and Carrie Melago
Thursday, September 16, 2010
City Smoking Ban May Extend to Parks and Beaches - WNYC
Another Nanny-state law - Now Mayor Bloomberg wants to stop cigarette smoking outdoors, too...I think it's absurd...!
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It's been a slow, steady and — by most accounts — effective campaign to get smokers in New York to take their habit outside. More than seven years ago the city became a national leader in efforts to curb indoor smoking when it enacted a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. Now, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and members of the City Council want to go even further by banning some outdoor smoking as well.
A bill to be introduced in the council tomorrow would prohibit smoking in all 1,700 city parks, 14 miles of city beaches, public marinas and even pedestrian plazas, like the one in Times Square.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn says not all of Times Square would be off limits to smokers. People would still be able to smoke on sidewalks.
"But you can't sit in one of those little tables, right next to me, in another little table, and smoke and therefore I have to ingest your second-hand smoke," Quinn says. "That you can't do."
Once the bill is introduced, public hearings would be held on the proposed new law. According to the Bloomberg administration, Chicago and Los Angeles already ban smoking at parks and beaches. Bloomberg, who has made banning smoking a major policy issue, says being three feet from a smoker is hazardous to your health, whether indoors or outdoors. The bill is supposed to protect against second-hand smoke.
"In passing it, we think it would help ensure that when New Yorkers and visitors to our city go to the parks and beaches for fresh air, there will actually be fresh air for them to breathe, and also that our parks and beaches won't be littered, as they are now, all too often," Bloomberg says.
According to the city, cigarette butts account for 75 percent of litter on city beaches and can take more than 18 months to decompose.
The smokers' rights group Citizens Freedom Alliance questions the science behind second-hand smoke dangers and says the ban would be taking away the rights and freedoms of New Yorkers.
City Council members defend the measure and say it's not meant to be punitive or generate revenue. Public workers with the authority to write summonses would enforce the law, but city lawmakers believe regular citizens could help too.
The smokers' rights group Citizens Freedom Alliance questions the science behind second-hand smoke dangers and says the ban would be taking away the rights and freedoms of New Yorkers.
City Council members defend the measure and say it's not meant to be punitive or generate revenue. Public workers with the authority to write summonses would enforce the law, but city lawmakers believe regular citizens could help too.
So far public reaction is mixed, with some people suggesting there should be a smoking section in parks and beaches, instead of an all out ban.
Junior Thomas, who was smoking in Riverside Park, says he hates that he smokes, but he'd rather quit on his own than have it forced on him. He called the ban "trotting on people's civil liberties."
Merle Chitan, who was also at the park, welcomes the ban. She's a nanny who suffers from smoke allergies. "You want to enjoy yourself when you're sitting in the park and the smoke is coming in your face, so I think it's a great idea what they want to do. "
Councilwoman Gail Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan, will introduce the bill Thursday. It's unclear which council members support the legislation.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
New Bill Would Require City to Trap Raccoons Anywhere in Five Boroughs by Lisa L. Colangelo - NY Daily News
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A new bill has been introduced that would require the city to trap and remove raccoons anywhere in the five boroughs at the public's request.
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| A new bill has been introduced that would require the city to trap and remove raccoons anywhere in the five boroughs at the public's request. |
A new bill has been introduced that would require the city to trap and remove raccoons anywhere in the five boroughs at the public's request.
New Yorkers fed up with the antics of the city's furry masked bandits could get some relief under a bill that makes it easier to capture and release raccoons.
The bill, being unveiled today by Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley, requires the city to trap raccoons anywhere in the five boroughs simply at the request of the public.
And in a conciliatory nod to the raccoons, the city Health Department would be encouraged to humanely release the critters. Under current guidelines, most trapped raccoons are euthanized because they can carry rabies.
"People have been calling my office complaining that they are seeing a lot of raccoons," Crowley said. "But the Health Department will only come if the raccoon is injured or sick. People are told to hire someone to trap them."
Dozens of raccoons in Central Park have tested positive for rabies, prompting the city to conduct an aggressive trapping and vaccination program.
"I have made reports and no one will listen to me," said a Queens woman, upset that a family of raccoons moved in behind her Ridgewood home. "I have two young daughters and I'm afraid. I was told if I called about a coyote, the city would come right away."
Health Department officials were mute on Crowley's bill, saying they don't comment on pending legislation.
But they encouraged any New Yorker who sees an aggressive or sick raccoon to call 911.
Wildlife experts encouraged New Yorkers to seal up their trash and leave healthy raccoons alone.
"You can't pick up and relocate every animal you see," said Bobby Horvath, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. "They are in the city, and you have to learn to live with them. They will have less contact with us if we don't invite them."
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
NYC's Fake Grass Gamble: A $300M Mistake? by Patrick Arden - City Limits Magazine - CityLimits.org
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Soccer players shout at midfield, but not about their game: The field is falling apart.
In 1998, New York City began installing synthetic turf fields in parks and playgrounds, saying the artificial material would be more durable than grass. But a City Limits investigation finds that many turf fields are falling apart, including this one at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
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| Soccer players examine the turf at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. |
Soccer players shout at midfield, but not about their game: The field is falling apart.
“It’s been like this for five years,” complains Israel Arreola, as he points to the open seams, torn patches and wavy folds in the artificial turf at Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Referees for public school league games already boycott two artificial-turf fields there, citing fears of liability. “This is bad: holes everywhere,” says Arreola, a Manhattan sous-chef who plays in a weekend league.
The reasons behind this buying binge have been many, ranging from the battle against obesity to an alleged cost savings on field maintenance. Artificial turf is part of PlaNYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's blueprint for an environmentally friendly future. Yet a City Limits investigation has found that overuse and chronic neglect has run turf ragged years ahead of schedule; price comparisons generally favor natural grass, even in the long term; and the health risks of turf—largely dismissed by the city after the destruction of one artificial field for high lead levels in late 2008—are much broader and deeper than previously reported.“Somebody’s going to get hurt.” Over the past 12 years New York City has borrowed an estimated $300 million to put 204 artificial-turf fields at parks, schools and playgrounds. An additional 52 fields are on the drawing board.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
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.
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.
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.
SAVING A HAVE-NOTThe 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
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.
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