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Community Gardens; Prospect Park's Audubon Center; Brooklyn Bridge Park


COMMUNITY GARDEN NEGOTIATIONS
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are in discussions to settle a lawsuit filed by the attorney general that has been blocking the city from developing community gardens on city-owned land. Mayor Bloomberg has made it a priority to settle the lawsuits left over from the Giuliani administration. The city's legal position may have been strengthened in April when a State Supreme Court judge ruled against a related lawsuit by the Green Guerillas, the garden advocacy organization. Observers expect that there will be a resolution soon.

About 400 community gardens could be affected. Many of them are in Harlem, the South Bronx, East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, as well as other low-income, minority neighborhoods lacking green and recreational space.

The Giuliani administration was in the process of turning over the garden lots for both market-rate and subsidized housing. In 1999, just as the city was about to auction off 114 gardens, two non-profit organizations, the Trust for Public Land and the New York Restoration Project (Bette Midler's group), raised the money and bought them. Soon afterward, an injunction granted in a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General temporarily kept the bulldozers out of the remaining unprotected gardens. (Cabo Rojo Garden in the Bronx, which was recently destroyed, technically was not covered by the injunction.)

Lawyers for the mayor and attorney general will not comment on the discussions. It is expected that there will a compromise that saves some gardens while allowing others to be developed. An article on the web site of the Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens (BANG) reports that one proposal under discussion would involve designating a number of gardens for development and transferring the rest to a land trust.

Joseph Pupello, president of the New York Restoration Project, said, "Our goal is the preservation and stewardship of open space in communities that are severely under-served for green space. We're set up as a land trust, we're in it for the long haul, and we are open to taking land into the trust." A spokeswoman for the Trust for Public Land, Susan Clark, said that the trust would also like the opportunity to add more gardens to the land trust it is establishing to oversee the gardens it purchased in 1999.

Community garden advocates would like to see the settlement include the involvement of communities and the consideration of an area's open space and housing needs. "The way to work this out is to create some rational planning standards that would allow community gardens to make a case for their garden," said Steve Frillman, executive director of the Green Guerillas.

Civic and greening groups are working to quickly pass legislation in City Council to require a public process for determining the fate of a garden, hoping to encourage the mayor and attorney general to consider this approach in their negotiations. In the past, similar legislation has stalled in spite of wide grassroots support. The groups - New Yorkers for Parks, the Municipal Arts Society and the League of Conservation Voters - have been lining up support among council members. Mike Klein, deputy director of New Yorkers for Parks, believes there is a better chance of passing the legislation now because of the current "climate of seriousness on solving the problem."

AUDUBON IN THE PARK
An Audubon Center for environmental education opened in Prospect Park this spring, opening a window into nature for the six million people who visit the Brooklyn park each year.

For city kids (and adults as well), a park is one of the only places they can learn about nature first hand. New York City parks harbor a surprising abundance of wild animals and plants, and provide temporary stopovers for migratory birds. In Prospect Park, the wildlife population has increased since the park's interior woodland - Brooklyn's last forest - was restored. More than 200 different bird species were spotted in the park last year.

The Prospect Park Audubon Center, operating in the newly restored 1905 Beaux Arts-style Boathouse, is the first urban Audubon center in the country. It offers exhibits, hands-on indoor activities, bird watching and nature walks as well as programs for school classes developed with educators from nearby School District 17. The center also plans to enlist school groups and park visitors in gathering data for environmental research, like the upcoming July 4th butterfly count. The project is a joint effort of the non-profit Prospect Park Alliance, a public/private partnership that operates and raises funds for the park, and Audubon New York, the New York State branch of the National Audubon Society.

There are other opportunities in all five boroughs to learn about nature in the parks. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation operates a dozen nature centers with weekend events and school programs run by the department's urban park rangers.

BRIDGE PARK PROMISE KEPT
When the realization sunk in that the World Trade Center attack also was a huge hit to the city and state budgets, Brooklyn Bridge Park proponents feared that promised funding for an ambitious new park along the downtown Brooklyn waterfront would vanish. But on May 2, Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg held to their promises, signing a memorandum of understanding setting guidelines for creating and running the park and pledging $150 million for its construction. The agreement signaled a new era of city-state cooperation and gave the green light to a project that Brooklyn residents have been working toward for 15 years.

