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Parks

Parks

Private Partnerships For Public Parks


Randall's Island

Last year, the city parks department and the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation worked out a deal to allow 20 private schools near-exclusive use of the island’s ball fields during after-school hours in exchange for contributing $85.5 million over 30 years to help upgrade and maintain the fields. In a city with a steep divide between rich and poor, the agreement seemed to hit a nerve.

Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez summed up the outrage felt by many (including public officials representing the area) at the notion of privileged private school students locking up public fields during the hours when many schools run sports programs: “No one has explained why public parks, these natural treasures of our great city, are suddenly being converted into private airlines with first-class and coach sections.”

The deal illustrates the complications that can result from the reliance on private organizations to support what traditionally has been a public, taxpayer-funded service. The issue has been raised in park controversies around the city, from the inclusion of apartment buildings within the planned Brooklyn Bridge Park to City Hall’s refusal to allow protesters to gather on the lawn in Central Park.

"The prospective agreement at Randall’s Island is actually forcing all of us…to address the park dilemma straight on," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, the advocacy group. "Do we think parks are worthy of public investment so that they may provide universal access, or is it time to move to a model that requires some sacrifice in the universality of parkland in return for essential funding?”

A KEY SOURCE OF SUPPORT FOR THE PARKS

Central Park

In the 1970s, after city funding was slashed and the parks fell into disrepair, the Central Park Conservancy pioneered the concept of the private-public partnership to restore the landmark park. Many similar private-public partnerships were started, providing funding, grassroots energy, and innovative ideas to spark a citywide parks revival.

Last week, Bloomberg and the City Council agreed to put more permanent funding into the budget for parks. But the political reality in New York City is that the parks budget is among the first to be cut during times of fiscal crisis. Although the parks budget has held steady in recent years, public funding for operating the parks, once one percent of the city budget, remains just .04 percent. More than 20 large park partnership organizations and dozens of smaller ones help to fill the gap.

The Bloomberg administration has sought to build on and expand this private support. In addition to traditional philanthropy and private partners, it has encouraged corporate donations, concessions, the sale of naming rights, and funding mechanisms that link commercial development with the maintenance of public parks.

Even cities with generous parks budgets have embraced the concept of private groups to support the parks. “No matter how well funded a city’s parks are, they still need some help,” said Andy Wiley-Schwartz, vice president at Project for Public Spaces, a non-profit that works to improve community life through public spaces. “Having community stewards is priceless, and every city knows that, whether they fund parks or not. New York City also happens to need money.”

Private partners can be also more flexible and creative than city agencies that may be set in their ways and bound by union rules. For example, Central Park’s innovative zone management system, in which a gardener has responsibility for a specific section of the park, has proven very effective in keeping high maintenance standards and good community relations. Such groups can also provide a way for people to get more involved in their local park.

THE RANDALL’S DEAL

The Randall’s Island Sports Foundation was founded in 1992 by parents whose children played sports on the island and who wanted to realize the island’s potential as parkland. The group has raised private and public funding to restore and build new recreational facilities, including the $42 million Icahn track and field stadium, and run free summer and weekend programs for thousands of children in the neighboring communities of East Harlem and the South Bronx.

Under the proposed contract with the private schools, the island would get 65 new and restored fields. The schools would cover half of the debt service on the $70 million cost of constructing the new fields and pay for ongoing maintenance, but use the fields less than 15 percent of the total available hours. The Daily News recently reported that city officials plan to spend an extra $53 million on drainage and other infrastructure improvements as well. “The primary beneficiary of the project is the public,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, including the youth and adult sports leagues that play on the island on the weekends and in the summer.

The private schools have been busing students out to the island for years, claiming 95 percent of the fields after school. Their park department permits allow them to continue that use, whether or not the deal goes through. At present, there is not great competition for the fields after school because the island is difficult to get to by public transportation. But the school-age population of the adjacent neighborhoods is increasing, and if access is improved, demand for the fields will increase.

