Completion of the Greenwich Village section of the Hudson River Park raised real estate prices in the adjacent two blocks by 20 percent, according to a study released in September.
The study, commissioned by Friends of Hudson River Park with research by the Regional Plan Association and data from the Real Estate Board of New York, is consistent with previous research linking increased property values to well-maintained parks. Now, though, some parks advocates are exploring ways to tap into that increase to provide funds for parks.
The Hudson River Park study found the park had the largest impact on sales of condominiums, whose prices climbed by 80 percent after the Greenwich Village section of the park was finished in 2003, compared to a 45 percent increase in neighborhoods to the north and south.
Friends of Hudson River Park, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation and preservation of the five-mile-long park along Manhattan's West Side waterfront from Chambers to 59th Street, is using the study as a springboard to see whether the increase in real estate values could provide money for the park through the creation of a special Business Improvement District, or BID, for the park. In a BID, property owners pay an additional assessment to upgrade and maintain their area with better sanitation, security, landscaping and other amenities beyond what the city provides. If approved, a Hudson River Park BID would be the city's first special real estate assessment district dedicated largely to maintaining and operating a park.
The Hudson River Park, a public park being built with public money, was established on a new funding model requiring commerce within its borders to pay for maintenance and operations. But development on piers designated for this purpose has been delayed for years because of neighborhood opposition and other issues, sowing doubts about whether it is possible to generate enough money from this source alone. Funding from a BID could fill the gap.
The proposal for a Hudson River Park "park improvement district" raises, once again, the issue of what is the best way to pay for keeping up all of the city's parks, as people expect more recreation and breathing space in the urban environment and more families opt to raise their children in the city. With the city sliding into recession or worse, finding a way to keep caring for parks becomes ever more important.
Hudson River Park is the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Westway, the defeated proposal for an underground superhighway to replace the decrepit elevated West Side Highway. The park, also controversial, prevailed and construction began on it in 1993. Working closely with the park's creators and the city, the state Department of Transportation built a new landscaped roadway with lushly planted medians as well as a bikeway along the park's length that quickly became the most heavily used bike path in the country.
The first part of the park to be completed was in Greenwich Village. A once-decrepit stretch of piers and highway is now a ribbon of green unwinding between the bikeway and a waterfront promenade, with an irregular fringe of piers embedded with lawns, flower beds and neat groves of trees like pegs in a game board. The waters between and around the piers and grids of old pilings are designated as an estuarine sanctuary.
Shiny and new, the park still has a whiff of an architect's drawings, but on a fall evening it was in leisurely use. Four 10-year-olds tossed a football on a slender patch of grass buffered from traffic noise by a curving wall of trees and shrubs; people leaving work or walking their dogs made their way along the bench-lined promenade; others strolled down the piers out into the river to watch the sun set over Jersey City.
Across the street from the park, the change has been just as startling. New luxury condominiums, including three signature Richard Meier glass towers, have risen along West Street and several blocks inland.
The expected cost of maintaining and running the fully complete Hudson River Park is $20 million a year, according to Connie Fishman, president of the Hudson River Park Trust, the city-state partnership that oversees the design, construction and operation of the park. That amount doesn't include capital maintenance. "We'd love to be able to have additional funding that comes from rents and other contributions on a regular basis to build a long-term capital maintenance fund, which is of course critical to keep in shape all the new stuff we're building," she said.
The state legislation setting up the park designated specific piers for development to generate enough income for running and maintaining the park. So far, however, the only major commercial development is the huge Chelsea Piers recreation complex.
The Brooklyn Bridge Park along the downtown Brooklyn waterfront is being created under the same funding paradigm where the park, in essence, must pay its own way. There, the plan to include high-rise luxury housing to subsidize upkeep has drawn fierce community opposition.
So far, it has not been shown that development in either of these parks can provide enough income to maintain them properly. Both waterfront parks will have higher than usual maintenance expenses because of the wear and tear from salt and wind, the difficulty of doing repair work in or near the water and the extra cost of maintaining piers.