In the memorandum, the governor and mayor agreed that the master plan created through a public planning process by the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront Local Development Corporation would guide the park's development. They specified that 80 percent of the land would be protected "in perpetuity" as parkland, and that the city and state-owned section of the park will be "developed and operated as a unified and seamless park." A subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation was set up to oversee the process. In addition to committing $85 million in state funds and $65 million in city funds, the state and city affirmed that revenues from any commercial activities in the park would be used for the maintenance and operation of the park.

The next step is to refine the plan and begin an environmental impact statement. But park advocates hope to expand interim uses of part of the site, including one of the piers. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition sponsors a summer film festival in the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, which will become part of the larger park. The city plans to finish a playground and park this summer along the DUMBO waterfront at the foot of Main Street.

Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.

A Year After 911: The Rediscovery Of The City's Parks


Frustrated with the continued low level of public funding for parks in good times and bad, park advocates saw a rare opportunity last year to elect representatives who understood the importance of green space and recreation. The day they looked forward to was September 11, 2001; that was primary day in New York. A coalition called Parks 2001, made up of groups connected to sports, law enforcement, real estate, environmental and community gardens, persuaded most of the candidates, including Michael Bloomberg, to support its goals, including doubling the money allocated to the parks department to one percent of the city's budget.

These hopes were dashed after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and its devastating effect on the city's economy. The budget for parks was cut six percent, and Mayor Bloomberg has asked the parks department (and every other city agency) to shave an additional 7.5 percent from their expenses. There was also a reduction in the four-year capital budget for 2002-2005, which put on hold, perhaps indefinitely, a number of smaller park renovation projects that were already in the works.

Parks Department Commissioner Adrian Benepe testified at a City Council budg et hearing that his number one priority is maintaining safe and clean parks. But New York City's spending on parks and recreation was already among the lowest of 55 major cities in the country. This year's budget cuts and the anticipated fiscal problems over the next few years could reverse recent improvements, unless other ways to support the parks can be found.

This financial blow to the parks comes at a time when the parks are more important than ever to New Yorkers. The candlelight vigils and memorial concerts connected to the anniversary of September 11 are mostly happening -- where else? -- in a large park in each borough: Central Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Flushing Meadows Park, Prospect Park, and Snug Harbor.

The city's public green spaces, from Central Park to the neighborhood community garden, played an essential role in the aftermath of the terror attack on the World Trade Center. On those sunny late summer days, people instinctively sought out natural environments in which to ponder the unfathomable loss. New Yorkers also rediscovered the social function of parks, where strangers can talk to one another, neighbors meet, and community is forged. Along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, in Union Square, and in parks and gardens throughout the city, people left improvised shrines of flowers, flags, candles, photos, and poems. Undoubtedly, this September 11 people will again find their way to the parks.

Gardens, trees, and parks have also been the focus of efforts to remember those who were killed. Last spring, swaths of daffodils bloomed as symbols of remembrance and renewal alongside schools, libraries, firehouses, and highways and in parks. Lynden Miller, co-chair of New Yorkers for Parks, and Adrian Benepe, then Manhattan parks commissioner, came up with the idea for the daffodil planting independently of each other. Hans van Waardenburg of B&K Bulbs in Holland, the city of Rotterdam, and others donated bulbs. The Parks department and a number of park groups worked together to organize ten thousand volunteers to plant the bulbs, which will spread and bloom year after year.

To individuals and communities throughout the metropolitan area, planting trees and flowers has seemed the most fitting memorial. Even small acts of creation - a tree here, a hillside of flowers there -- breathe life into a city that has suffered a terrible loss. Some are at sites where people witnessed the fall of the towers, like a grove planned for a park in Hoboken a mile from Ground Zero. Others are to memorialize members of the community who died.

The Living Memorial Project of the U.S. Forest Service is cataloging these memorials. It now posts 40 projects descriptions on its website and expects to have 100 by the end of the fall.