In addition to protesting restricted access to the fields, residents of East Harlem and the South Bronx say the Randall’s Island foundation hasn’t included their communities in planning for the island, has no local representatives on its board, and does not advertise events in their neighborhoods, keeping the island as an enclave for the wealthy.

At a recent City Council hearing on the proposed deal, board members of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation acknowledged the board did not include representatives from those neighborhoods. But they stressed that the foundation’s goal was to provide a clean, safe place to play for all children. Karen Cohen, the group’s president and founder, said that it is working with 11,000 children from 100 local organizations. She said, “We want to make sure everyone is able to use Randall’s Island.”

OBJECTIONS TO PRIVATE FUNDING

The influence of private funding can extend to how a park is designed, renovated, and used.

A coalition of Brooklyn civic organizations and residents called Brooklyn Bridge Park Defense Fund, which is suing to stop the inclusion of luxury apartment buildings in the Brooklyn Bridge Park to subsidize its upkeep, says the planned towers would make the park into a playground for the residents, not a public park.

Washinton Square Park

The original plan for the waterfront park, developed in a series of community workshops, included stores, a Chelsea Piers-like recreation center, and other uses that would bring people into the park. But when the final plan was released by the Empire State Development Corporation, which is overseeing the construction of the park, it contained luxury apartment buildings, a hotel, and office and retail space. The corporation said that when the actual economic analyses were done, the other commercial uses proved insufficient to generate enough revenue to support the park.

“The fear of privatization in any park is a reasonable fear,” said Marianna Koval, executive director of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, which works to support the park. “It is important to strike the right balance. The housing will work to sustain 74 acres in perpetuity. That’s a great thing. Now, how do we protect against privatization from that housing, and across the board in this park?” Her organization is focusing on programming free activities and events in the park that establish “early patterns of use so that people feel welcome.”

A more subtle form of privatization can result when the financial investment by a private group or donor gives them a proprietary interest in a park. ‘The city cedes authority, control, and responsibility to a new class of owner, who has rights and privileges because they are the ones who have to pay off the costs,” said Jonathan Greenberg, founder and coordinator of the Open Washington Square Park Coalition, which is fighting the park department’s redesign of Washington Square Park.

During the Republican National Convention in 2004, the city denied protesters’ request for a permit to rally in Central Park because it said the crowd would damage the carefully restored lawns. Protest organizers charged that the Central Park Conservancy’s interest in protecting the lawns it had paid to restore trumped the more basic right of public assembly.

Greenwich Village residents who are fighting the park department’s design for renovating Washington Square Park see the influence of New York University’s dollars in the redesign calling for a centered fountain and a fenced-in greensward instead of a more modest renovation of the vibrant but somewhat unruly existing space.

Parks Commissioner Benepe rejects that notion, however. “The issue that private dollars are driving the discussion in projects is somewhat of a red herring. It’s a substitute for the fact that some people just don’t like the decisions that are being made,” he said. “There are literally hundreds of projects at some stage of construction, design, and bidding. Unlike with most municipal projects, everybody has an opinion on it.”

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

Brooklyn Bridge Park (Illustration)

A reliance on private funding, observers say, lets the availability of money, instead of a more systematic assessment of park needs citywide, dictate which park projects will go forward. That can lead to prioritizing projects for affluent areas before meeting the needs of neighborhoods that don’t have private resources at their disposal.

There has been a lot of coverage in the press recently about a new playground near the South Street Seaport where children would use sand, water, and movable blocks to build giant constructions guided by adult “play workers.” Architect David Rockwell is designing this labor-intensive experiment at no charge and raising $2 million to pay for the staff. Meanwhile, the once ubiquitous “parkie” who kept playgrounds clean, unlocked the bathrooms, and kept an eye on children has gone the way of, if not the dinosaur, perhaps the panda. In 2005, the city funded 110 playground associates for the entire city during the summer months, two per City Council district.