In the controversy over the Hudson River Park's creation, opponents were concerned that as the park was built, the need for more funding would lead to increasing the area for development within the park. Although that remains a possibility, as people began to use the park and claim it as their own, a constituency has emerged to oppose large-scale developments that are not seen to benefit the community or fit in with the purpose of the park.
In the village, the 14-acre Pier 40 at West Houston Street was set aside for revenue-generating development. But in the past six years, the trust has not been able to find a developer with a plan that is commercially viable, brings in enough funding for the park and is acceptable to the community. The pier currently houses a parking garage that generates millions of dollars in revenue for the park, as well as a heavily used interim sports field in the garage's enormous interior courtyard.
Last March, the trust's board turned down a proposal for a huge entertainment complex anchored by Cirque du Soleil (dubbed Vegas on the Hudson by opponents) because of a dispute over lease terms. The developer, Related Companies, wanted a 49-year lease, which is not allowed under the park legislation. The trust then gave two community-based groups that had submitted plans 90 days to present a joint proposal. Their plan included new schools, camps and playing fields as well as parking and small retail operations, but the trust rejected that in October as not financially feasible.
"It remains to be seen whether even with a longer lease there is a proposal that can both satisfy the community and meet the economic needs of the park," said Fishman. "It's a big unknown right now."
Many cities with well-regarded park systems, including Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle, generate funds for parks through some form of park district. In New York City, fees paid by residents and developers in Battery Park City cover the costs of gardening, maintenance and activities in its beautifully cared-for parkland.
Assessing property owners near Hudson River Park could help fund park maintenance, avoiding the need to compete with other city parks for public funding or to expand development within the park.
A Hudson River Park district would differ from a BID in that it would tax mostly residential properties, not businesses. "It would also be a very large district," said A.J. Pietrantone, executive director of Friends of Hudson River Park. "It intersects with other BIDs and would have to be done carefully," he said. The proposed district's large area could keep the assessment low, but the potential negative impact of a Hudson River Park BID on low-income property owners and small business owners would have to be addressed.
Friends has been discussing the feasibility of a BID with community members and property owners, said Pietrantone. He said that he is not sure how the worsening economy would affect prospects for park district. "We think that because the assessment we're talking about is small, the economy is less of a factor than if it were a full-service BID. Because of the pressure on the state budget, it makes it all the more important for us to look at alternative resources."
"For city parks, we're going to need both public funding and private funding," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks. "We should be seriously looking at these dedicated sources."
However, he said, any funding mechanism should insure that the city addresses the needs of less affluent areas, particularly in the outer boroughs. "We would not want to see a system in which only neighborhoods that can afford the extra tax can create the BID. We have to make sure every park is getting a high level of service."
Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues.Â
In a city where every square foot is contested, how can we fit more greenery and public gathering spots amid the concrete? Why are the sidewalks narrow and the streets wide, making it difficult to walk in some parts of town? Should a quarter to a third of city streets be reserved for parking cars, or can some of this public land be put to other uses?
These are the kinds of questions raised by the transformation of more than 50 New York City metered parking spots into temporary public spaces on the second annual National Park(ing) Day held Sept. 19. This nationwide event, sponsored by the Trust for Public Land to call attention to the need for urban parks, has now spread to more than 70 cities across the country.
In New York City, the number of park(ing) spots more than doubled from the previous year's event. Organizers arranged sod, trees, flowers, benches and tables, as well as cardboard boxes, string and chalk, to create functional, if tiny, public spaces. The spots ranged from a meditation garden on a busy street in Williamsburg to a grassy patch filled with children coloring on Cortelyou Street in Brooklyn to an arbor in Nolita made of 88 upside-down white traffic cones.
The quirky micro-mini-parks invited passersby to experience how a public space can bring neighbors together and add life, color and a little breathing space to the urban matrix. As a participant in the "Stay-cation Park" in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn explained his park(ing) spot in the 2008 Park(ing) Day video, "It's a place for people just to sit and enjoy. I've already heard some people say they've never actually looked at this intersection. It's like putting on a new pair of glasses."
