NYC Parks [Archive] - Wired New York Forum

billyblancoNYC

October 1st, 2004, 11:55 AM

In exchange for the right to build a $1.4 billion water filtration plant underground in a large Bronx park, the city offered up $220 million in parks money for the borough. Nice to see, especially the Greenstreets and the waterfront access.

Here's a detailed list of the improvements to come:

http://www.nyc.gov/portal/index.jsp...8&rc=1194&ndi=1

Here's more info:
http://nyc.gov/portal/index.jsp?epi...8&rc=1194&ndi=1

MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG AND GOVERNOR GEORGE E. PATAKI ANNOUNCE OVER $220 MILLION FOR BRONX PARKS

Ratification of Memorandum of Understanding on Croton Filtration Plan Clears Way For Enormous Improvements in Parks Across the Bronx

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Governor George E. Pataki today announced more than $220 million worth of improvements for Bronx Parks will be made over the next five years.

On Tuesday, the City Council approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the State that allows the City to move forward with the construction of a water filtration plant for the Croton Water Supply System under the Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park. As part of the agreement, more than $220 million generated from water and sewer revenue will be spent on improvements to Bronx Parks over the next five years. The agreement represents a rare opportunity to invest more than triple what would be spent on Bronx's parks over the next five years. Joining the Mayor and Governor at the event in Saint James Park in the Bronx were Assembly member Jose Rivera, Council Members Joel Rivera and Madeline Provenzano, Department of Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe and Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Christopher O. Ward.

"This is a great day for the Bronx," said Mayor Bloomberg. "We are making an historic investment into Bronx Parks that generations of New Yorkers will be able to enjoy. Not since the days of the WPA will Bronx see more greening and improvements to its recreational areas. This has been a long tough road and I want to thank everyone who played a part in this important announcement. Particulary I want to express my gratitude to Governor Pataki, Assembly Speaker Silver, Senate Majority Leader Bruno, Council Speaker Miller, and Commissioners Ward & Benepe for their work on this project."

"This multi-million dollar investment in parks projects will give the Bronx the green space that it deserves," said Governor Pataki. "Because of this agreement, recreational facilities will be improved, new waterfront parks will be developed, and neighborhood parks and playgrounds will be renovated throughout the borough. Thanks to a shared commitment with Mayor Bloomberg, the Bronx is receiving a great investment in its parks. By working together, we will continue to provide clean and safe drinking water for the people of New York while creating new and improved park and recreational space for Bronx families."

"It brings me great joy to continue to build and beautify our parks so our children can enjoy them," said Assemblyman Jose Rivera.

"Today marks an historic occasion," said Council Member Joel Rivera. "Bronx parks will receive over $220 million for beautification and restoration projects. Not only will this go a long way in beautifying our borough, it also assures safe, clean, and enjoyable parks for the people of the Bronx both young and old."

The Bronx parks projects were identified after years of input from the community, and were finalized over the past year with the help of community groups, elected officials and Bronx residents. Collaboratively, the Parks Department focused on projects that would be a challenge to fund through the capital budget. The projects fall into five categories and include improving neighborhood parks, renovating regional recreation facilities, developing the Bronx Greenway, improving and expanding access to the Bronx waterfront, building and "greening" the borough. Highlights include:

More than 20 neighborhood parks and playgrounds will be renovated with new play equipment, comfort stations, seating areas, fencing and landscaping. Major work at Story Park will include reconstruction of a playground and comfort station. Tremont Park will receive a new seating area for seniors, as well as a hard court game area.

Regional recreation facilities, including ballfields, running tracks and tennis courts will be reconstructed or built throughout the borough. The Parade Grounds at Van Cortlandt Park will be reconstructed with new athletic fields, sod and drainage. Playgrounds, a track field, senior area and skate park will be reconstructed at Williamsbridge Oval Park.

Waterfront parks will be developed along the Long Island Sound, East River and Harlem River. New waterfront space, including a Greenway link, will be developed at Pelham Bay Park, and environmental work will include the restoration of lagoons and salt marshes at Pugsley Creek Park and Soundview Park.

Major sections of the Bronx Greenway, including the Hutchinson, Bronx River and Soundview to Ferry Point sections, will be completed. Work will include the restoration of existing parkland - including improving pathways and public access to parks and the waterfront - as well as transforming underutilized property into new parkland in areas with little open space. A new pedestrian bridge over the Bronx River Parkway and Bronx River will connect Shoelace Park and Muskrat Cove providing a major link in the Bronx River Greenway.

A comprehensive program to "green" the borough will include the creation of new Greenstreets, improvement and expansion of horticultural plantings in parks and playgrounds, and the addition of street trees in under-served neighborhoods. Parks will also upgrade and expand the Bronx Green House and Nursery.

The State will also establish a comprehensive Urban Forestry Program, administered by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The program will further the greening of the Bronx, improve air quality, reduce ambient air temperatures, and help reduce energy costs and heat "island" effect by planting thousands of trees in parks, playgrounds, streets and other targeted areas of the borough.

ZippyTheChimp

October 6th, 2004, 12:56 AM

October 6, 2004

Next Subway Stop, the Wilderness

By JOSEPH BERGER

Who needs Yellowstone and Yosemite?

New York City boasts its own constellation of national parks - all right, natural parks - 48 preserves of emerald tidal marsh, bouldered shoreline, ancient woodlands, gurgling creeks and tranquil kettle ponds where ospreys dive from the sky to snatch unwary fish and shrews stow away for the day under rotting tree trunks.

A few of the sanctuaries are almost as pristine as they were when European explorers first gazed upon them in wonder, and, unlike those explorers, today's visitors can get there by subway.

Four years ago, the 48 preserves were designated "Forever Wild" by the Department of Parks and Recreation to keep them from being turned into ball fields, golf courses, playgrounds and marinas. But officials have realized that New Yorkers who have flown to Yosemite and Yellowstone scarcely know about the wilds of Pelham Bay Park or Marine Park and even a few undomesticated spots in Central Park. And they may not care enough to keep them wild.

So the department has decided to cultivate a constituency that will fight to safeguard its natural treasures.

"Promotion is the greatest protection," said Mike Feller, the department's chief naturalist. "If people know about and come out and use these areas, they will protect them."

On Oct. 16, the department will start a series of hikes and canoe trips through a few of the Forever Wild preserves. (Call 311 or consult www.nyc.gov/foreverwild.) Meanwhile, it has been running advertisements on buses and bus shelters inviting visitors to the preserves. "Wish You Were Here," one advertisement exults over a photograph of an idyllic marsh that looks like a Louisiana bayou, adding at the bottom: "WAIT! You ARE here!"

Getting the preserves known is a matter of survival, parks officials and advocates say. Many New Yorkers prefer ball fields and golf courses instead of terrain fit only for strolling and contemplation, said Maura Lout, research director for New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group. Such a conflict surfaced several years ago in southern Staten Island when borough officials wanted to create ball fields out of a chunk of Bloomingdale Park for residents of new homes sprouting nearby, recalled Henry Stern, a former parks commissioner. With the borough so critical to the mayoral victories of both Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael R. Bloomberg, the Parks Department lost the preservationist argument and ball fields were built.

The 48 natural areas, which total 8,200 acres, almost a third of the city's 29,000 acres of parks, are protected by state law only as parkland, which can leave wiggle room for ball fields and playgrounds. But city officials do not want to try to pass a more stringent law, fearing a gantlet of political scrapes and restrictions on their freedom in unforeseen circumstances.

"It has no legal force - it's a policy - and I suppose a future administration could undo it," said Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner. "But in addition to a policy, you have a constituency."

Not all the protected natural areas are in their original state. Pretty as it is, Central Park is mostly a glorious fake -fabricated a century and a half ago from shantytowns and swampland. But nature has been allowed to take over some of the artificial handiworks, and now two places, the Hallett Nature Sanctuary and the North Woods ravine and "loch," have been designated Forever Wild.

Much of Marine Park in Brooklyn, a lush expanse of tidal marsh surrounding a saltwater creek, was once landfill, the failed product of a plan to turn the coast of Brooklyn into another port. Now osprey wheel overhead looking to seize the fish that multiply in the briny creek.

At least one preserve demonstrates how wild terrain wants to stay that way, defeating the best intentions to civilize it. In Forest Park in Queens, city officials four decades ago turned a swamp in a park hollow into a baseball field, but players found the field flooded regularly.

Four years ago, officials surrendered to the inevitable and the field has returned to woodland kettle pond, with floating hearts - pads with small yellow flowers - covering much of its surface. King birds swoop low over the pond and toads trill along its edges. It would be hard to know that busy Woodhaven Boulevard is just behind a screen of birch, hickory, oak and maple.

The other day, Mr. Benepe and Mr. Feller showed the pond off, then capered through the reeds like small boys, chasing a toad.

"This is the flip side of 'If you build it, they will come,' which was said about a ball field," Mr. Benepe said. "If you take out the ball field, then toads and dragonflies will come."

But Forever Wild does not mean entirely untamed. In Alley Pond Park in Queens, framed by three highways but rich with peat bogs and black locust forests, workers with buzz saws were cutting down Norway maples, intruders inhospitable to the park's insects and animals. They were also trimming away alien vines strangling native trees.

"You can create wilderness," Mr. Feller said.

Before the Forest Park visit, Mr. Feller took a reporter and photographer on a tour of the Hunter Island preserve in Pelham Bay Park. Peering through binoculars, he spotted an osprey riding a northwest wind.

"They're hugging the shoreline and they'll make a left-hand turn over Westchester and the Bronx," he said. "They have runs of fish over the lagoon and start forming a holding pattern. I don't know of another site on the East Coast that gets that concentration of ospreys in the fall migration."

Hunter Island, a former estate connected to Orchard Beach by landfill, is now largely a forest that slopes down to a shore strewn with boulders. Mr. Feller called it the southernmost example of rocky New England shoreline.

"There are parts of Hunter Island that look pretty much as they would have when Europeans first stepped on the island," Mr. Feller said.

Hiking through a mile-long woodland trail, Mr. Feller, a Brooklyn native who has become a spellbinding encyclopedia of natural facts, pointed out white snakeroot flowers, much like those some historians blame for the death of Lincoln's mother. (She may have died drinking milk from cows that grazed in patches of snakeroot.) He found pokeweed, whose purplish berries, he said, provided the ink for the United States Constitution.

Mr. Feller found clam shells that he said were probably used by Indians and shards of a rose-petaled porcelain teacup that he guessed came from the home of the Hunter family, which conveyed its estate to the city in 1866. He pointed out a forest on the north side of the island that dates to a period before settlers cleared the land for farming.

"Here's where we get roughly 200-year-old trees," Mr. Feller said. "They're very big wide trunks, evenly spaced trees, with a nice herb layer underneath. That's what existed here when there were only native Americans."

