September 2013 - Parks & Recreation - 49

All of which brings us back to
New York City. What happens here
often spirals outward to the rest of
the nation. When Major League
Soccer, with vigorous support from
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, proposed to build a $340 million soccer
stadium on 13 acres smack in the
middle of a densely populated, 800acre working-class park in Queens,
the ensuing battle drew media attention on two continents.
Community opponents waged a
vigorous battle. They appear to have
prevailed, as soccer proponents now
eye other locations.
In the 1930s, New York's greatest
mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, insisted that parks are central to city life,
and he worked the funding levers in
Depression-era Washington to pour
money into park coffers. His parks
commissioner, the master builder
Robert Moses, was at his greatest
in building or refurbishing the parks
that define the city, from Central
Park to Riverside, Pelham Bay and
Orchard Beach in the Bronx.
So we had a Golden Age of city
parks. By the 1970s, the parks were a
ball tumbling quickly down a hill. Every year, mayors cut the park department budget, which has no independent source of revenue. By the early
1980s, Central Park was a shambles
and other parks little better.
It was in this arid soil that conservancies took root, as citizens both
wealthy and middle class stepped
forward. They can point to great
successes. Prospect Park, an Olmsted grand dame, with rolling hills
and streams, was forbidding in
1980, its grand oaks and sycamores
sitting like beached whales, roots
exposed to the elements. It is again
a grand park.
The flipside is that the wealthy
became accustomed to running vast
public patrimonies. New York park

Nearly half of the $500 million cost of building Chicago's Millennium Park came from
private donors and corporate sponsors, evident in the park's many branded amenities
such as the McDonald's Cycle Center and the BP Bridge. The city has also entered into
controversial tax agreements and leasing deals that ultimately benefit a number of
private interests in order to ensure continued funding for the park.

officials make no feint toward funding equity. The High Line, with 6.7
acres, has a workforce of 70, with
three curators and 10 rangers. Flushing Meadows Park, with 12 times the
acreage, has 19 staffers. Central Park,
with a $220 million endowment, has
just three city officials among more
than 50 members.
Steve Hindy is a public-spirited
businessman who owns Brooklyn
Beer, and he sits on the board of two
park conservancies. He is no Jacobin.
But he sees public funds as a stream
running dry.
" Someone should really blow the
whistle on what's happened to our
parks, " he says. " Conservancies and alliances have been critical to fill the gap,
but I fear that's why there's no public
outcry about elected officials cutting
the fiscal throats of our parks. "
The pressure in New York to create new conservancies increases by
the month. For the past few years,

the Parks and Recreation Department has led an expensive renovation of Washington Square Park, a
historic and cacophonously diverse
park in Greenwich Village.
Now they propose to turn it over to
a hand-picked baby conservancy.
Assemblywoman Deborah Glick,
who represents this neighborhood,
cowrote a passionate letter to the
NYC Parks.
" I understand the department is
confronted with shrinking resources, but privatization of public spaces is not appropriate, " she writes.
" Once a conservancy is established,
the transparency associated with
Parks Department oversight will be
diminished. "
The sense, at least here in New
York, is that Glick is shoveling sand
against the tide.
Michael Powell is a columnist for The New
York Times (powellmh@gmail.com).

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