What began as an attention-getting mix of guerilla activism and stoop-sitting has gained credibility as the city itself has begun to experiment with the kind of outside-the-box thinking Park(ing) Day celebrates. "For the first time, parking in New York City is not considered absolutely sacrosanct," said Wiley Norvell, spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, which organized the event in New York City.
In the last year, as part of an all-out effort by the Bloomberg administration to enact the sustainability initiatives of PlaNYC 2030 before the mayor's term ends, the Department of Transportation has begun to shift the balance between the automobile and the pedestrian.
These efforts, led by transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, seemed to intensify after congestion pricing failed to get off the ground earlier this year. Since last September, the Department of Transportation has carved 49 acres of new public space from the asphalt, including Broadway Boulevard, a series of pedestrian plazas created by closing several traffic lanes on Broadway from Times Square to Herald Square.
Further down Broadway, the transportation department in August replaced a lane of parking and a lane of car traffic at Madison Square with landscaped plazas and new bicycle lanes, creating 41,700 square feet of new public space. These additions have been relatively inexpensive, requiring little more than paint, planters, new surface coatings, and tables and chairs.
The changes have happened so quickly that an article in the New York Observer raised the question of whether Sadik-Khan was moving too fast: "The DOT's recently ramped-up pace has frustrated residents and elected officials, who feel they were let in on the decisions only after all the plans were made."
Sadik-Kahn responded that "consulting with the community is an important part of the process."
"We've got 6,000 miles of streets and over 12,000 miles of sidewalks, and we're trying to look at making them livable spaces, and not just these utilitarian corridors," Sadik-Khan told the Observer. "So when you take a look at the streets of New York, that's 80 percent of our public space. In some ways, I think of myself as the largest real estate developer in New York."
In another effort to increase recreational space, temporarily at least, the transportation department has closed streets. On three Saturdays this summer, the city banned cars on a route from the Brooklyn Bridge to Grand Central Station, turning Park Avenue into a highway for bicyclists, skaters and runners.
In Jackson Heights, residents received a permit to close a block of 78th Street every Sunday through November, expanding the neighborhood's one open space, 1.9-acre Travers Park. "My kids grew up in the park, but I feel like this is the first time that they really have room to run around," resident Mandy Un told the New York Times.
The Department of Transportation also has launched a PlaNYC-funded program to put public plazas in each of the community districts.
In a related PlaNYC initiative, the parks department added 94 new Greenstreets to the existing 2,260. The PlaNYC budget provides the first dedicated funding for this program, begun in 1996, to plant trees, shrubs and flowers on traffic islands and medians. It allocates $15 million for 800 new Greenstreets over the next 10 years, and, starting in fiscal year 2009, is supposed to provide the first funding for maintenance in the program's history.
More street rearrangements are in the works, including a long-delayed project to widen public and pedestrian space at Astor Place and Cooper Square and make the streets there safer to cross.
In October, the city plans to reconfigure the underused parking strip on both sides of Kent Avenue in Williamsburg as buffered bike lanes. The route is part of the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. The borough's growing legion of bicycle riders applauds the plan, but in what the Brooklyn Papers called a "bitter struggle for control of the streets," some residents of South Williamsburg say it would turn over too much space to bicycle lanes, clogging vehicular traffic.
Civic organizations and the transportation and parks departments are collaborating on an effort to completely rethink Grand Army Plaza, where a popular greenmarket, the main building for the Brooklyn Public Library, a memorial arch and a newly renovated fountain are encircled by confusing and dangerous roadways. The Design Trust for Public Space recently announced the top awards in a competition to reinvent the plaza and make it the gateway to Prospect Park it was originally meant to be. The top 30 proposals will be on display in the center of the plaza until October 13, and visitors will be able to vote for a "People's Choice" award. Meanwhile, the Grand Army Plaza Coalition and the Design Trust, taking inspiration from the contest designs, will work with the parks and transportation departments and local communities to create a new master plan for the plaza.