When Mr. Feller and company reached the waters of Long Island Sound, there was scarcely a ripple on the blue-gray water and a lone seagull glided overhead. Practically underfoot were luxuriant spreads of salt marsh cordgrass and a few inches higher up salt meadow cordgrass.

Mr. Feller beamed like a parent on graduation day.

"The other reason Hunter Island is much better than the Adirondacks or the Catskills is you can't walk there and come on this," he said.

Mr. Feller recalled the first time his wife, Margot Perron, then an urban park ranger like him, took him out to Hunter Island.

"I had a preconceived notion of a chain-link fence, blacktop and swing sets," he said. "So I was skipping, skipping and jumping, because this completely exceeded any expectations I had about a New York City park."

There were almost no people on the walk, save an immigrant from Ivory Coast sunning himself on a shoreline boulder. But the spot is so lovely that over the years resourceful New Yorkers have carved out redoubts - apparent picnic spots. Mr. Feller pointed out a fortlike alcove where one enchanted improviser had planted a patch of impatiens, and a bench built by an aging World War II steamfitter. The ruins of their labor are still there, protected now within the Forever Wild designation.

"Nothing is forever," Mr. Feller said of all 48 preserves. "But these are not the areas people should be thinking about for recreation. These are the sites whose greatest contribution to the city is leaving them as they are."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

http://nycgovparks.org/sub_about/parks_divisions/nrg/forever_wild/foreverwild_sites.php

billyblancoNYC

October 6th, 2004, 01:39 AM

I've wanted the city to promote this and it's golf courses as destinations for a while now. Finally, someone sees that showing people NYC has it all makes some sense. Nice article.

Edward

October 9th, 2004, 09:23 PM

Installing the art in the Grand Ferry Park (http://www.wirednewyork.com/parks/grand_ferry_park/default.htm). 9 October 2004.

http://www.wirednewyork.com/parks/grand_ferry_park/images/grand_ferry_williamsburg_9oct04.jpg (http://www.wirednewyork.com/parks/grand_ferry_park/default.htm)

Installing the art in the Grand Ferry Park (http://www.wirednewyork.com/parks/grand_ferry_park/default.htm). 9 October 2004.

http://www.wirednewyork.com/parks/grand_ferry_park/images/grand_ferry_art_9oct04.jpg (http://www.wirednewyork.com/parks/grand_ferry_park/default.htm)

krulltime

June 22nd, 2005, 03:43 PM

Bx. parks leaf much
to be desired: group

BY JEGO ARMSTRONG and AUSTIN FENNER
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

The Bronx scored poorly on a survey of neighborhood parks by an advocacy group, placing no parks in the top 10 and four in the bottom 10.
Overall, city playgrounds have improved, according to the report card released yesterday by New Yorkers for Parks, a nonprofit parks advocacy organization, but 40% of the city's parks earned scores of Cs, Ds and Fs.

Manhattan has five of the top 10 community parks in the city, which were evaluated on recreational space, passive green space, bathrooms and sitting areas. It also had two in the bottom 10.

University Woods Park in the University Heights section of the Bronx was rated the worst in the city with a dismal 6% score out of a possible 100%.

"It's not a place for people to come and hang out," said Tony Campbell, 47, of Kingsbridge, who was sitting in the Bronx park on a bluff.

A reporter who visited the derelict park yesterday noted the pungent smell of urine along its pathways.

The Bronx park scene is set to change drastically, thanks to a $200 million infusion of cash for its parks the city has agreed to provide in exchange for building an underground water filtration plant for the Croton Water Supply System beneath the Mosholu Golf Course in Van Cortlandt Park.

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión suggested University Woods be turned into an educational nature preserve operated by Urban Park Rangers.

Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, said the Parks Department can improve park quality by stepping up its targeted maintenance program called Operation Releaf/Relief to fix derelict bathrooms and water fountains.

"The mayor and the City Council can address the challenges in caring for neighborhood parks by increasing funding for park maintenance and operation in next year's budget, which is now being negotiated," said DiPalermo.

Bryant Park on W. 42nd St. in Manhattan - with its lush, manicured lawns and flowers - was rated the best small park in the city.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe dismissed the report card as inaccurate.

"We don't agree with the sampling or the conclusion of the report card," said Benepe.

"More New Yorkers enjoy first-class parks and playgrounds than at any time in the last 35 years."

Originally published on June 22, 2005

All contents © 2005 Daily News, L.P.

krulltime

June 22nd, 2005, 08:56 PM

I was just wondering... has anyone here been to University Woods Park? Is it really that bad? Anyone has any photos of the park? I will go there but now I am scared to go alone and take my camera there. :(

TonyO

June 28th, 2005, 12:20 PM

NY Times
June 28, 2005

Making the Brutal F.D.R. Unsentimentally Humane

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/arts/water.slide.1.jpg
Rendering of a renovated pier as conceived by the East River esplanade plan. Under the plan, a vibrant panorama would be created without losing the area's rough edges.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/arts/water.slide.3.jpg
Although it is still in the earliest stages of design, city officials hope to complete the project, which includes surrounding neighborhoods, within three to five years.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/arts/water.slide.2.jpg
For example, the plan proposes that an abandoned median strip running down Allen Street from the East Village to the foot of the Manhattan Bridge would be transformed into a narrow park.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/arts/water.slide.4.jpg
The city also plans to redesign the underside of the F.D.R. Drive to compliment the elaborate system of landscaped berms and shelters scattered along the two-mile waterfront.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/06/27/arts/water.slide.5.jpg
Image of proposed East River esplanade looking toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Few people reminisce longingly about the New York waterfront of the 1970's, with its decrepit piers, graffiti-covered warehouses and tetchy drag queens. But you can say this for it: it had a gritty integrity. The typical riverfront developments of today, with their traditional lampposts and quaint park benches, drip with nostalgia for a city that never was. They have all the charm of an open-air suburban mall.

The master plan for an East River esplanade, which was unveiled last month by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is a welcome reprieve from that New York cliché. Covering a two-mile stretch of waterfront from Battery Park to East River Park in Lower Manhattan, the project will transform a series of abandoned piers and derelict corners beneath the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive into a vibrant urban panorama without sacrificing the rough edges.

But the master plan is more than a blunt criticism of misplaced sentimentality. Even as it celebrates the city's underbelly, it weaves it into the surrounding neighborhoods with remarkable sensitivity. The plan shows how a series of small interventions, when thoughtfully conceived, can have a more meaningful impact on daily life than an unwieldy urban development scheme.

Although it is still in the earliest stages of design, city officials hope to complete the esplanade within three to five years. (The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has allotted $150 million toward the project, which has a relatively modest projected cost of $200 million.) Aspects of the plan still must be approved by a number of city, state and federal agencies.Commissioned by the city's Department of City Planning and the Economic Development Corporation, the design sprang from a collaboration among architectural generations: Gregg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects, based here, the Richard Rogers Partnership in London and the landscape architect Ken Smith. Mr. Rogers, the co-designer of the Pompidou Center (1977) in Paris, is best known for creating a high-tech Pop Art aesthetic whose roots lie in the progressive values of the 1960's. Mr. Pasquarelli, 40, who like many in his generation, is warier of Modernism's mission, is less a social rebel than an astute social observer.

Both find beauty in the large-scale public works projects that were a prominent feature of the 20th-century American landscape. Originally conceived in the late 1930's by Robert Moses, the city's imperious planner, the F.D.R. Drive - then called East River Drive - is usually considered an example of the brutal approach for which Moses later became infamous. It slices callously through the city, cutting a series of East Side neighborhoods off from the waterfront. The area underneath, which still sometimes reeks of rotting fish - a memory of the former fish markets - exudes a seedy noir spirit.

Mr. Pasquarelli and Mr. Rogers do not moralize about that past. Initially they considered lowering parts of the elevated freeway to ground level, but the cost was prohibitive. Eventually the team decided that the F.D.R.'s aggressive form could be used to imbue the site with energy. To that end, the crude steel I-beams that support the freeway would be clad in contoured metal or concrete panels. Bands of fluorescent light strips, vaguely reminiscent of a Dan Flavin light installation, extend along the freeway's underside, their arrangement echoing the cars flowing by above.

Such artistic touches would mesh well with an elaborate system of landscaped berms and shelters to be scattered along the two-mile waterfront. Planted with colorful shrubs and wild grasses, the berms rise right out of the pavement's surface. A series of glass pavilions would be scattered underneath the freeway; they may house restaurants, flower shops or some kind of public services.

Most of these architectural components are place markers; they have yet to be fully designed. Even so the idea is to create a seamless, contemplative environment along the waterfront that embraces both the fine-grained scale of the surrounding communities and the monumental scale of the freeway. In doing so, the architects shrug off the conflict between Modernists and historicists that absurdly still defines so many urban planning debates in New York.

That schism dates from the 1960's, when the activist Jane Jacobs challenged Moses' megalomaniacal plans, but it has little relevance today. For architects like Mr. Pasquarelli, the suburban promise embodied in Moses' freeway and park projects represent, for better or worse, a part of our collective memory. Their task, as they see it, is to salvage the corners of unexpected beauty from those childhood landscapes and give them new meaning. It is an approach that is far more relevant to contemporary life than Jacobs's - and every bit as humane. The outcome in the waterfront master plan is a project that craftily weaves together a remarkable range of scales. To offer relief from the uniformity of the esplanade, for example, the architects have suggested transforming a number of piers into more eco-friendly structures, sprinkled with public gardens. The surface of one of the piers peels up as it projects out toward the water, forming a viewing platform as well as allowing light to flow down to the water's surface.

Conceived as little oases, the piers relate to a grander, and still incomplete, vision: the plans for the greening of the waterfront across the river in Brooklyn and on Governors Island just to the south. Extending like fingers out into the river, they help weave these disparate vistas into a cohesive whole.

That same surgical approach is used to stitch the project into the surrounding communities. An abandoned median strip running down Allen Street from the East Village to the foot of the Manhattan Bridge would be transformed into a narrow park. Set diagonally to the bridge, it is gently sloped, so that it seems to accelerate as it approaches the waterfront, creating a wonderful forced perspective that pulls the neighborhood down toward the esplanade. Other interventions are more sedate: a sequence of reflecting pools along Peck Street are meant to conjure the street's past as a boat slip.

SHoP and Rogers have yet to sign a contract with the city to complete the final design. In theory, they could be dropped in favor of another architectural firm. But even at this early stage, the esplanade is one of the few current projects to give voice to a young generation of architects intent on redefining our vision of the contemporary Metropolis.