Sites For Beginners:

  • Neighborhood Open Space Coalition's Treebranch Network -- Among the areas covered by this longtime advocate for New York City open space are greenways, community gardens, parks, the waterfront, and Gateway National Park. Subscribe here free to the electronic version of Urban Outdoors Bulletin, an excellent source of news about parks and related issues.
  • NYC Department of Parks and Recreation -- It's easy to look up any park location, facility, program, or event at this site. You can also take a "virtual tour" (actually, more words than pictures) of several important parks in each borough, or design your own park by playing the NYC planner game. The "Daily Plant," circulated within the department, offers an inside look at park programs and events. Various park permits and applications, including a request for a street tree, can be printed and submitted through the site.
  • OASIS -- An interactive site that lets you view NYC land use maps or aerial photos by borough, neighborhood, community board, or zip code, then zoom in on details like parks, community gardens, or vacant lots and obtain zoning and ownership information. There are some inaccuracies, but users can help update the information.
  • Partnership for Parks -- A joint initiative of the City Parks Foundation and the NYC parks department. Under "What We Do," there is information about the Bronx River and other projects, citywide volunteer events, small grants programs, and many other efforts that help communities support and build constituencies for their parks.
  • Trust for Public Land -- This national open space group has increased its focus on urban areas in recent years. It has helped save community gardens and negotiated the purchase of several new state parks in the city recently. The site provides frequently updated information on the trust's projects and open space issues nationwide. Look under "Research Room" for urban land conservation and federal and state funding.
  • Urban Parks online -- An electronic toolbox for people working on city parks issues, from the Urban Parks Institute (part of the Project for Public Spaces, a NYC non-profit that aims to build community life through public spaces). The site brings together ideas from all over for creating, funding, and maintaining urban parks, and highlights park places and park news from around the country.

Other Recommendations:

  • Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation -- AHR is dedicated to strengthening the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, an important source of funding for urban parks and recreation. The site also has links to the House and Senate web sites, and a listing of all the projects, by state and by county, that have received money from the fund.
  • Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens -- Information on community garden issues, but not recently updated.
  • Brooklyn Botanic Garden -- Visiting this site is the next best thing to visiting the garden: Exhaustive but well organized, it offers virtual tours and everything you would ever want to know about the garden, as well as gardening information and access to the resource center and library.
  • Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation -- The organization that is creating the Brooklyn Bridge Park posts the park's master plan, as well as an overview of the planning process and a trove of background material.
  • Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition -- More information from a coalition of community groups that is working to create a Brooklyn waterfront park. The list of links is an excellent resource.
  • Car-Free Central Park Campaign -- This site for a campaign by the pedestrian and bicyclist advocate Transportation Alternatives lays out arguments for banning cars from Central Park's loop drive and provides the latest news on the issue.
  • Central Park Conservancy -- The official web site of Central Park, with news, events, tours, programs, and more.
  • Green Guerillas -- An organizer of grassroots activism to protect community gardens, this group also offers generous hands-on help: plants, supplies, advice, and volunteers.
  • GreenThumb -- New York City's GreenThumb program has been supporting community gardens for more than 20 years with information, technical assistance, materials, and funding. Check the site for grants, events, information, and links to gardening organization and individual community garden web sites.
  • More Gardens! Coalition -- This organization is active in the efforts to protect community gardens.
  • New York City Audubon -- Focuses on the city's wilder open spaces: Look here for wetlands and wildlife habitat protection, volunteering, and, of course, birding.
  • New York City Environmental Justice Alliance -- A network of grassroots groups working for healthier environments in low-income areas and in communities of color. Its Open Space Equity Campaign helps community-based groups with land use planning, organizing and advocacy to green their neighborhoods. Download a draft of its Green Cities proposal for a state urban environmental investment program.
  • New York Restoration Project -- A lively site from Bette Midler's group, which has been restoring parks in upper Manhattan and has helped save community gardens.
  • Prospect Park Alliance -- Park visitors can look here for park history, destinations, and recreation information.
  • Take a walk, New York -- Sign up here for free one-hour guided walks in some of the city's great and far-flung parks and greenways, sponsored by the New York City Department of Health and the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition.
  • Waterfront Park Coalition -- A project of the New York Conservation Education Fund, the coalition has created an inventory of waterfront park opportunities, assists local groups, and develops funding strategies.

Central Park of Art, Beetles and Cars; First Budget Hearings on Parks


WHITNEY IN CENTRAL PARK
The Whitney Museum's Biennial this spring includes five large-scale artworks by contemporary New York artists commissioned for specific sites in Central Park. This is the first time the park has been part of a major museum exhibit, and also the first time the Whitney Biennial has exhibited art in an outdoor public space. The installations, organized by the Public Art Fund, include a fifty-foot-high leafless tree made of stainless steel near a stand of magnificent American elms, and an ephemeral series of splashes beneath Bow Bridge that appear to be caused by something being dropped into the water.