European cities have long understood how pedestrian squares and streets where people can gather, sit, talk, sip a cup of coffee and watch the world go by add immensely to a city's vitality. In New York, people are so accustomed to living within the grip of the automobile that it seems hard to imagine any other way. In the ephemeral spaces of Park(ing) Day and at the new public plazas popping up around the city, New Yorkers are able to see how much more pleasant urban life can be.
Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues.Â
The latest skirmish in the escalating turf war over the use of city parkland focuses on an unlikely natural area, a former Queens reservoir now claimed by woods and wetlands.
The 50-acre, three-basin Ridgewood Reservoir sits on high ridge where Queens and Brooklyn meet, just south of the Jackie Robinson Parkway, in the northeast corner of Highland Park. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2007 sustainability blueprint, PlaNYC 2030, identified the site as one of eight underdeveloped park properties the city plans to transform with active recreational facilities and allocated $50 million in capital funding for Ridgewood Reservoir alone.
While local residents, environmentalists and parks advocates agree that the reservoir, now officially off-limits to the public, should become more accessible, they disagree over how the area should be used. The parks department is considering a proposal to put ball fields in one of the reservoir's basins. Citywide and local environmental and parks groups want to keep the basin intact as a nature preserve and use the funding for new and improved facilities elsewhere in Highland Park. They have political support from the two local community boards, Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and many other elected officials, including City Comptroller (and mayoral candidate) William Thompson, who co-authored a New York Times op-ed piece on the issue with Robert Kennedy Jr. in May.
However, many residents of the adjacent neighborhoods of Cypress Hills, East New York and Bushwick - areas with very few parks and trees - support the ball field proposal. On June 19, about 100 people from East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC), an organization dedicated to empowering residents to improve their communities, demonstrated on the steps of City Hall and then went inside to testify at a hearing of the City Council parks committee, voicing their support for more sports fields.
As in so many park conflicts, the competing visions for Ridgewood Reservoir reflect the difficulty of balancing the many different claims on the city's precious open space. And, as in several other recent parks controversies, such as the one surrounding using funds from private schools to build soccer fields on Randalls Island, it raises the question of whether parks projects tend to be determined by the availability of funding, rather than through a comprehensive planning process that takes into account all available parkland, community needs, environmental benefits, cost-effectiveness and site suitability.
For 100 years, Ridgewood Reservoir, located on the southwestern side of a large swath of open space that includes several cemeteries and Forest Park in Queens, was part of the city's water system. It was taken out of regular service in 1959 and completely drained in 1989. Surrounded by a chain-link fence, it was known mostly to residents who exercised on the perimeter path and people who used the basins illegally for a paintball course.
The reservoir's three adjacent clay-lined basins, with sloping, rock-reinforced walls, have an average depth of about 20 feet. Over the years, wetland and forest vegetation has grown inside the two outer basins. In the middle basin, a pond persists, surrounded by thick stands of the invasive reed phragmites. Several small buildings - a caretaker cottage and pumphouses - have fallen into disrepair.
On a sunny day in June, I visited the reservoir with staff from New York City Audubon, including Glenn Phillips, executive director, and Susan Elbin, director of conservation. After parking next to a picnic area shaded by large, graceful trees, we climbed up a stone stairway set into the hillside to the path circling the reservoir.
Joggers passed as we looked through the chain-link fence into a sunken forest overgrown with vines. Bird sang and flitted in the treetops. The reservoir is a stopover for birds migrating along the Atlantic flyway and provides breeding territory for nearly 40 species, many of which are rarely found in the city. So far, 137 bird species have been counted in the reservoir basins. There is also an abundance of butterflies, dragonflies, damselflies and other insects, as well as several rare native plant species. "How many people pass by here every day and have no idea that this is one of the treasures of New York City?" Phillips said.
Serendipitously, we met up with a large contingent from the parks department, who invited us to go down into the basins with them, helping us descend the steep sides with ropes.
Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, who was part of the group, explained that the department's Natural Resources Group has inventoried and mapped the numerous distinct ecological communities in the three basins.