Along with the High Line - which transforms a section of gritty elevated tracks in downtown into a public garden - it represents a clear and much-needed break from the quaint Jane Jacobs-inspired vision of New York that is threatening to transform Manhattan into a theme park version of itself, a place virtually devoid of urban tension. It proves that there are still some in the city who are culturally daring, even if their numbers at times seem to be dwindling.

NewYorkYankee

June 28th, 2005, 08:02 PM

This is a great project, I look forward to it being implemented.

sfenn1117

June 28th, 2005, 10:34 PM

Sunset Park in Brooklyn was in the movie "The Honeymooners." Awesome park, terrible movie. There's awesome brownstones and rowhouses near the park too, and a MASSIVE pool. I think it holds 1500 people, built during the depression.

I'm always in Owls Head Park, it's just 2 blocks down on my street (68th). There's a new 9/11 memorial on the 69th street pier that's lit up every night between 9 and 11 PM. It's really nice.

Cannonball Park next to Ft Hamilton gives an amazing view of the Verrazanno.

Manhattan Beach Park is nice, a great beach.

Dyker Beach Park is alright. I hear the golf course is pretty good.

The Brooklyn Heights Promenade is amazing. Oh to live in a brownstone with a backyard on the promenade, but realistically..............

I love Battery Park City, it's nice and modern and the Winter Garden is awesome. I hope I can live there one day. Seriously. It is my dream neighborhood. By the time I'll be able to move in there, after college, the new World Trade Center will hopefully be built.

pianoman11686

July 7th, 2005, 12:52 AM

Parks Even the Parks Dept. Won't Claim

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Published: July 6, 2005

At University Woods, a city park high above the Harlem River in the Bronx, hypodermic needles, feces and used condoms littered the grounds on a recent day. Several large trees lay across the main pathway. Broken animal bones that some said bore traces of Santeria rituals were visible.

The 3.3-acre municipal park, whose grounds have long been a hideaway for drug users and prostitutes, was named the city's worst small park last month, for the third year in a row, by the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says city parks are in better condition now than they have been in nearly 40 years. He added, however, that a small percentage of the parkland the city owns - including University Woods - is not conducive to being actively maintained by gardeners, and that to do so would be "a waste of money."

"That park is not a park," Mr. Benepe said, referring to University Woods. "That park is a vestigial landscape on the side of a hill. It has a series of paths that lead nowhere. It's a cliff side. It will never be a park." He added, "Just because something is in our inventory doesn't mean it's worth taking care of."

New York City has acquired almost 300 acres of parkland since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002. But critics say that the city started neglecting some existing parks - most in poor neighborhoods - long before Mr. Bloomberg named Mr. Benepe parks commissioner shortly after taking office.

Mr. Benepe bristles at the suggestion that the Parks Department favors certain areas of the city over others. "The reality is that across the city in every neighborhood, the parks are better," he said. And while he says there is no formal two-tier system when it comes to maintaining city parks, he acknowledges that some are better cared for than others.

Just how many of the city's 1,700 public parks, playgrounds and recreation facilities are not actively maintained is not clear, but Mr. Benepe said that a limited number of city parks would "never be great parks" because they are on land unsuitable to be developed as parkland, or because they are in neighborhoods that are no longer significantly residential.

There is no list, no formal process leading to a park being written off. But it is clear that some parks, over a period of decades, have simply fallen out of favor with the Parks Department, which says that every park is supposed to be cleaned at least once a day.

The department, which decides how often horticulturists visit each park and what capital projects to pursue, has seen its operating budget increase to $201 million in fiscal 2005 from $152 million in fiscal 1997, and the department's capital budget in the current fiscal year alone is $850 million, up from $550 million last year. Much of that amount will be spent on developing recently acquired parkland and on parks along the waterfront, according to Parks Department figures.

Despite their unkempt pockets, some parks, like Aqueduct Walk Park in the Bronx, are heavily used. Many others, however, are similar to University Woods, and attract few visitors. Large swaths of Highbridge and Fort Washington Parks in Upper Manhattan, Soundview, Ferry Point and Pelham Bay Parks in the Bronx, Highland Park on the Brooklyn-Queens border and Idlewild Park in Queens, among others, have been designated natural areas by the Parks Department, to preserve wetlands and other natural habitats. Such areas require less rigorous maintenance than others. Some of these are now impassable for all but the most determined parkgoer due to overgrown trails, poison ivy, homeless encampments and garbage. Abandoned cars and boats have been left in some of the parks.

What these parks have in common is that they rely almost exclusively on city money, while the city's best-maintained parks - Central Park, Bryant Park and Prospect Park among them - are managed in part by private conservancies that raise money and hire workers independent of the Parks Department. The neglected parks also lack the community support and involvement present in the neighborhoods around the city's most successful green spaces.

"It is completely outrageous that poor communities are given this type of service when other parks are given adequate service," said Geoffrey M. Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates. "Having prostitutes and drug users fill a park when a community needs parks, goes against everything government is supposed to do in terms of providing services and protecting people."

The Police Department, not the Parks Department, is responsible for tackling serious crime in city parks. But Mr. Croft said that unmaintained areas provided a natural shelter for criminals.

Mr. Benepe said that any problems that exist are isolated, and that the department has a rigorous inspection process. "This is a big system and you can't address every little problem," he said. Mr. Benepe said a lack of resources was not an issue either. "The challenge is how to spend all the money we've been given," he said.

In all, the Parks Department's 28,800 acres take up about 14 percent of the total land mass in the city's five boroughs. About 12,000 acres of parkland have been designated natural areas, though some, like Central Park's Ramble, are well maintained and free of the trash and invasive species that plague the natural areas of other parks.

University Woods, for instance, has failed the Park Department's own cleanliness and general condition inspections for the past three years, and if its current circumstances are any indication, it has little hope of ever being a haven for anyone seeking a respite from city life. The last capital project in the park - which involved repairing fences and walkways that are again in disrepair - took place in 1997.

On a recent weekend in University Woods, in University Heights, a man and woman were seen having sex against a tree. Encampments for homeless people were scattered in the underbrush. Several areas had been littered with hypodermic needles, used condoms, needle cleaning kits and wrappers for "Savage" and "TKO" brands of heroin. And piles of feces could be seen on staircases.

The only evidence of the park's benches were rivet holes in the ground. There were no garbage cans, lights, restrooms or staff workers. Visitors have reported seeing a dead goat and the skulls of various animals, apparently after they had been sacrificed.

Julio Calderon, 31, who was walking a large pit bull outside the park, said he never stepped inside University Woods, though he lives nearby. "The park is dangerous," Mr. Calderon said in Spanish. "People who are in there do things I don't want to see."

The parks commissioner said he would like to trade University Woods to a developer for more suitable park property, or to fence it off. "You have to be pragmatic about these things," Mr. Benepe said.

The Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carríon Jr., agreed but called the park's current neglect a "disgrace."

"University Woods cannot continue to be what it is," he said.

Not far away, in Highbridge Park, which stretches for two miles across Upper Manhattan, the scene was even more grim on a recent weekend. Huge sections of the 119-acre park set aside as natural areas have been taken over by homeless people who have built permanent shacks made of sheet metal and steel pipes driven into the earth. One of the park's residents is a heroin addict and prostitute who would give her name only as Joanne. Her makeshift house has a bed and a nightstand. She said she had lived there for 13 years. Men smoked crack cocaine a few feet from where a youth baseball game was being played.

Kelvin, who would not provide a surname, lives in the park underneath a Harlem River Drive entrance ramp. He lifted his shirt to show his heavily bandaged chest, where he said he had been stabbed the week before. He tapped a Bible on his nightstand, which lay atop some pornographic magazines. "I almost died," he said in Spanish. "God was with me." On a concrete wall, someone has scrawled graffiti: "This might be the only place where New York is still New York."

Mr. Benepe said that while Highbridge Park is "much better than it was 10 years ago," it had been ruined decades ago when freeway ramps were built across it.

Mr. Benepe, who expressed both skepticism and surprise at the park's condition when told about it, said the city's plan was: "Let nature take its course." "Trees are growing, insects are buzzing, oxygen is being produced, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said.

Mr. Croft, the parks advocacy group president, said, "Having prostitutes, drug dealers and drug users in parks is not going back to nature."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

NY_Yankees_1979

July 8th, 2005, 02:43 AM

I like the views from Sunset Park in Brooklyn the best. But my favorite park in the city is Joyce Kilmer Park in the Bronx.

ZippyTheChimp

July 8th, 2005, 08:26 AM

Sunset Park (http://www.pbase.com/zippythechimp/sunset_park)

Joyce Kilmer Park
http://www.pbase.com/zippythechimp/image/20410749
http://www.pbase.com/zippythechimp/image/20411056

BrooklynRider

July 8th, 2005, 10:39 AM

The Bosque at Battery Park has been very nicely renovated. Some sections are open. The night lighting is very pretty. The fountain area is still roped off and the carousel is yet to come.

NY_Yankees_1979

July 8th, 2005, 04:42 PM

The pic from Sunset Park of the Manhattan skyline is my favorite. I go to a lot of Yankees games during the season and stop by Joyce Kilmer Park on my 16 block hike to the stadium.

Schadenfrau

July 8th, 2005, 04:46 PM

Have you been to Franz Sigel Park? It's just a few blocks south and is actually much nicer.

NY_Yankees_1979

July 8th, 2005, 04:51 PM

Have you been to Franz Sigel Park? It's just a few blocks south and is actually much nicer. Yeah I've been there too, it's a nice park and much bigger than Joyce Kilmer. I like sitting in Joyce Kilmer before Yankees games.

NY_Yankees_1979

July 8th, 2005, 04:55 PM

Another Bronx park that I like is St. Mary's Park (which is about 12 blocks due south of where I live).

bohemian rhapsody

July 10th, 2005, 05:36 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/nyregion/06parks.html

July 6, 2005
Parks Even the Parks Dept. Won't Claim

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TIMOTHY WILLIAMS&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TIMOTHY WILLIAMS&inline=nyt-per)
At University Woods, a city park high above the Harlem River in the Bronx, hypodermic needles, feces and used condoms littered the grounds on a recent day. Several large trees lay across the main pathway. Broken animal bones that some said bore traces of Santeria rituals were visible.

The 3.3-acre municipal park, whose grounds have long been a hideaway for drug users and prostitutes, was named the city's worst small park last month, for the third year in a row, by the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says city parks are in better condition now than they have been in nearly 40 years. He added, however, that a small percentage of the parkland the city owns - including University Woods - is not conducive to being actively maintained by gardeners, and that to do so would be "a waste of money."

"That park is not a park," Mr. Benepe said, referring to University Woods. "That park is a vestigial landscape on the side of a hill. It has a series of paths that lead nowhere. It's a cliff side. It will never be a park." He added, "Just because something is in our inventory doesn't mean it's worth taking care of."

