Photo (c) re:kuwait

By the time the first section of the High Line opened in June to wide acclaim, dozens of new buildings had already sprouted up around it, including a glass-curtained hotel that floats above the park and a series of residential towers designed by world-renowned architects. City officials have predicted that development sparked by reinventing the abandoned elevated rail line as a park will bring $4 billion in private investment and $900 million in revenues to the city over the next 30 years, the Times reported.

The surge in development spurred by the High Line is the latest exhibit in the growing stack of evidence that having beautiful, well-maintained parks is much more than a nice amenity cities can ignore when times are hard. Creating and maintaining parks stimulates the economy and also provides quantifiable recreational and environmental benefits along with other services and savings to taxpayers.

In the most recent analyses of the economic benefits of parks, a study found that Central Park contributed $1 billion to the city's economy in 2007. A broader assessment by the Center for City Park Excellence of The Trust for Public Land quantified the real economic benefits that parks provide, using examples from cities around the country.

In supporting the seemingly quixotic vision of West Side residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond, founders of Friends of the High Line, to save the old railway and make it a linear park -- and in incorporating it into the city's planning process for the far West Side -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg indicated he understood the impact public space can have on a city's economic growth. The mayor further recognized the link between parks and prosperity in his sustainability plan, PlaNYC 2030, which aims (though, since the recession, at a slower pace) to create new parks and plazas citywide.

Until the fiscal problems hit last year, the Bloomberg administration had modestly boosted the budget for operating and maintaining the parks department, to about $270 million a year. But next year's budget cuts about $13 million from parks maintenance, eliminating 250 summer workers as well as $3 million for tree pruning. This follows the previous year's reductions, for a total cut of $24 million since 2007.

The parks budget has not had consecutive cuts of this magnitude in more than 15 years. Advocates worry that the reductions could start the city back on the path to the dismal conditions of the 1970s and '80s, reversing a parks revival that contributed to the city's economic resurgence.

"I think we're going to see the consequences through the park system," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks. "We're already strained to take care of our parks, and you're going to see the care go down."

How Parks Boost the Economy

Such cuts could turn out to actually cost the city money. Fine parks contribute to the economy by increasing property values and, as a result, real estate tax receipts. A 2008 analysis found that the completion of the Greenwich Village section of the Hudson River Park raised real estate prices in the adjacent two blocks by 20 percent.

In 2003, a study by Ernst & Young and New Yorkers for Parks looked at the results of investment in six city parks, with supplemental data from 30 additional parks. It found that real estate values were higher on blocks closest to well-managed and maintained parks, such as Prospect Park.

Parks also attract tourists and residents who come to events and activities or who just want to enjoy the surroundings, generating economic activity inside and near the park. Central Park attracts more than 25 million visitors a year, about one fifth of whom come from outside the city, according to "The Central Park Effect," which was prepared by the economic analysis firm Appleseed for the Central Park Conservancy. The study determined that in 2007, spending by visitors and enterprises in the city's most famous park directly and indirectly accounted for $395 million in economic activity. This activity, as well as increases in property values near the park, generated $656 million in revenues for the city in 2007.

"Measuring the Economic Value of a City Park System," released in April by the Center for City Park Excellence at The Trust for Public Land, analyzed seven ways that city parks provide economic benefits: property values, tourism, direct use, health, community cohesion, clean water and clean air. Starting with conservative assumptions of park use and other variables, researchers calculated dollar values for each of these benefits in a different city.

In San Diego, for example, the study determined that, with slightly less than 5 percent of tourists coming to the city especially to visit the parks, park-derived tourist spending in 2007 totaled $114 million. That generated $8.6 million in direct sales and other tax revenue as well as a collective increase of $40 million in residents' wealth.

By offering free or inexpensive recreation, parks also save residents money. In Boston, for example, the study determined that the economic value of direct park use was $354 million.

The health benefits of exercise in parks offer further savings. The study calculated $19.9 million in medical savings realized by residents in Sacramento because of active recreation in parks.

According to the report, "numerous studies have shown that the more webs of human relationships a neighborhood has, the stronger, safer and more successful it is." Well-used parks offer many ways for neighbors to get to know each other, and efforts to create, save, or care for parks create further community cohesiveness. This "social capital" can reduce a city's costs for policing, fire protection and criminal justice. Because the economic value of social capital can't be measured directly, the report cited as a proxy the amount of time and money residents contributed to "friends" groups and other park-oriented organizations and agencies.

Parks also provide quantifiable environmental benefits: Trees and vegetation absorb runoff and reduce costs for treating stormwater; they also absorb air pollutants. Using Philadelphia as an example, the study found that the city's park system saved $5.9 million in 2007 in stormwater management costs. In 2005, the 4,839 acres of tree cover in 7,999 acres of Washington, D.C. parkland produced savings of $1.13 million in air pollutant removal.