We walked single file through the tangle of shrubs and trees to a mossy opening in the early successional forest of Basin 1. Mike Feller, the parks department's chief naturalist, called it the "'Lost World' in reverse. Twenty years ago, he said, the basin was an open wet meadow. He recalled walking there in 1988 or 1989 amid tall sedges and sweet gum and red maple saplings. Today, it is growing into a mosaic of predominantly native forests adapted to wet conditions. Ideally, these diverse and ecologically rich plant communities could be self-sustaining, said Benepe, although invasive vines and trees have also gotten a foothold.
Back on the pathway, we walked around to the reservoir's northern side, where an opening in the trees offers a bucolic vista of the pond and marsh in Basin 2. Finally, we descended into the third and largest basin - where athletic fields might go. This basin has what Feller described as a "split personality." At its southern end is a mix of wetland plant communities similar to Basin 1. But the northern half, where the topsoil is very thin, is overrun with non-native, invasive trees and shrubs, and lacks the ecological diversity and value for wildlife of the other sections. One large area is composed almost exclusively of just two plant types: Black locust trees form a canopy over a knee-high understory of mugwort.
Feller explained that this section is full of seeds of undesirable plants that the wind and birds would inevitably spread elsewhere in the reservoir, possibly crowding out the indigenous plans. "The sooner you remove the invasives the better," he said. "There comes a point where the seed load is too high." In light of that, "Doing nothing is the worst of all scenarios," Benepe said.
PlaNYC called for using all of Basin 3 for active recreation, but the current proposal, a preliminary idea from the design consultant Mark Morrison Associates, would put athletic facilities on 10 acres in the basin, about 20 percent of the reservoir's total acreage. Building and maintaining fields would require bulldozing through the reservoir walls to provide ground-level access for trucks and machinery, as well as razing the forest.
So far, nothing has been decided. "It's not clear we're going to build fields," Benepe said. "It's completely up in the air-a possibility but not a given." At the City Council hearing, he mentioned some of the other ideas the department is considering, such adding bikeways and walkways, providing interpretive maps and converting one of the historic structures into a nature center, though presumably these could be done in addition to, as well as instead of, the athletic facilities.
From the commissioner's testimony at the hearing, it is clear that his department favors combining natural areas and recreation in the basin. This, officials believe, would not only expand recreational opportunities to improve the health and quality of life for New Yorkers, as mandated by PlaNYC, but also make the basin easily accessible for forest management, maintenance and crime control.
As to suggestions that the department put more fields in other parts of Highland Park instead, Benepe noted that the department is building a multi-use field on some of the old tennis courts in the lower part of the park, but the "issue with Highland Park is that much of it is on a hill. Virtually all of the flat land is taken up by fields or other facilities."
After an in-depth site analysis by the design consultant, the parks department will start developing conceptual plans "that will be the basis for discussion with various community groups, elected officials and the community boards," said Benepe. The goal is to begin the first phase in October 2009 and complete work by spring 2011.
Highland Park has numerous recreational facilities, including basketball, tennis and handball courts, baseball fields, two playgrounds, a children's garden, a running track and walking trails. The Brooklyn-Queens Greenway goes along the southern side of the reservoir. But the park has suffered from decades of neglect, community members say, and several decades ago crime there was rampant. Residents do praise the parks department with making substantial improvements since then.
At the City Council hearing, several leaders of East Brooklyn Congregations said more needs to be done. They called for the department to repair existing fields, fix the paths, stairways and lighting around the reservoir, and create more places to play baseball, soccer and other sports inside the basin.
They stressed that this must be done in an environmentally sound way. "If you come here, it's because you do love nature," said Juan Romero, a parishioner at St. Joseph Patron Roman Catholic Church in Bushwick and an EBC leader.
However, they made it clear they want sports to play a role in the reservoir. "We're not against birds, but to allow the reservoir to remain strictly for the birds would not be in the best interests of 500,000 people," said Bishop David Benke, pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Cypress Hills and EBC co-founder. He said that bringing more people into the area for active recreation would enhance the mission of an environmental center and make the natural areas safer.