New York City has acquired almost 300 acres of parkland since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002. But critics say that the city started neglecting some existing parks - most in poor neighborhoods - long before Mr. Bloomberg named Mr. Benepe parks commissioner shortly after taking office.

Mr. Benepe bristles at the suggestion that the Parks Department favors certain areas of the city over others. "The reality is that across the city in every neighborhood, the parks are better," he said. And while he says there is no formal two-tier system when it comes to maintaining city parks, he acknowledges that some are better cared for than others.

Just how many of the city's 1,700 public parks, playgrounds and recreation facilities are not actively maintained is not clear, but Mr. Benepe said that a limited number of city parks would "never be great parks" because they are on land unsuitable to be developed as parkland, or because they are in neighborhoods that are no longer significantly residential.

There is no list, no formal process leading to a park being written off. But it is clear that some parks, over a period of decades, have simply fallen out of favor with the Parks Department, which says that every park is supposed to be cleaned at least once a day.

The department, which decides how often horticulturists visit each park and what capital projects to pursue, has seen its operating budget increase to $201 million in fiscal 2005 from $152 million in fiscal 1997, and the department's capital budget in the current fiscal year alone is $850 million, up from $550 million last year. Much of that amount will be spent on developing recently acquired parkland and on parks along the waterfront, according to Parks Department figures.

Despite their unkempt pockets, some parks, like Aqueduct Walk Park in the Bronx, are heavily used. Many others, however, are similar to University Woods, and attract few visitors. Large swaths of Highbridge and Fort Washington Parks in Upper Manhattan, Soundview, Ferry Point and Pelham Bay Parks in the Bronx, Highland Park on the Brooklyn-Queens border and Idlewild Park in Queens, among others, have been designated natural areas by the Parks Department, to preserve wetlands and other natural habitats. Such areas require less rigorous maintenance than others. Some of these are now impassable for all but the most determined parkgoer due to overgrown trails, poison ivy, homeless encampments and garbage. Abandoned cars and boats have been left in some of the parks.

What these parks have in common is that they rely almost exclusively on city money, while the city's best-maintained parks - Central Park, Bryant Park and Prospect Park among them - are managed in part by private conservancies that raise money and hire workers independent of the Parks Department. The neglected parks also lack the community support and involvement present in the neighborhoods around the city's most successful green spaces.

"It is completely outrageous that poor communities are given this type of service when other parks are given adequate service," said Geoffrey M. Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates. "Having prostitutes and drug users fill a park when a community needs parks, goes against everything government is supposed to do in terms of providing services and protecting people."

The Police Department, not the Parks Department, is responsible for tackling serious crime in city parks. But Mr. Croft said that unmaintained areas provided a natural shelter for criminals.

Mr. Benepe said that any problems that exist are isolated, and that the department has a rigorous inspection process. "This is a big system and you can't address every little problem," he said. Mr. Benepe said a lack of resources was not an issue either. "The challenge is how to spend all the money we've been given," he said.

In all, the Parks Department's 28,800 acres take up about 14 percent of the total land mass in the city's five boroughs. About 12,000 acres of parkland have been designated natural areas, though some, like Central Park's Ramble, are well maintained and free of the trash and invasive species that plague the natural areas of other parks.

University Woods, for instance, has failed the Park Department's own cleanliness and general condition inspections for the past three years, and if its current circumstances are any indication, it has little hope of ever being a haven for anyone seeking a respite from city life. The last capital project in the park - which involved repairing fences and walkways that are again in disrepair - took place in 1997.

On a recent weekend in University Woods, in University Heights, a man and woman were seen having sex against a tree. Encampments for homeless people were scattered in the underbrush. Several areas had been littered with hypodermic needles, used condoms, needle cleaning kits and wrappers for "Savage" and "TKO" brands of heroin. And piles of feces could be seen on staircases.

The only evidence of the park's benches were rivet holes in the ground. There were no garbage cans, lights, restrooms or staff workers. Visitors have reported seeing a dead goat and the skulls of various animals, apparently after they had been sacrificed.

Julio Calderon, 31, who was walking a large pit bull outside the park, said he never stepped inside University Woods, though he lives nearby. "The park is dangerous," Mr. Calderon said in Spanish. "People who are in there do things I don't want to see."

The parks commissioner said he would like to trade University Woods to a developer for more suitable park property, or to fence it off. "You have to be pragmatic about these things," Mr. Benepe said.

The Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carríon Jr., agreed but called the park's current neglect a "disgrace."

"University Woods cannot continue to be what it is," he said.

Not far away, in Highbridge Park, which stretches for two miles across Upper Manhattan, the scene was even more grim on a recent weekend. Huge sections of the 119-acre park set aside as natural areas have been taken over by homeless people who have built permanent shacks made of sheet metal and steel pipes driven into the earth. One of the park's residents is a heroin addict and prostitute who would give her name only as Joanne. Her makeshift house has a bed and a nightstand. She said she had lived there for 13 years. Men smoked crack cocaine a few feet from where a youth baseball game was being played.

Kelvin, who would not provide a surname, lives in the park underneath a Harlem River Drive entrance ramp. He lifted his shirt to show his heavily bandaged chest, where he said he had been stabbed the week before. He tapped a Bible on his nightstand, which lay atop some pornographic magazines. "I almost died," he said in Spanish. "God was with me." On a concrete wall, someone has scrawled graffiti: "This might be the only place where New York is still New York."

Mr. Benepe said that while Highbridge Park is "much better than it was 10 years ago," it had been ruined decades ago when freeway ramps were built across it.

Mr. Benepe, who expressed both skepticism and surprise at the park's condition when told about it, said the city's plan was: "Let nature take its course." "Trees are growing, insects are buzzing, oxygen is being produced, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said.

Mr. Croft, the parks advocacy group president, said, "Having prostitutes, drug dealers and drug users in parks is not going back to nature."

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

bohemian rhapsody

July 10th, 2005, 05:40 AM

I think it is insane that in this day and age, a New York City park can be let go like that... permanent shacks?! People who have lived there for over a decade? wow.

I just realized that perhaps I should have started a new thread for this, rather than muddying up a nice discussion of New York's very pleasant parks.

My apologies...

ZippyTheChimp

July 10th, 2005, 06:38 AM

Actually, it's in the right place.

lofter1

July 22nd, 2005, 10:02 AM

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_115/tribecashudsonpark.html

Tribeca’s Hudson Park construction to begin this fall

By Ellen Keohane

Demolition of Piers 25 and 26 along the Tribeca segment of Hudson River Park could be begin this fall with reconstruction of Pier 25 starting in May, followed by Pier 26 next summer, Hudson River Park Trust president Connie Fishman said Monday.

Work on the Tribeca section of the park can finally move forward now that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has granted the Hudson River Park Trust $70 million in post-9/11 funds for the project. However, it will probably take four to six months of paperwork before the Trust actually receives the money, Fishman said at a Community Board 1 Waterfront Committee meeting July 18. And the entire process may take more than three years, she said.

The $70 million will be able to fund most of the Trust’s plans for the Tribeca segment of the park, but Fishman said she was confident that they will be able to get whatever additional money that might be needed.

Some of that money could come from the Water Resources Development Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives on July 14. The proposed legislation, which still needs to be approved by the Senate, includes an authorization for $5 million in funding for the Hudson River Park.

It’s up to the Army Corps of Engineers and the Hudson River Park Trust to determine exactly what the money can be used for, said Reid Cherlin, press secretary for U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who pushed for the legislation. One possible use is a proposed bird sanctuary — “eco-pier” near Canal St. The sanctuary at the Pier 32 site would be visible from the land.

At Monday night’s committee meeting, Fishman and landscape architect Andrew Lavallee presented the newest version of the plan for the Tribeca segment of the park. Fishman called the new design “60 to 100 percent final.” It will involve rebuilding and extending Piers 25 and 26, which are currently deteriorating.

The Tribeca-based landscape architecture film, Mathews Nielson, took over the project from the Boston and San Francisco-based firm Sasaki Associates, Inc. For financial reasons, it makes more sense to work with a local firm, Fishman said.

“After living in Tribeca for 30 years and working on the master plan for the park from 1993-1997, it is a great pleasure to build a part of the park now,” Signe Nielsen, a principal of the Mathews Nielson firm, said in a telephone interview. Nielsen’s firm designed Duane Park in Tribeca as well as the landscaping adjacent to the Hudson River Park along Route 9A.

The design presented on Monday night included a few changes from what C.B. 1 committee members had seen before. More trees, for example, were added to the design based on public feedback requesting more shade, Fishman said.

The trapeze school and batting cages are not part of the new design. The trapeze school will have to move, as commercial venues are not allowed on the park’s premises, Fishman said. It may be relocated to Pier 40.

The Trust owns the batting cages, but Chris Martin, the Trust’s spokesperson, said he did not know of any plans to place them anywhere else in the park.

The cages are not well used and Mark Costello, vice president of the Downtown Little League, said although they do get some use by the league, they don’t open until the end of the season, they’re too expensive, and the pitches are too fast for many players.

Several Tribeca residents who attended the committee meeting expressed their collective concern that the “beloved” community feel of Pier 25 will be lost when it is rebuilt.

“There was always a desire to retain an informality and a spontaneity on Pier 25,” said Nielson in a phone interview following Monday’s meeting. “We’re going to take that very seriously and apply ourselves to achieve that. I plan to go there this weekend and just hang out and absorb it all.”

Pier 25 will retain many of its current amenities, including a playground, a mini golf course with nine holes and three practice tees, a snack bar and a landing for water taxis. The pier will also have an artificial turf, multipurpose playing field and three sand volleyball courts, said Lavallee, while pointing to a scale drawing of the current park design at Monday’s meeting.

The plans for Pier 26, in contrast, are still largely undetermined, said Fishman. The Trust is still waiting for the design of the marine life center, which needs to be moved further down the pier to allow for vessel access to the facility. A boathouse with a floating pier for kayaks will also be located on Pier 26. The River Project and the Downtown Boathouse, the pier’s current tenants, are likely candidates to return to the pier.

The Tribeca segment of the park will also include a basketball court, various seating areas, a skate park, a 65 by 120 foot dog run, a 1,200 square foot dance floor, a restaurant and tennis courts—which have already been built. A building at North Moore St. will house public restrooms as well as skate concession and maintenance facilities. There will also be a mooring field for boats south of Pier 25.

BrooklynRider

July 22nd, 2005, 11:36 AM

....a restaurant and tennis courts—which have already been built...

What restaurant was built? I haven't seen it. Is that hamburger shack a "restaurant"?

NYatKNIGHT

July 22nd, 2005, 12:45 PM

I think they mean just the tennis courts have already been built. The restaurant, dance floor and etc are to come.