Investment Required

To capture the economic benefits of parks, however, a city must invest in their upkeep. Parks help the economy when they are well maintained and well used. They can have a negative effect when they are neglected, attracting vandalism, drug-dealing and other crime. During the New York City fiscal crisis of the 1970s and '80s, dirty, worn and dangerous parks became a potent symbol of the city's decline.

The parks system, compared to other city services, takes a relatively small amount of money to maintain. Although the parks department operating budget has increased since the lows of the early 1990s, the number of park properties has increased by 20 percent, and the department still runs on a budget that park advocates say is not adequate to keep the entire system in good repair.

Especially at risk are parks in the outer boroughs and in lower-income neighborhoods, which have not benefitted as much from the private funding that burnishes the city's flagship parks. Users of some parks and sports fields still contend with trash, locked bathrooms and lack of maintenance. Daily News columnist Denis Hamill described these types of conditions recently inrecounting his experiences as a baseball dad in Queens.

Many of the neighborhoods surrounding these parks have been affected disproportionately by the mortgage crisis and declining real estate prices. Given the economic benefits of well-used and maintained parks -- and the increased need for free recreation and relaxation during a time of financial stress for many residents -- can the city afford to pare down the parks budget further?

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

Photos courtesy of the New York City Dept. of Parks and Recreation

The current waterfront in the Yankee redevelopment zone, with an inset of a rendering of proposed waterfront park.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in early April, people of all ages crowded into the temporary South Bronx park at 161st Street and Jerome Avenue. The three-acre synthetic turf field and track is pinch-hitting for the parkland slated to replace 22 acres of Macombs Dam Park now vanished under the new Yankee Stadium. A baseball team practiced on the diamond at one corner of the field; in another corner, a half-dozen boys played soccer. Squeezed in the middle, members of the Bronx Colts football teams ran their drills.

Their coach, Leroy Freeman, Jr., stood and watched. He said that finding practice space, especially this time of year when so many sports compete for space, has been difficult during the three years since Macombs Dam Park closed. Like many school and neighborhood teams, the four football teams fielded by his Bronx Colts Youth Foundation have been traveling around the borough to play their games. Freeman is impatient for the replacement parks to open.

"We've got kids out here that need these fields – they need these fields." he said. Being involved in the sports program, he said, "keeps them away from the streets, builds up their character. It gives them hope."

Map from Dept. of Parks and Recreation

View full map

When the deal was made to build a new Yankees ballpark on the worn but beloved swath of parkland, the city said that most of the new parks to replace it would be ready when the new stadium opened. The Yankees play their home opener in the new stadium on April 16, but the first section of new parkland won't be finished until months after baseball season ends. However impressive the new facilities might be, residents are irritated at the delays and sad at the sight of the massive new structure in the middle of the former stretch of green. Many say the patchwork of new parks can never truly replace what they viewed as their Central Park.

The Park Swap

For the better part of two decades, the Yankees tried to get the city to replace their outmoded stadium, threatening to move the team out of the city.

In 2005 the team and the Bloomberg administration reached an agreement in which the Yankees would pay for the construction of a new stadium, assisted by more than $800 million in tax-exempt financing, property and sales tax exemptions and public subsidies for parking garages, new parkland and other infrastructure. The Yankees would get to build their new ballpark and several garages on parkland owned by the city -- to the north and west of the old stadium in Macombs Dam Park and part of Mullaly Park. By building there, the Yankees would displace four baseball fields, two basketball and 32 handball courts, 16 tennis courts, and a soccer/football field ringed by the quarter-mile Joseph Yancey Track, where the first U.S. interracial track team developed many Olympic athletes.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion and state legislators fast-tracked the legislative approval required to take over, or "alienate," the parkland before residents had a chance to have a say in the process.

By law, when parkland is alienated, it must be replaced by parks of equivalent value, usefulness and accessibility.

To comply with this, the city came up with a plan to build numerous new recreational spaces, ranging in size from less than half an acre to almost 10 acres. The pieces add up to about 32 acres, some of which is existing parkland or mapped parkland that had been used for other purposes. The sites include the rooftop of a parking garage being built on top of two of the former Macombs Dam Park ballfields, an abandoned industrial site along Harlem River and the footprint of the old Yankee stadium.

The Grand New Parks

Parks officials recently led reporters on a tour of the new parks under construction. They said the new recreational facilities will be much better than those they will replace and incorporate requests made by residents at a series of public meetings.

The centerpiece of the garage-top park will be a synthetic turf multi-purpose field for soccer and football, surrounded by a state-of-the art 400-meter running track, with bleachers overlooking it all. There will also be four basketball and eight handball courts, a comfort station and an office.

Part of the field and a temporary track is slated to open sometime in April, fenced off from the surrounding construction. The entire rooftop, being built in two sections, was originally set to open along with the new stadium. It now is supposed to come on line in spring 2010.