The operations of the city’s private-public partnerships can also lack transparency and public accountability, advocates say. Even the extent of private support is not fully known, according to the Independent Budget Office. Between $60 and $70 million a year is provided to parks by partnership organizations, but that represents just part of the total. The budget office did an analysis of private funds spent on public parks at the request of the chair of the City Council parks committee, Helen Foster, but found that it could not give a full accounting because the necessary information was incomplete, out of date, or not publicly available.

In a letter to Councilmember Foster, budget office Director Ronnie Lowenstein wrote, “Since the city continues to rely on private funding for support of its parks and recreation programs, a more through annual accounting of private support would be beneficial in helping the City Council and others determine whether the total resources available for parks and recreation are sufficient and appropriately allocated.”

After the outcry on the Randall’s Island contract, city officials agreed to postpone the final vote by the city's Franchise and Concessions Review Committee and hold further discussions with all of the interested parties. Borough President Scott Stringer, Comptroller William Thompson, East Harlem Councilmember Melissa Mark Viverito and the local community boards have been negotiating to reach a compromise that would allow public school children and local residents to have greater access to the fields during after-school hours. The City Council's parks committee has scheduled another hearing on the issue for January 31. A vote by the franchise committee has been set for February 14.

However the Randall’s Island issue is resolved, the growing importance of private partners to the park system requires a closer look at the trade-offs involved.

“It’s the public sector’s responsibility to provide a framework, to define what it means to be a private partner providing a public service,” said Maura Lout, director of operations at New Yorkers for Parks. “We have to figure out a way to make this work, because we’re obviously going to see more and more of it.”

Editor’s Note: Rich Davis, chairman of the board of directors of Citizens Union Foundation(publisher of Gotham Gazette), is also chairman of the board of trustees of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation.Dick Dadey, the executive director of Citizens Union Foundation, serves on the board of directors of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.

Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues. 

A Greener Governor?


Under the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, the federal government has reduced conservation funding and, in recent years, provided no money for urban parks. Funding for the National Park system has also been cut, which has starved New York harbor’s Gateway National Recreation Area of money needed to make it the great urban national park it was planned to be.

Come January, Democrats will head the congressional committees with jurisdiction over the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Urban Parks and Recreation Recovery, which are key sources of funding for land conservation and urban park restoration. Since Democrats tend to represent urban areas and be more responsive to urban concerns, they may be inclined to restore appropriations for city parks and direct funding to Gateway and other urban national parks."But the budget numbers haven’t changed,” said Alan Front, senior vice president of The Trust for Public Land, which works to increase federal funding for parks and open space. "That may stop the new chairmen with the best intentions from doing what they might want to do in terms of open space spending."

Park advocates expect Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer to continue his strong support for protecting open space in New York City. As attorney general, Spitzer defended the public’s interest in parkland several times. Early in his first term as New York State attorney general, he sued to stop former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani from auctioning off hundreds of community gardens on city-owned land. He later negotiated a compromise with Mayor Michael Bloomberg that protected nearly 200 gardens and set up a public review process for the rest.

Any future attempts by city officials to alienate parkland, or take it over for another use, may be not be so easily approved under a Spitzer administration. His community garden lawsuit was based in part on the legal argument that the gardens were de facto parks and could not be taken from public use without state legislative approval. In the last few years, the city has won state approval to take significant chunks of parkland for non-park uses, including the filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park and a new stadium for the Yankees replacing Macombs Dam Park. Christian DiPalermo, executive director of the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, said, “We hope to work with Spitzer’s administration to strengthen the alienation laws in the state, so parkland isn’t the first choice but rather the last.”