Too bad the trapeze school has to move, it's a hit with spectators.

ablarc

August 1st, 2005, 01:05 AM

There was an Indian reservation in Inwood Hill Park as recently as the 1930's, when it had a population of about 300. Does anyone know why the Indians moved out, and when?

ZippyTheChimp

August 12th, 2005, 09:06 AM

August 12, 2005
Heralded as Parks, but Looking More Like Dumps

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/12/nyregion/12park.xlarge1.jpg
At Pugsley Creek Park in the Bronx, some abandoned cars are prominent. Others are hidden in high weeds.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/12/nyregion/12parks.1.jpg
A padlocked fence surrounds a trash-strewn lot on Hoe Avenue in the Bronx.

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TIMOTHY WILLIAMS&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TIMOTHY WILLIAMS&inline=nyt-per)
A few months after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, the family of Dr. Ronald E. McNair, one of the seven astronauts killed, stood with Mayor Edward I. Koch in East Harlem to announce the construction of a new park in Dr. McNair's honor.

There were refreshments, balloons and solemn words about how Dr. McNair, who grew up visiting his father's auto repair shop in East Harlem, would have treasured a tiny green oasis in the middle of the embattled neighborhood.

Nearly 20 years later, McNair Park is a trash-filled vacant lot. No trees have been planted, no swings have been put up and no one seeks respite among the weeds and garbage there.

McNair Park is just one of dozens of undeveloped plots of land that have been dedicated as public parks across the city, often with great fanfare, but then never actually developed. Every year, the city buys plots of land from developers, or takes over unused municipal plots, intending to create parks.

But in scores of cases, nothing happens. Many of the undeveloped plots, which are often in densely populated, poor communities with limited green spaces, exist as de facto garbage dumps and occasional crime scenes.

Indeed, land that was once maintained by private developers can become worse after the Parks Department takes it over, advocates for parkland say, because the city fails to take care of it, and it becomes littered with abandoned cars, hypodermic needles and the occasional discarded stove.

Rafael Lebron, 34, who lives across the street from undeveloped parkland in the Clason Point section of the Bronx, said it was little more than a wasteland. Twice, he said, rats from the park have nested in the engine well of his car and chewed through electrical wires, costing him $2,000 in repairs.

At dusk, he says, he calls his three children inside because of wandering rats. "We don't know what's inside the park, but we know what's coming out," he said. The history of New York City is littered with broken municipal promises and deferred plans. Every mayoral administration proposes plans for new streetscapes, retail hubs and apartment complexes that never come to fruition, and dreams about stadiums that never rise.

But the failure of the city to develop its promised parks - a problem that predates the Bloomberg administration - is particularly galling to residents of neighborhoods with few green patches, particularly as asthma and obesity rates continue to rise among their children.

"These are communities that are desperate for parks and open space, and this is what they get," said Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Parks Advocates. "Parks are supposed to be a asset to a community, not a liability."

Parks Department officials said parks had not been developed for various reasons, including lack of money and insufficient community support. Often the parcels of land are bought by the city with no concrete plans for a park, in anticipation of future opportunities.

"The city continually grows and changes in ways we can't immediately respond to," said Liam Kavanagh, the Parks Department's first deputy commissioner. "Sometimes it takes us years to put together the money and the support from the community, but usually it is worth the wait."

But often, grand plans are foiled by money problems. At McNair Park, for instance, the city planned a space-themed park honoring the astronaut's life but then dropped the plan in the late 1980's, a time of budget cuts in the Parks Department, Mr. Kavanagh said.

Several attempts to jump-start the project have since failed, but Mr. Kavanagh said the department hoped to start work on the park by the end of the year.

Ronald McNair's brother, Carl McNair Jr., said in a telephone interview from Atlanta that he had no idea the park had never been completed. "I was under the impression that they were building a park," he said. "We're getting near 20 years. I'm surprised it's not there." (There is a monument to Dr. McNair in a Brooklyn park.)

The Bloomberg administration has made acquiring new parkland a priority. Since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office in 2002, the city has added nearly 300 acres, much of it along the city's waterfront. Almost every day, the parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, opens a new playground, and the city's capital budget for parks has almost tripled on Mr. Bloomberg's watch.

But plenty of plots await the shovels. Some are small, like a pack of unnamed parcels in the Rockaways, vacant for decades. Some are larger and overcome by weeds, like Rocks and Roots Park in the South Bronx, Railroad Park in Queens and Clove's Tail Park on Staten Island. Others, like the 78-acre Pugsley Creek Park in the Bronx - a park in name only, it seems - are neighborhood blights.

On a recent weekday afternoon at Pugsley Creek Park, which sits along the East River near the end of Soundview Avenue, wild pheasants and rabbits were in evidence. But there were also at least 18 abandoned cars and two abandoned boats.

The Parks Department said it planned to build a small playground and restore a small salt marsh there. But there were no plans to conduct a basic cleaning or weed cutting until officials were told that the park had become a dumping ground for boats, cars, washing machines and construction material. Invasive species like mugwort and Japanese knot weed have grown as tall as 14 feet in some places, making the park virtually impassible.

Henry J. Stern, who ran the department as parks commissioner for 15 years, said that parks filled with wrecked cars and other debris attracted criminal activity.

"You can't let it get to that point," said Mr. Stern, who left the department in 2001. "It takes a long time to dump a car in there, but when people see one, before long, you have many cars dumped there."

Many of the cars have been in the park since at least 1999, however - during Mr. Stern's tenure as commissioner - according to dates that have been written on the vehicles by Parks Department employees. Some are so badly rusted that they are hard to identify by make and model.

After being informed about the abandoned cars, the Parks Department began removing some vehicles, but officials said workers were unable to find others in the tall weeds.

The problems at Pugsley Creek Park are not new, according to a June 1998 Parks Department memo. While visiting the park to determine whether to build a bridge there, city workers could barely penetrate the park. "Due to overgrown mugwort, the group could not reach the area where this proposed bridge might be located," the memo reads. Instead of cutting the weeds, the Parks Department relied on aerial photographs. The bridge was never built.

Linda Mills, 49, who lives across the street from the park, said it would be nice for neighborhood children to have a safe place to "burn off a little energy."

"A lot of people have little kids with nothing to do," she said. "That's how they get in trouble."

At the ceremonial opening of another undeveloped park in June 1997, Vernam Barbadoes Preserve in Queens, Mr. Stern, who is known for his love of theatrics, dressed in a helmet and fatigues, a la Gen. George Patton, rode in on a boat and planted a Parks Department flag there, ceremonially claiming it as Parks Department property. Since then, according to a list of Parks Department projects, the 21-acre park has not received any work.

Former Mayor Koch, who presided over the October 1986 ceremony at McNair Park, said he did not understand why a proper park had not been built. "I can't explain the oversight and the failure to do it," he said. "It would behoove the city of New York to take immediate action."

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

NYatKNIGHT

August 15th, 2005, 04:16 PM

Beyond Lady Liberty

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

August 15, 2005

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/15/nyregion/burks.rang.184.1.650.jpg
The first commissioner of the National Parks of New York Harbor, Maria Burks, 53, near her office at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, oversees 26,000 acres in 22 parks in New York City and northern New Jersey.

Maria Burks has proved she can corral unruly hordes of nature lovers on Cape Cod. For her next trick, she will try to herd history buffs onto boats in New York Harbor.

Ms. Burks is the first commissioner of the National Parks of New York Harbor, and her mission is to draw attention to the parks and beaches beyond the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. She wants people spotting herons in Jamaica Bay, spiraling up the nation's oldest lighthouse at Sandy Hook, N.J., and climbing around the cannons of Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. The solution to getting them there, she believes, is ferries.
"These parks have been, in the past, divided by the water," said Ms. Burks, sitting outside her office at Fort Wadsworth. "We're saying now we're going to connect them by the water."

After nine years as the superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, Ms. Burks, 53, now oversees the largest collection of land on New York Harbor - 26,000 acres in 22 national parks spread around New York City and northern New Jersey. Along with Liberty, Ellis and part of Governors Islands, as well as some landlocked historic sites like the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt, the park service owns Gateway National Recreation Area, which stretches from the Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge to Sandy Hook.

Ms. Burks's ferry dreams were stoked in October when New York Water Taxi began the first harbor tours sanctioned by the National Park Service. Then, last month Congress included $5 million in the federal transportation bill for ferry docks and other improvements on Governors Island and at Sandy Hook.

Next, Ms. Burks hopes to pry some money from New York State's ferryboat fund to create new landings at Fort Wadsworth and at Jacob Riis Park in Rockaway, Queens. But before docks can be built and boats leased, there is the rather large task of building awareness.

Practically everyone who visits New York knows about the Statue of Liberty, and many are also aware of Ellis Island. About three million people are expected to visit Liberty and Ellis Islands this year, the most since before 9/11, Ms. Burks said. The challenge is drawing people to places like Fort Wadsworth, where there was not a single visitor in sight on a recent sunny afternoon.

Ms. Burks's appointment came after a trial run as acting commissioner that lasted more than a year. The parks she supervises employ 650 people and have a combined annual budget of $52 million. Still, the scope of the operation is not reflected in her trappings. Her office is tiny, with just enough room for a desk and two armless steel chairs, tucked in the corner of a larger suite above the fort's bookstore, a beer bottle's throw from the upper span of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. On a sweltering midsummer day, Ms. Burks is decked out in her drab-green Class A dress uniform, complete with stiff-brim hat, which she wears on formal occasions. She calls the uniform a tool that can help in certain situations but can stiffen up people in others. "It's an honor to wear, but it's not always fun and it's not always comfortable," she said.

She rarely wore it during her years at the Cape Cod National Seashore. On the Cape, where Ms. Burks still owns a home, she had to navigate the shoals between the claims of the New England traditionalists and the demands of the sun-worshiping masses. She negotiated with local leaders over everything from water rights to driving on the beaches to public nudity in Provincetown.

"On Cape Cod, we had some very troubled relationships with our local communities," Ms. Burks said. In most of the cases, she said referring to the uniform, "I felt it wasn't helpful to look different from everyone else."

Brenda J. Boleyn, a longtime member of the National Seashore's advisory commission, said that Ms. Burks melted some of the opposition to the park service's way of doing things by being "very open and candid" in discussing their differences.

"She's one of the most remarkable administrators I have ever known," she said. "She can create consensus for what she wants to accomplish." But, Ms. Boleyn added, "she would never back down on the regulations of the National Park Service."

This steadfast defender of the realm fell into the job almost by chance 30 years ago. After receiving an undergraduate degree in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, Ms. Burks took the advice of her father, a history professor, and applied for work with the park service. "It was that or substitute teaching," she said.