At the hearing, Benepe cited numerous examples of city parks where wildlife thrives in natural areas next to recreational facilities, including Central Park, Prospect Park and Alley Pond. He noted that this department has a great deal of experience with the stewardship of natural areas. "We want to make these better habitats by managing and promoting growth of native species and planting species that provide food for wildlife," he said.
Environmental and park groups acknowledge the need for more recreation and respect that the parks department has chosen the least valuable part of the basin for its ball field proposal. But, they say, Ridgewood Reservoir is a unique place worthy of special protection. "Put in hiking trails instead of ball fields," said Elbin.
The spell cast by this surprising urban wilderness has inspired a year-and-a-half-long environmental dance project. A YouTube video (click here to view it) shows footage of the reservoir and its wildlife, explains its history and makes the case for its preservation.
"Ridgewood Reservoir has habitat for birds and plants not found elsewhere, particularly in that part of Brooklyn and Queens in need of natural areas," said Phillips. "The value of that particular property is greater than you might expect because it's surrounded on all sides by open space."
"This is an urban area that doesn't have a lot of natural areas that are accessible to residents of the city, especially the youth," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks. "One could argue that a hike through a natural area is just as important for youth as playing soccer."
Opponents of the ball fields fear that even a limited plan could have a major impact on the area. "Even if you open half of the basin to ball fields and leave the other half entirely intact, it's going to change the dynamic," Phillips said. Ball fields would inevitably bring greater disturbances - -including dogs - to the forested areas, and it is not known how this would affect the nesting or migrating birds.
Many people also worry that if fields go in the reservoir, there will be pressure to expand them in the future. They cite a compromise Bloomberg brokered in 2003 that scaled down a plan for recreational facilities in Staten Island's Bloomingdale Woods. Elected officials there are still pushing to build more fields in the wetland forest. "With easy access, you are always fighting a battle to prevent a ball field," said Phillips.
They have also raised concerns about the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of building sports fields in the reservoir. Although fields would go in the driest part of the basin, the reservoir is a depression lined with clay specifically designed to hold water. Would ball fields be drowned in a heavy rain?
In addition, opponents point out that development in the basin seems to contradict PlaNYC's goal of making the city more environmentally sustainable by preserving and adding natural areas to cool and clean the air and absorb stormwater runoff. The reservoir is in the watershed of Jamaica Bay and the sewershed of Newtown Creek. When heavy rains overwhelm the sewage system, untreated sewage spills into both bodies of water. "Any increase in the amount of impervious surfaces at Ridgewood Reservoir would result in an increase in stormwater and consequently an increase in combined sewage overflows that already pose a serious burden on the city's waterways," said Andrew Rafter in testimony for the environmental group Riverkeeper.
Further complicating the politics of the issue is distrust by some citizens and advocacy groups of the city government and the parks department stemming from earlier parkland conflicts, such as the taking of Macombs Dam Park for the new Yankee Stadium even before most residents were aware it was happening, and the controversial redesigns of Washington Square and Union Square parks.
Some supporters of the ball fields see signs of NIMBYism in the impressive line-up of political force against developing the reservoir because several prominent politicians live in large houses abutting Highland Park.
"My fear is that a lot of this is just delay tactics," said Benke of EBC. "That money is ephemeral. We're of the opinion that the time to strike is now. Do it now and find a way to use those 10 acres or show us an actual plan to reconfigure the park that can be accomplished over a short period of time."
Others disagree, believing any plan to develop the park needs further consideration. They worry that the administration, in the push to put PlaNYC's initiatives into effect before Bloomberg's term ends, may not be fully considering all the options. Does it make sense to breach the reservoir walls and disrupt this urban experiment with nature when there may be other nearby sites that would be less expensive and intrusive to develop? Is the project being driven by the availability of PlaNYC money and not by a more holistic look at what works best where?
"I don't think we've done a good enough study of open space availability throughout the city," said DiPalermo of New Yorkers for Parks. "There is no real master plan for parks and open space."
Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues.Â