As part of Spitzer’s very comprehensive environmental agenda, laid out in a response to a questionnaire by the New York League of Conservation Voters, he promised to build on Governor George Pataki’s open space legacy and preserve open space and parks in cities. He is expected to continue the state’s financial support, committed under Pataki, of the two large new waterfront parks planned or being built in the city: Hudson River Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park. Also, soon after Spitzer takes office, he will have an opportunity to select the new chair of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, a city-state authority that is overseeing the development of the island and its open space. Park advocates are hoping that Spitzer will become actively involved in the project and finally follow through on a plan for the island.

Spitzer also said he would write comprehensive environmental justice regulations, which could mean support for more parks, greenery and recreation in communities of color.

In the coming years, New York City may also benefit from an increase in allocations from the Environmental Protection Fund, the source of nearly all state funding for urban park and waterfront development, as well as for open space and solid waste programs. In recent years, $125 million a year has generally been allocated from the fund, an amount insufficient to meet the state’s environmental, park and open space needs. (This fiscal year, however, Pataki and the legislature substantially increased spending from the fund to $225 million.) To increase appropriations from the fund without raising taxes, Spitzer supports the “bigger better bottle bill,” which would provide the fund with the unclaimed deposits, estimated to be more than $100 million a year, now kept by the beverage industry.

Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues. 

Yankee Stadium/Parks Exchange Underway


In mid-August, city workers fenced off Macombs Dam Park and part of Mullaly Park in the Bronx, chopped down hundreds of large trees, and turned over the three-block site to the Yankees for the construction of a new stadium and VIP parking. For people who live and work in the surrounding neighborhood, the loss of their leafy community park, with its heavily used running track and baseball and soccer fields, was heartbreaking.

“It was a great joy to me to look out the window and see people using that park,” said one woman, who asked not be named because she worked for the city and feared retribution from the Bronx political machine. “That park was used every single day, even in the snow. The kids played there; the older people went around the track. It was a very lovely place for people to be.”

In exchange for removing 20.8 acres of parkland from public use, the city has committed to spend $160 million over the next four years on 24.5 acres of new recreational facilities and open space.

Many in the community opposed the swap, saying it shortchanged residents by taking a large, open space surrounded by mature trees in a residential community and replacing it with sports fields and courts in several locations further from where people live. The plans include a track and artificial turf soccer field on top of a parking garage.

Joshua Laird, assistant commissioner for planning at the parks department, said, “We think the community is going to get really greatly improved recreational facilities in a community that needs that.” But he also said, “The hardest aspect of this project for us is seeing those trees go. Our basal area formula will allow us to replace the functioning of the trees, but there’s just no way to replace the grandeur of a mature oak tree.”

Construction of the stadium is on schedule, but the building of the promised interim and replacement parkland has gotten off to a slower start. Now residents are wondering when – and if – the new parks will be built.

LONG-TERM PROMISES

The park department’s plan calls for parks and fields on several sites:

  • tennis courts and an esplanade on the now-derelict waterfront
  • an artificial turf soccer field and a running track on top of a new parking garage
  • three ball fields on the site of the old Yankee Stadium
  • several passive park areas and paved plazas

To replace 400 large, old trees that were cut down, the city expects to plant about 8,000 smaller trees, most outside of the immediate neighborhood.

The parks department has said it will finish the detailed plans for the new parkland in consultation with the community. Laird said that community outreach has begun with several recent visits to community board meetings, and that the department will be hiring a community liaison person for the project.

The new parks and playing fields are scheduled to be completed a year and a half after the Yankee’s new stadium opens for the 2009 baseball season.

COMMUNITY FEARS

An interim track and a number of temporary fields are supposed to be in place before the permanent facilities are completed. But some promised deadlines already have not been met. City officials did not deliver on their promise to construct a temporary running course around two ball fields next to Yankee Stadium by the time construction started, for example. And, according to the environmental impact statement, by the fall of 2006, there was supposed to be a track and soccer/baseball field on a parking lot ultimately destined for a four-story parking garage; city officials now say they hope to complete the field by next spring, weather permitting.