She landed a 90-day gig leading tours of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and, she recalled, fell in love.

"I loved the buildings and the sense of understanding something and being able to explain it so that others could appreciate it," she said. "One of the best things about this job is you never know what the day is going to bring."

Some of those early days were quite heady. When Queen Elizabeth was visiting Philadelphia during the nation's bicentennial celebration in 1976, the park service did not want to buy gloves for all of its female employees who would be shaking hands with the queen, Ms. Burks recalled. So she was assigned to peel gloves off those who had greeted the queen and rush them to others farther along the receiving line.

On the night the Liberty Bell was being moved, at the stroke of midnight, to a new pavilion across the street, Ms. Burks's role was to hide out of view of the throng of onlookers and cue the action by whispering into a two-way radio, "Move the bell."

Since then, Ms. Burks has held almost every type of job in the park service that does not require a sidearm. Raised as a Quaker, she said, she was never attracted to the law enforcement aspects of the service and never sought a commission to carry a gun.

These days, she is likely to tote a briefcase and a calculator, as she tries to arrange partnerships with companies that can handle the business end of transporting and accommodating visitors. But that approach is fraught with resistance.

Already, the park service is tangled in litigation with a group called Friends of Sandy Hook over plans to lease dilapidated buildings at Fort Hancock to a development company that wants to turn them into offices and, possibly, a bed-and-breakfast. Representative Frank Pallone Jr., a Democrat from Long Branch, N.J., has tried to stop the project, calling it inconsistent with the park service's mission.

The going has been smoother on the water. Tom Fox, the president of New York Water Taxi and a onetime ranger at Sandy Hook, said he was impressed by how quickly Ms. Burks helped pull together the groups involved in the harbor tour. Launched from the South Street Seaport, it circles counterclockwise past the Statue of Liberty and around Governors Island, showing off the forts and batteries that protected the harbor from naval invaders.

The tour is a production of the two-year-old National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy, a nonprofit group, because the park service is prohibited from operating business ventures of its own. Mr. Fox, whose company provides the boats and pilots, and sells the $12 tickets, said it was drawing about 10,000 riders a month this summer.

"She gets everybody working as a team," he said. "That's the kind of thing the National Park Service here really needed."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/15/nyregion/20050815.burks.graphic.gif

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/15/nyregion/burks.lib.184.1.650.jpg
Students from John Muir Middle School in San Jose, Calif., visiting the Statue of Liberty last year.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/08/15/nyregion/burks.184.1.650.birds.jpg
The commissioner hopes to get a boat landing built at Jacob Riis Park, above, in Rockaway, Queens.

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

RedNucleus

August 16th, 2005, 04:18 PM

just wondering ... has the small, triangular "Canal Park" at the western end of Canal St reopened yet ?

http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/lmr/images/canal.pdf

Also, what is the - rather odd looking - building seen in the back in the picture on

http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_110/treesgrowoncanal.html

TLOZ Link5

August 16th, 2005, 04:36 PM

The building in the rear of the picture is a ventilation tower for the Holland Tunnel. There's another of the same design at the end of the pier on the other side of West Street, and at least one more on the other side of the river in Jersey City.

NYatKNIGHT

August 16th, 2005, 06:18 PM

And yes, Canal Park is now open.

http://www.pbase.com/image/47794926.jpg

krulltime

August 16th, 2005, 06:52 PM

And yes, Canal Park is now open.

http://www.pbase.com/image/47794926.jpg

^ Oh nice... I have to go see it!

Now whats that I see... Oh man! Child's Graffiti already!

TonyO

August 23rd, 2005, 08:18 PM

The Real Deal

City to start building second biggest park

August 22, 3:11 pm
The city has taken its first step toward building the city's second largest park, The Real Deal has learned. Plans for a $6 million, 28-acre park, dubbed Owl Hollow Fields, were announced Monday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. They mark the initial step toward developing a 2,200-acre, $100 million park over the former Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. Fresh Kills Park will be second only to the Bronx's Pelham Bay Park in area, and nearly two and a half times the size of Central Park. Construction on the Owl Hollow Fields site will begin in the spring of 2006 and be completed in the fall of 2007.

Ninjahedge

August 24th, 2005, 09:49 AM

New York City paaaaarks,
New York City paaaaarks,
New York City paaaaarks....They ain't to briiiight.

;)

BigMac

October 21st, 2005, 01:32 PM

New York Times
October 21, 2005

An Oasis Beckons in a Spot Once Used by Trash Trucks

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

http://www.gothamist.com/attachments/Jen%20Chung/2005_10_canalpakdrawing.jpg
(Gothamist)

http://www.gothamist.com/attachments/Jen%20Chung/2005_10_canalpark.jpg
(Gothamist)

The idea of seeking solace in the middle of the usual traffic mess outside the Holland Tunnel may seem perverse, but an arrow-shaped sliver of land on the Manhattan side, once used as a parking lot for garbage trucks, will be dedicated today as the city's newest park.

The park, at the corner of Canal and West Streets in TriBeCa, has actually been a public space of some sort since King James II of England ceded the parcel to the city in 1686, one year after his coronation. After many incarnations - public square, public market, a viewing garden - the space was designated a park in 1870 and redesigned in 1888 by Calvert Vaux, a designer of Central Park, and Samuel Parsons Jr.

The latest version of the park, called Canal Park, borrows elements from the 19th century design, which shunned straight lines. These features include Mr. Vaux's S-curved central walkway, an ornate black wrought-iron fence and lush green plantings.

"This is great because it is one of the city's oldest parks, and it had disappeared for virtually a century," said Adrian Benepe, the city parks commissioner. "You don't often get a chance to get back a park."

The dedication of the park, which has been open to the public for about two months, includes a concert tonight featuring Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson.

The revival of one of the city's oldest parks is the story of ghosts, a fight over widening Canal Street and a group of neighbors who by virtue of thousands of hours of research pushed the city and state governments to relent to their demands.

The leaders of the effort to re-establish the lost park, Carole De Saram, Richard Barrett and Jana Haimsohn, were members of local community organizations who met while opposing the Canal Street plan and bonded over the idea of restoring Canal Park.

All the while during their efforts, they wondered about the strange little asphalt triangle where garbage trucks parked for as long as they could remember.

Ms. De Saram said the group came to believe that a ghost was trying to get their attention. "Every time I walked by, there was always a presence there, something you knew that was there," she said.

Eventually, Mr. Barrett found several old maps showing that the triangle had once been a park. But when he and his two allies brought their discovery to the city, they were told that without a deed they had no legal proof that the plot had been a park.

So Ms. Haimsohn scoured numerous libraries for evidence, sorting through reams of city government microfilm. One day, while she was trying to operate a stubborn microfilm reading machine at the Science, Industry and Business Library of the New York Public Library, microfilm started wildly spewing out. Then the machine suddenly stopped.

When Ms. Haimsohn looked at the screen, it showed exactly what she had been searching for: the 1870 dedication of Canal Park, when it was called St. John's Square.

The group swears it was the ghost that led them to their discovery.

In 1921, the city lent the triangle to the agency that was building the Holland Tunnel. The parcel was to be returned to the Parks Department after four years. It never was. Instead, it was turned over to Julius Miller, then the Manhattan borough president. Eventually, the Sanitation Department began storing trucks there.

After several fruitless meetings with state and city agencies, Ms. De Saram, Mr. Barrett and Ms. Haimsohn sued the federal, state and city governments, contending that removal of the park had been illegal because no one had obtained the State Legislature's approval, which is required for converting parkland to other uses.

The opposing sides reached a settlement in which the state agreed to pay the $2.7 million cost of restoring the park to its past glory. The park's size has also been doubled to about two-thirds of an acre.

Mr. Barrett said he is confident that Canal Park will be well used, even though it is so close to the Holland Tunnel. "It's a funny area, and there is definitely rush-hour congestion," he said.

Mr. Benepe said: "But people will come. You'd be surprised how a piece of greenery can be a sort of psychic oasis despite traffic rushing around you."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

nycbound

November 6th, 2005, 02:45 PM

Are pets allowed at all parks in the city or are there restrictions?

ZippyTheChimp

January 12th, 2006, 09:39 AM

Brooklyn’s Salt Marsh Center Is January’s ‘Park of the Month’

MARINE PARK — Brooklyn’s Salt Marsh Nature Center in Marine Park hosts some of the Parks Department’s most innovative community outreach programs. For the unparalleled beauty of its surroundings in Marine Park and for its work with high school interns and after-school programming, the Salt Marsh Nature Center has been chosen as January’s Park of the Month.

“The Salt Marsh Nature Center has taken great steps to introduce Brooklynites to the nearly 800 acres of precious marshland in Marine Park,” said Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Julius Spiegel. “From the Ranger Conservation Corps to its new Afterschool program, it has become an important center for youth environmental education in Brooklyn.”

The Ranger Conservation Corps, an urban environmental internship for high school students, was started in 2001. Since then, scores of students have participated, many of them returning year after to year. Participants get school credit for their involvement and often find mentors in the Urban Park Rangers who run the center. The Rangers Corps takes part in wildlife management, creates interpretive displays, performs trail maintenance, and gets preference when applying for Parks Conservation Corps, a paid summer internship opportunity.

This past fall, the Corps created a Community Composting site at the Salt Marsh Nature Center. The Corps’ goal was to encourage community members to bring organic material to the nature center to be made into rich compost. So far, the Corps has collected nearly 300 pounds of leaves, food scraps, and grass cuttings from the community. The spring project for this group is an ongoing pollinator survey, which involves the planting of native wildflowers and incorporates the nature center’s indoor and outdoor beehives.

This fall, Parks also began its first after-school program based in a nature center. The Salt Marsh Nature Center Afterschool program is unique in its focus on an environmental curriculum. Geared towards students of middle school age, it accommodates 20 children and is held three days a week. Weather permitting, the group takes walks on the nature trail and will be doing trail restoration work in the spring. Given appropriate funding, this program will be expanded to all of the City’s nature centers. And, as with all after-school programs, it’s free.

The Salt Marsh Nature Center is located near the intersection of East 33rd Street and Avenue U in Brooklyn and is open daily, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. during the winter (closed on Wednesday).

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
Main Office 718 422 7400

ZippyTheChimp

April 25th, 2006, 09:37 AM

otham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/parks/20060425/14/1830

Parks Budget For 2007

by Anne Schwartz
25 Apr 2006

In recent years, the city’s parks have become greener and cleaner as a result of a substantial increase in capital spending for park renovation, as well as the growth of park groups that raise private funding for maintenance and provide volunteer labor. Many new parks, large and small, are in the works, including the High Line, Fresh Kills, and a new six-acre park on the Keyspan site in Queens.