"Central Park has had a long history of displaying public art on both a permanent and temporary basis," said Rick Lepkowski, spokesman for the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit organization that manages the park. There are traditional statues like the Angel of the Waters at Bethesda Fountain, the only sculpture commissioned during the original design of Central Park. The Public Art Fund sponsors rotating exhibits of contemporary sculpture at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza on Fifth Avenue at 60th Street, and temporary individual pieces have been displayed occasionally in other parts of the park.

Although the exhibition in Central Park was arranged before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office, it could be a harbinger of more ambitious public art to come during his administration. At the press conference announcing the opening of the Whitney Biennial in Central Park, Mayor Bloomberg indicated that he would be open to reconsidering a proposal made in 1981 by the artist Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude for a work covering the entire landscape of Central Park. At the time, the Parks department rejected the installation, called "The Gates," partly because of the crowds it would draw. The concept, which can be viewed on a web site devoted to the artists, involves framing the park's pathways with a series of fifteen-foot-high metal gates. Suspended from each gate would be a free-hanging, golden-colored woven panel meant to wave in the wind toward the next gate. Mayor Bloomberg, who was a board member of the Central Park Conservancy at the time, had argued strongly in favor of the Christo project.

BEETLE THREAT
A much less welcome arrival in Central Park this year is the Asian long-horned beetle. In January, during a survey of the park, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discovered the imported pest in two trees in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, a fenced-off grove of trees in the southeast corner of the park. The Asian long-horned beetle first appeared in New York City in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 1996. It has since infiltrated trees in other parts of Brooklyn, in Bayside and Flushing, Queens, and in several locations in Manhattan. The parks department is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets to determine whether the beetle has infected additional trees in the park. The agencies are also injecting Central Park trees with the pesticide imidacloprid to test whether it can prevent the spread of the beetle. But as of now, the only sure way to kill the beetle and its eggs and to stop it from moving to other trees is to cut down, chip, and burn infested trees. So far, the city has had to destroy about 3,500 infested street, park, and backyard trees. The parks department recently received a state forestry grant of $200,000 to replace trees all over the city that had to be felled because of the beetle.

The one- to one-and-a-half-inch beetle is shiny black with white spots, and long, black-and-white banded antennae. It chews depressions in the bark of trees to lay its eggs. Once hatched, the larvae tunnel into a tree's interior to feed, killing the tree. Characteristic signs of the beetle are pencil- or dime-sized holes in upper tree trunks; piles of sawdust at the base of the tree or where branches meet the trunk; and dark stains from sap seeping out of the holes. The insect has a preference for maples, but will lay its eggs in many other types of hardwood trees. To report beetle sightings, call 1-877-stop-alb. For more information, check the USDA web site.

THE PARK WITHOUT CARS?
While the city is adding art to Central Park, some people would like to see another element subtracted: the automobile. Car-Free Central Park, a campaign of Transportation Alternatives, an advocate for pedestrians and cyclists, is calling for a ban on car traffic on the park's loop drive. (This would not affect the four sunken east-west transverse roads, which Olmsted and Vaux designed to minimize the impact of traffic.) The group's immediate goal is a three-month summer moratorium, to see how traffic patterns and park use would be affected. The new Speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, is on record as supporting the eviction of cars from Central Park, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said, "not in your or my lifetime." Campaign leaders aim to gather 100,000 signatures in a petition drive, which they hope will convince the mayor to change his mind.

FIRST BUDGET HEARING
The Parks and Recreation committee of the New York City Council held a hearing March 19 on the parks department budget, the first step in the council's consideration of Mayor Bloomberg's proposed cuts to the city's 2003 budget. The mayor has called for across-the-board cuts of 13 percent to most city agencies, with additional "contingency" reductions of 7.5 percent.

The hearing was the first held by the newly created stand-alone council committee on parks and recreation. Committee chairman Joseph Addabbo, Jr., led off the session saying that this "affects real people," and that the loss of funding would have an impact on the safety and condition of the parks. "If you want to see a community go down the tubes," he said, "just neglect the parks."

Noting the seriousness of the city's current deficit, the new parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, told the committee, "It is not enough to say you must increase the budget of an agency without identifying where it will come from." Later testimony from representatives of civic and park groups called for restoring the money the mayor proposed to cut from the parks budget. Among those speaking was former parks commissioner Henry Stern. He said the city should give the revenue from park concessions to the parks budget instead of the city's general fund, reminding the committee that most council members and the mayor had promised to do this during the election.

Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.



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