All this has fueled the fears of residents who already feel betrayed by the Bronx borough president and other local politicians who fast-tracked the parkland takeover despite neighborhood opposition. Many don’t believe that the city will end up building all the replacement parks, especially the fields in the old Yankee stadium.

“My fear is that they’ll have cost overruns, find asbestos in the old stadium—blah, blah, blah—and they won’t be able to do it,” said JJ Brennan, a resident who founded Save Our Parks, a neighborhood group that has brought a lawsuit to stop the stadium. “No money is allocated right now. That part is not supposed to happen until after 2009. There will be an election before then, and we’ll have a whole new slate of politicians who can do whatever they want.”

Hector Aponte, parks department Bronx borough commissioner, says that such fears are unfounded. “At some point, people have to realize that the city is acting in good faith,” Aponte said. “All the people who were so critical of the Croton filtration plant are starting to realize that we are improving parks all over the place. There are naysayers who never believe anything. They have to give us some time. To say it’s not going to happen, when the Yankees just started construction in August, I don’t think that’s fair.”

WHERE DID THE SPORTS TEAMS GO?

When the Yankee Stadium redevelopment plan was up for approval, the parks department said it would help teams that used the park find other places to play, giving priority for the closest fields to youth teams. Aponte said that his department met with representatives of all the youth leagues that play in the park last spring and explained that there was going to be a shortage of fields. “Maybe a month ago, we sent out letters to all permitted people and made calls to let them know if they wanted alternate space to contact the permit office,” he said.

It is hard to tell whether or not all teams have found alternative places to play. The soccer coach at a local Catholic school said his team didn’t find a new home field although other teams in his league did. The school’s track team has not found a track for practice, so they have been using the sidewalks and the street.

According to Aponte, even without the loss of Macombs Dam Park, there would be a shortage of playing fields in the Bronx because so many fields are being renovated with mitigation money from the filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park. “The good news is that we’re renovating. The bad news is there are not enough fields,” he said. “We’ve asked teams to cooperate and share space. Up to now there haven’t been complaints.”

CONSTRUCTION WOES

In a continuation of what some residents say is the Yankee’s history of disrespect for the largely black and Hispanic local community, the stadium construction is proceeding despite violations affecting the health and quality of life of residents. “Construction is still going on before 7 a.m. and on Saturday when the buildings department said they would not issue any more after-hours permits,” said Joyce Hogi, who lives across the street from the former park. A recent visit to the site found that trucks were not being washed down before leaving the site as required. It had recently rained, and Jerome Avenue was covered with mud. Residents said that when the weather is dry, the air is filled with dust. The neighborhood already has some of the highest asthma rates in the city.

“If you see what they’re doing with construction, they are already not doing what they promised,” said JJ Brennan. “Everything’s been a bait and switch with us.”

Asked about these complaints, Alice McGillion of Rubenstein Associates, spokesperson for the new Yankee Stadium, said, “The Yankees are in full compliance with all the construction rules and regulations.”

STILL FIGHTING, OR COMPLAINING

Save Our Parks, which has battled the project with few outside allies, sued unsuccessfully to block the stadium’s construction. It continues to press its lawsuit charging that the National Park Service did not conduct a thorough review before approving the project. The approval of the federal agency was required because Macombs Dam Park had received federal funding for improvements.

“If a conversion request comes through for a non-park use, such as the Yankees taking over Macombs Dam Park, it has to meet the criteria that it be of equal usefulness, accessibility and value, and we feel it is not,” said Hogi. At this point, it is too late to stop the stadium’s construction, she conceded. “What I’m hoping for -- this is as a private citizen -- is that we will get more parkland back. This community does not need four parking garages.”

Mary Blassingame, a former member of Community Board 4, which represents the area, led the board’s opposition to the stadium plan, and was later removed from her committee chair by Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion. She said, “What I’m hearing from the community is that people who were against the project, but weren’t reacting too much, are very, very upset now. People got really shocked when they saw the devastation.”

Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues. 

 



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