At the same time, however, city allocations to maintain the parks and provide recreational programs, cut repeatedly over the last two decades, have not been restored. The parks department has made effective use of the resources it has, including temporary workers in various welfare-to-work programs funded by the Human Resources Agency. Its internal inspection ratings of park conditions are at an all-time high, according to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. But a comparison of the beautifully maintained plantings and trees, lush lawns, and green ball fields in privately funded Central Park with the scraggly grass, dirt fields, and trees in need of pruning in, say, Queensbridge Park, illustrates how more horticultural attention could improve many parks.

The city’s annual budget process works against any significant increase in funding to care for the parks. Typically, the mayor proposes a baseline that is lower than the previous year’s adopted budget, and the City Council adds back in most or all of the items that were cut. This keeps the focus on restoring programs instead of adding funding.

This year, the mayor’s preliminary budget eliminates $14 million for 600 seasonal park employees, the entire street tree pruning effort, and an after-school program at the recreation centers. It also cuts the one major new budget item from last year, the 50 new Park Enforcement Patrol officers added amid concern about crime in the parks, which had increased the force to 110. In early April, three of the newly hired PEP officers stopped an attempted rape in Forest Park in Queens.

“Saving lives shouldn’t be part of a budget dance,” said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, the citywide parks advocacy group. “I think that we should all just agree these are necessary programs and they should be funded. More energy should be put by the Council and the Mayor to improving park service with additional funds, particularly when there is a surplus.”

Park advocates are lobbying for the council to add $9 million to the parks budget to almost double the PEP force to 200 officers and to increase the frequency of tree pruning from the current ten-year cycle to the generally accepted standard of pruning each tree every seven years.

The additional funding would also include $3 million for expanding the Neighborhood Parks Initiative, a partnership of the parks department, the City Parks Foundation, and the Central Parks Conservancy inaugurated in 30 parks last year. The program assigns a full-time gardener and playground associate to outer-borough parks in need of better maintenance. The Central Park Conservancy helped train the new gardeners, the first to be hired by the parks department in years. One of the goals is to disseminate the practices that have improved Central Park so dramatically, including the zone management system that gives gardeners personal responsibility for a specific section of the park.

Drawing Revenue from the Parks

The parks department also raises about $60 million a year through concessions and various fees. The money goes into the general fund, not directly to parks, but it helps buffer the department from budget cuts.

For the next fiscal year, the city is proposing to bring in additional revenue by charging membership fees at the six recreation centers receiving federal Community Development Block Grant funding. These recreation centers had remained free in 2003 when the city began charging visitors to most centers. The fee is $50, or $75 for centers with pools. (Children up to age 18 can still use the centers for free, and there is a reduced senior fee.)

The new fees are projected to bring in $2 million. But that revenue goal may be unrealistic, according to the Independent Budget Office. Its recent analysis of center use and revenue after the fees were instituted found that attendance dropped at the centers charging the higher amount, while it increased at the free and less expensive centers.

The analysis suggests that once fees are imposed at the formerly free centers, fewer people -- especially from the lower income populations that are at higher risk of obesity and diabetes -- will use them. If charging for using park facilities ends up discouraging people from using them, it undermines the mission of the parks department as well as the larger public policy goal of improving the health of residents.

Commissioner Benepe takes issue with that conclusion, however. “What we have found is that when it’s free, lots of people join, but very few people actually come,” he said. “When people pay, they tend to use it more.” He noted that the fees were a fraction of a typical health club membership. He also said there was no difference in the socioeconomic status of people using the community development-funded centers and the others, so that it was more equitable to charge a fee at all centers.

The Independent Budget Office also looked at what happened when the parks department raised the price of a season’s tennis court pass from $50 to $100. Doubling the price led to a 40 percent drop in the number of passes sold, resulting in only a 16 percent increase in income, part of which came from higher sales of one-time use passes. The budget office found that tennis court usage “appeared to have dropped off significantly,” and concluded that a smaller price increase might have resulted in both greater total revenues and court use.

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

NYatKNIGHT

April 26th, 2006, 02:18 PM

Two small parks in my neighborhood have recently been ripped up and are presumably undergoing complete makeovers.

Father Demo Square - 6th Avenue @ Bleecker/Carmine:

http://www.pbase.com/image/59248183.jpg

Vesuvio or Thompson playground (?) - on Thompson and Sullivan Streets, between Prince and Spring Streets.

http://www.pbase.com/image/59248790.jpg

lofter1

April 26th, 2006, 04:46 PM

Father Demo Square was in long need of renovation. although the pigeons never seemed to mind.

Vesuvio Playground is the now-official name -- but no one seems to know what exctly is planned here. Again, this place was in dire need of work. But it looks like they didn't rip out that little 30s-era swimming pool or the restrooms.

NYatKNIGHT

April 26th, 2006, 05:34 PM

It looks like they're ripping out the pool, it is now exposed at the base. I hope they replace it or at least install something that sprays water for the hot days. This little park is the only refuge in Soho.

lofter1

May 8th, 2006, 11:31 AM

A mountain of upgrades coming at Vesuvio Playground

DOWNTOWN EXPRESS (http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_156/amountainofupgrades.html)
Volume 18 • Issue 51 | May 5 - 11, 2006

Ground was broken last Thursday for the long-awaited renovation of Vesuvio Park in Soho. Council Speaker Christine Quinn is funding the $2.8 million project, the first renovation of the playground in more than 25 years. Work is expected to be complete by September 2007, according to the Parks Department.

The playground was renamed in the late 1990s for Anthony Dapolito, who died in 2003 and owned the nearby Vesuvio Bakery. The longtime Parks Committee chairperson of Community Board 2, Dapolito, known as “Mr. Parks” and “Mr. Playgrounds,” led the way in acquiring property to create open spaces in the Village and Soho. The former Parks Department recreation center at Clarkson St. and Seventh Ave. S. is named in his honor.

“Vesuvio Playground has been for most of its life a classic, gritty urban play space, but recently it has started to show its age,” said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. “Now this park, named for the venerable Italian bakery owned by the late neighborhood advocate Tony Dapolito, will be fully renovated to meet the recreational needs of the 21st century, while celebrating the vibrant but vanishing heritage of the Italian Greenwich Village.”

Parks will replace the 40-year old swimming pool with a brand-new in-ground swimming pool and install new play equipment and a spray shower.

The project also includes a chess and checkers table with benches, as well as landscaping with new plantings and greenery. The handball courts will also receive a facelift.

Dapolito’s former bakery on Prince St. is named for Mount Vesuvius, which in 79 A.D. erupted and destroyed the city of Pompeii. The renovation project was designed in the theme of Pompeii, with Parks designers incorporating research of the historic city into the patterns of the flooring and other elements of the playground.

The playground was acquired in three parcels over the course of 28 years. In 1929 and 1930 Parks purchased two parcels midblock on Thompson St. In 1957, Parks expanded the property south to Spring St. and west to Sullivan St.

Downtown Express is published by Community Media LLC.

lofter1

May 8th, 2006, 11:52 AM

Park on Canal Street Gets Going at Last

By Barry Owens
MAY 2, 2006
TRIBECA TRIB (http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/newsmay06/canalpark.htm)

For all the city's talk of plans to create a park on the triangular lot at Canal, Varick and Laight Streets, the site for years has been nothing more than dusty dead space, marked off by orange construction barrels and wind-whipped police tape. But last month there was finally a sign of life in this tiny corner of Tribeca—"Please keep off the newly sodded lawn," the sign read. It was posted on a new fence and signed by the city's Parks Department.

http://www.tribecatrib.com/photos/news/may06/park-today.gif
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http://www.tribecatrib.com/photos/news/may06/park_sod_cap.gif
Organizers of the Tribeca Film Festival footed the bill to lay sod on the triangle (Tribeca Cinemas is located across the Street from the site), and seemingly overnight it was transformed from an embarrassing neighborhood eyesore to an inviting green space, though off-limits for now.

The Parks Department says there is more to come. A fresh design plan is in place and it's riding the fast track through city channels.

"It is a very simple plan," said Gail Wittwer-Laird, a landscape architect who has designed a new look for the park that will include trees, benches, a lawn and an ever-rushing fountain in the form of a canal. "I think everyone is anxious to move this forward.

Wittwer-Laird presented the plan for the unnamed park to Community Board 1 last month and said that the design had already passed muster with the city's Arts Commission, which must approve changes to city-owned property that are visible from the street. Getting the commission's approval is no small hurdle. A previous plan for the park, created in 2002 by a landscaping contractors association from outside the city as a gift to the neighborhood following the Sept. 11 attacks, failed three times to win acceptance from the commission. The group finally walked away in frustration last year, leaving the city to plan anew.

"It is loosely derived from the plan of several years ago," Wittwer-Laird told the board, referencing the original city plans for the park that were drawn up in 2001, but set aside following the terrorist attack. "It has been a long time coming, but I think it is going to be great when it is finally built."

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The board voted to approve the plan with little hesitation. "I remember approving this before 9/11," said member Albert Capsouto.

The design presented last month calls for a fenced-in park with three gated entrances, lined with a perimeter of trees and cut through with a winding path of granite stones. In the center will be a small lawn under the shade of a large tree.

Along the north side, artist Elyn Zimmerman hopes to create a canal—120 feet long, 12 feet wide and eight inches deep—where recycled water would flow from high to low ground.

The installation is inspired by the former channel through Lower Manhattan that gave Canal Street its name. But Zimmerman, who designed the memorial for the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (which was destroyed on Sept. 11), said the water feature would more closely resemble a mini-Panama Canal with its series of locks and dams.

"Call it poetic license, but this will make it more interesting," she said.

The park is one of six public spaces for which the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in February allocated $19.5 million, which the Parks Department will receive in June. Construction is expected to last 18 months.

Until work begins, the sod will remain. So too will the old concrete curbs that Wittwer-Laird and Zimmerman, in a moment of inspiration, rescued from the rubble when new sidewalks were installed around the park site. The curbs were placed in the center of the lawn to serve as benches.

"Totally temporary," said Zimmerman.

lofter1

May 9th, 2006, 01:48 AM

... parks in my neighborhood have recently been ripped up and are presumably undergoing complete makeovers.

Father Demo Square - 6th Avenue @ Bleecker/Carmine:

Doing Demo’s plaza proud

http://www.thevillager.com/villager_136/demo.gif
Images courtesy NYC Parks and Recreation

Designs showing the renovation plans for Father Demo Square,
which will include a new fountain and 3-foot-high perimeter fence.
The photo of the fence section, at left, is from a small “vest-pocket”
park on Sixth Ave. across the street from Father Demo Square.
The photos of the fountain, at right, are from Brooklyn Borough Hall.

