September 2013 - Parks & Recreation - 47

hopes the developer would fashion a
park in addition to an amusement facility and thousands of units of houses. Then the local economy went belly
up, Lennar saw its revenues dive, and
the project languished for years.
In Alexandria, Virginia, developers showed spinning word pictures
of a Xanadu-like athletic and entertainment center, with restaurants
and snack bars, to be built on parkland. The proposed sports megalopolis, The Washington Post reported,
would be equivalent in size to three
Wal-Mart Supercenters.
Alexandria officials seemed entranced. But residents raised a ruckus, dismayed at the prospect of losing treasured ballfields and wooded
trails. And city officials recently
discovered that federal strictures appeared to prohibit turning the park
into a development without first obtaining new park acreage elsewhere.
New York City, because of the
size of its park system and its commanding place in the national media
spotlight, has become a leader in the
march toward the quasi-public, or as
the case may be, the quasi-private.
NYC Parks turned Bryant Park, a
green rectangle within the shadow of
Manhattan's grandest public library,
over to a local business improvement
district. The new stewards polished
Bryant Park to a splendid sparkle,
even as they took pride in " programming " the park like an open-air television set for a near constant hum
of activity. Beneath the Brooklyn
Bridge, a new park is privately run, its
customized lands to be paid for with
a hotel and luxury condominiums.
The discussion of partly privatized urban parks raises complex
questions. Conservancy leaders can
point to stirring triumphs of parks
restored. And there are some genuinely happy betrothals with city
park departments.

In 1903, the famed Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm first identified a site on
the south shore of Seattle's Lake Union as ideal for a large public park, but industrial activity prevented this for more than 100 years. The city progressively bought up the land
throughout the late 20th century, and in 2005, the Seattle Parks Foundation launched
a $20 million campaign to develop the green space. Thanks to efforts of more than 20
contributing partners, Lake Union Park opened to the public in 2010.

Yet risk is ever-present.
" Conservancies certainly revive
some parks and make them look
beautiful, " notes Professor Low.
" But conservancies are run by
wealthy people, and the landscape
gets gentrified in an aesthetic way
that many poor people come to understand as not for them. "
A few grand American cities continue to chart resolutely public courses. In Seattle, Minneapolis, Austin
and Chicago, officials have declined
to tiptoe down privatization's path.
Their experience too is worth a look
in these tough times.
Not long ago, neighbors in an
upper-middle-class precinct of Seattle asked to meet with the Seattle
Parks and Recreation staff. They
asked if they could hold fundraisers and cough up enough money

to reopen a wading pool shuttered
due to cuts.
Parks officials listened intently, and
made a counteroffer:
" Our pushback was that we don't
want to privatize our parks and have
a rich/poor divide, " says Deputy Superintendent Eric Friedli. " We said,
'If you raise money to open two wading pools, we'll open yours and another on the south side of Seattle,' "
which is poorer.
" They got it right away, and
agreed, " he recalls. " That's kind of
the way Seattle thinks. "
Still, Seattle offers no picture of
rosy good-budget health. They've
cut back on fence repairs and had
workers pull out shrub beds that
cost too much to tend. In better
times, staff paint its community
centers on a six-year cycle; tight

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