THE_VILLAGER (http://www.thevillager.com/villager_136/doingdemosplaza.html)

The long-awaited renovation of Father Demo Square on Sixth Ave. at Bleecker St. recently got underway, as a construction fence was put up around the triangular plaza about two weeks ago. Depending on the severity of the winter weather, the renovation is expected to last up to nine months.

Budgeted at $1.3 million, the project will include installation of a new fountain, as well as a 3-foot-high fence similar to those ringing the nearby Sixth Ave. small “vest-pocket” parks. The uneven plaza will be leveled, the irrigation system redone, trees replanted and new lights embedded in the ground. Although until now the park has been used throughout the night, it’s expected there will be a curfew once it reopens.

David Gruber, president of the Carmine Street Block Association, said the community favors a 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. curfew and that the low fence will help police convince people that the park is closed. “The community wanted to have it secured overnight and safe and quiet,” Gruber said. “A lot of people live around there. We need to have some crowd control.” It’s not clear, however, if any pigeon-control plan is in the works for the plaza, which is usually festooned with pigeon droppings.

lofter1

May 9th, 2006, 01:52 AM

Doing Demo’s plaza proud

... Although until now the park has been used throughout the night, it’s expected there will be a curfew once it reopens.

David Gruber, president of the Carmine Street Block Association, said the community favors a 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. curfew ... “The community wanted to have it secured overnight and safe and quiet,” Gruber said. “A lot of people live around there. We need to have some crowd control.”

Not so much a problem of "crowd' control methinks, but rather a plan to reclaim the space from the few homeless folks who had claimed Demo's for overnight sleep-overs.

Kris

May 9th, 2006, 04:16 AM

May 9, 2006
City to Limit Car Traffic in Central Park and Prospect Park
By DIANE CARDWELL

Moving to further reduce traffic in city parks, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that stretches of Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn would close to cars under a six-month pilot program to begin June 5.

Under the plan, vehicles will no longer be able to use the East Drive of Central Park north of 72nd Street during weekday mornings or the West Drive in the afternoons. In Prospect Park, drivers will lose morning access to the West Drive, which runs roughly parallel to Prospect Park West.

"For many years people coming to Prospect Park or Central Park for recreation during weekdays have had to share road space on the park drives with automobiles," Mr. Bloomberg said in Prospect Park as he announced the changes.

"These new regulations will be especially welcome for the cyclists, joggers and in-line skaters who use the park drive and it should also make entering and leaving the parks safer for pedestrians."

The changes come as public pressure to ban park traffic entirely has been increasing and as the City Council is considering a bill, introduced by Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, that would mandate a trial of more comprehensive restrictions. But Mr. Bloomberg said that although he might personally like to see such a ban, it was unrealistic because of the congestion it would cause on surrounding streets.

"It would be better if you didn't have cars in parks," he said, adding that it would create chaos to ban traffic completely during the morning and evening rushes.

Officials estimated that 865 vehicles would be affected by the Central Park closings and 357 by those in Prospect Park. By contrast, Mr. Bloomberg said, on weekdays 70,000 people use Central Park and 15,000 use Prospect Park.

In Central Park, the West Drive will be open to cars only between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., while the East Drive north of 72nd Street will be open only from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. From 72nd Street to 57th Street and the Avenue of the Americas, the East Drive will continue to be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In Prospect Park, only the East Drive will be open from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., while both the East and West Drives will be open between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

BrooklynRider

May 10th, 2006, 12:35 PM

It really is time for a full ban on cars in the parks. There needs to be certain areas that are pedestrian only and there is no reason why we should sharet hese parks with autos.

krulltime

May 11th, 2006, 06:36 PM

This is an interesting story about real estate prices around some NYC parks...

GET YOUR PARK PERKS FOR LESS
IF CENTRAL PARK DOESN'T FIT INTO YOUR BUDGET, LOOK HERE

BY JANET HUEGE
May 11, 2006

THINK you have to spend a fortune for a park view? Can't afford Central Park or Gramercy Park? Getting the park perks you're looking for could be as simple as picking another park.

But those views and that grass often don't come cheap. Properties with views of Central Park can start at $800,000 (a 400-square-foot studio on Central Park South) and go as high as $70 million (Pierre Hotel penthouse at 795 Fifth Ave.). Gramercy Park is pricey, too, with the low end at $625,000 (a 450-square-foot studio on Gramercy Park South) and the high end reaching $16 million (duplex penthouse at 50 Gramercy Park North).

But the city is full of other great parks: Stuyvesant Square Park, Seward Park, Tompkins Square, Fort Greene Park and Pelham Bay Park are five alternatives that offer lots of green for less.

"People love the sense of community that a park view gives them - no matter what park it is," says Corcoran Group senior vice president Glenn Schiller, who notes that park-side property values are always on the up and up. "And if you can pay less for that feeling, it feels even better."

PELHAM BAY PARK

Pelham Bay Park, located in the northeast corner of The Bronx, is the largest public park in New York City. At 2,764 acres, it's three times the size of Central Park. The area was part of the 50,000 acres purchased in the 17th century from the Siwanoy Indians by Thomas Pell.

Today, the park includes two golf courses, a miniature golf course, a driving range, a stable, tennis courts and baseball diamonds.

The park borders the neighborhoods of Country Club and Pelham Bay. Most of the homes with park views are brick-and-frame detached houses sitting on lots that are 3,500 square feet to 5,000 square feet.

There are also many smaller semidetached homes that sit on 2,500-square-foot lots.

Overall, most of these homes have been renovated and include amenities like formal dining rooms, driveways, porches and basements. Prices range from $500,000 to $725,000.

In addition, "There are a handful of mid-rise apartment buildings built in the 1930s to 1940s which have park views on the upper floors," says Prudential Kafcos Realty associate broker Phyllis Basilone. "There are also some multi-family homes with views that have rentals as well."

One-bedroom rentals average $950, two-bedrooms rentals are $1,200 to $1,300, and three-bedroom rentals average $1,500 a month

SEWARD PARK

Bordered by Essex Street, Canal Street and East Broadway, the three acres of land that are Seward Park (named after former Secretary of State William Seward, who negotiated the purchase of Alaska) were acquired in 1897. Seward Park is the site of the first municipally built playground in the United States, which was constructed in 1903.

"The area still has a lot of old-timers, including Chinese and Jewish immigrants," says Manhattan Apartments saleswoman Melissa Giordano.

The United Housing Federation built the Seward Park Co-ops in 1957. Today, 500-square-foot studios there cost $300,000 to $350,000. One-bedrooms, which average 850 square feet, cost between $450,000 and $520,000; 1,100-square-foot two bedrooms go for $575,000 to $725,000, and 1,250-square-foot to 1,300-square-foot three-bedrooms are $775,000 to $1 million. Amenities include 24-hour security guards, parking, a gym and a laundry room.

Not surprisingly, the cost of living near Seward Park is significantly less than Central Park or Gramercy Park. With the influx of luxury condos in the Lower East Side, however, that gap is decreasing.

The Forward Building at 175 East Broadway, built in 1910, was home to the Jewish Daily Forward newspaper. When the renovation of the building is complete this summer, the 10-story building will have 29 luxury apartments ranging from $575,000 to $4.5 million.

Another condo elevating Seward Park's prices and reputation is 7 Essex St., a new building with luxury lofts.

"Today, nothing in 7 Essex is below $1.5 million," Shemesh says, "and the triplex penthouse is $3.5 million."

TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK

Bordered by Avenue A, Avenue B, East Seveth Street and East 10th Street, the 10.5-acre park named after former Vice President and New York Governor Daniel Tompkins was designated a public park in 1878.

The properties with park views are largely rentals, although there is a particularly well-known condo.

Most of the rentals are archetypal East Village walk-ups, which means they are usually small and oddly shaped, with the occasional bathtub in the kitchen.

"The average price of a typical East Village one-bedroom rental is $2,300 a month," says Corcoran Group senior associate broker Paul Gavriani. "However, something with a park view will cost you more, running between $2,650 and $2,900."

The Christodora House at 143 Avenue B is one of Tompkins Square Park's most well-known addresses. The 17-story doorman building built in 1928 was converted to condos in 1986. One-bedrooms range from 650 square feet to 850 square feet and run from $650,000 to $850,000. Two-bedrooms, which rarely become available, average $1.6 million for 1,100 square feet.

Painter Dustin Horowitz, 32, has lived in three different studios in five years in the Christodora House.

"It's not like Central Park where tons of people have that view," he says. "Only a handful of people see what I see."

FORT GREENE PARK

Brooklyn's first park, Fort Greene Park is a 30-acre green oasis built in 1847 at the urging of poet Walt Whitman. Famed Central Park designers Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux redesigned the park in 1864.

The park, bordered by Myrtle Avenue to the north, Saint Edwards Street to the west, Dekalb Avenue to the south and Washington Park to the east, currently houses tennis and basketball courts, playgrounds and a weekly Saturday greenmarket.

The buildings that have park views are predominantly townhouses, though there is a high-rise condo two blocks from the park that offers views on the upper floors.

The townhouses, built in the mid- to late 1880s, are primarily Italian in style and are mostly four stories. They range from 17 feet to 22 feet wide. Prices start around $1.5 million and can go as high as $2.5 million.

The Greene House, a new high-end condo located at the corner of Carlton and Greene avenues, was completed in October 2005. Building amenities include a fitness area, a daytime concierge and parking. A 755-square-foot one-bedroom goes for $549,000; a 1,735-square-foot two-bedroom is $799,000, and a 999-square-foot two-bedroom with 1,208 square feet of private outdoor space is $899,000.

New housing stock is coming to the area in the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building. The tallest building in Brooklyn at 512 feet, is being converted into condos, which are expected to be ready next year.

STUYVESANT SQUARE PARK

Given to the city in 1836 by Peter Stuyvesant, former governor of New Amsterdam, Stuyvesant Square Park is bisected by Second Avenue and hemmed by 15th and 17th streets. Many buildings in the park date back to the 1850s and 1860s.

"The condos with park views are mostly prewar walk-ups," says Prudential Douglas Elliman executive vice president Tamir Shemesh.

One-bedrooms that range from 700 square feet to 800 square feet run $650,000 to $775,000, and 1,400-square-foot two-bedrooms start at $1.5 million, according to Shemesh.

And there are three new condo conversions with park views. Landmark 17 at 233 E. 17th St. is a five-story Victorian Gothic building constructed in 1877. The two- to four-bedroom loft-like units range from $1.7 million to $4.8 million.

"For what you get, it's still cheaper than Central Park and Gramercy," Shemesh says.

Rutherford Place at 305 Second Ave., originally built as the Lying-In Hospital in 1899, now offers 122 multi-level units going for $500,000 to $3 million. The Abbey Condominiums at 205 E. 16th St., originally built in 1888 as a church