Parks spokesperson Jama Adams said that the department is no longer using synthetic turf filled with recycled black crumb rubber. Instead it will use a light-green-colored virgin rubber infill. This fill is cooler, although the exact amount hasn’t been determined, she said. Standard synthetic turf can reach temperatures of up to 130 degrees.

Beds at the edge of the roof will be planted with shrubs and trees. "When you're up here, you won't even know you're on a parking garage," said Thomas Balsley, the principal of Thomas Balsley Associates, the landscape architecture and urban design firm that is designing the new parks.

The rooftop park is at street level on the west but above grade next to the old Yankee Stadium. The stadium will be razed and replaced with three regulation ballfields -- for baseball, softball and Little League -- and renamed Heritage Park.

Balsley explained that the design seamlessly connects the garage-top park with Heritage Park. Heritage Park will also have a play area, grassy mounds where people will be able to sit and watch the games and perimeter plantings. "It is not normal to have such a rich landscape palette associated with sports fields," said Balsley. "I like to imagine it is a park and we have carved some ballfields out of it."

Between the two spaces will be a tree-lined walkway, called Ruppert Plaza, leading to the stadium from a pedestrian bridge to the new Metro North station.

Construction has also begun on the waterfront park along the Harlem River, across from the Gateway Mall scheduled to open in late 2009.

That parkland is being built on piles because of soil settlement. It will feature a pedestrian/bicycle path, a beach, passive park areas and viewing platforms and 16 tennis courts, a dozen of which can be covered with a bubble for indoor play. The concessionaire will have the option, parks officials say, to turn the four outdoor courts into a skating rink in winter.

The plan also includes renovating an historic powerhouse to house the tennis concessionaire, the Bronx park headquarters and rental space.

The Temporary Solution

To help compensate for the loss of playing fields, in 2007, a year after stadium construction began, the city opened the temporary ballfield and track at 161st Street and Jerome Avenue, a site earmarked for another parking garage. In 2008, it completed a synthetic-turf baseball field and refurbished the basketball and handball courts at P.S. 29, a mile away from the original park, and constructed a synthetic turf field for soccer and baseball at the West Bronx Recreation Center, a mile and a half away.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Parks and Recreation

"To minimize the impact of the new park construction on the sports season, the department worked closely with neighborhood athletic teams and successfully accommodated all field permit holders on other fields, including: the interim ballfield at 161st and Jerome Avenue (formerly Lot 1), Franz Sigel Park, P.S. 29 Ballfield, Pelham Bay Park, Allerton Field, and Van Cortlandt Park," parks department spokesperson Jesslyn Tiao Moser wrote in an email message.

Using Yankee Stadium funds together with mitigation money from the Van Cortlandt Park filtration plant, the parks department has also nearly completed an extensive renovation of the remaining part of Mullaly Park. It added a synthetic turf soccer field, upgraded the two softball fields, and added new playgrounds, gardens and dozens of new trees.

The department began planting the trees in 2005, and has since planted 45 percent of the 8,000 young trees to replace the larger trees cut down in Macombs Dam Park, although only a few hundred are near the original park site.

A row of tall street trees along 164th Street, opposite Mullaly Park, got a reprieve, said Frank McCue, parks department stadia project manager. Once slated to make way for a parking garage, the trees were saved when the city decided to shrink the garage by 200 spaces instead.

More Days, More Dollars

Yankee Stadium and the new Metro North station were both completed on schedule, but the replacement parkland has been subject to delays and will be not be fully complete until the fall of 2011, according to the current timeline. Meanwhile, the estimated cost to the taxpayers, one that would not have been incurred if the Yankees had rebuilt their new stadium at the site of the old one, has risen from $116 million to $195 million, according to the Independent Budget Office.

At a City Council hearing in June 2008, Liam Kavanagh, parks department first deputy commissioner, said that the delays were due to the complexity of the sites as well as the discovery of an unexpectedly large quantity of toxic oil barrels at the waterfront site.

According to the budget office report, the cost increases can be attributed to the expansion and revision of some of the projects, unanticipated environmental clean-up, delays and a steeper climb in construction costs than initially estimated.

The delays and cost overruns seem a logical consequence of trying to replace parkland in an area where no natural open space remains. The three major replacement sites require complicated engineering, demolition and/or environmental clean-ups.

The city has not explained why it did not begin dismantling the old stadium immediately after the final season ended, so that it could begin construction of the replacement ballfields sooner. The Mets demolished their old ballpark as soon as the season was over.

The city also plans to build two pocket parks, a playground and a skate park on opposite sides of 161st Street, across River Avenue from the old stadium. The sites are now paved lots that were actually mapped as parkland but have been used for stadium parking and, as a result, require environmental remediation.

Scattered Sites

No matter how well designed and up-to-date the new facilities turn out to be, neighborhood residents and park advocates maintain that it was never a fair exchange. The new parks, plazas and sports fields will be scattered throughout the neighborhood and beyond, closer to the pollution and noise of the Major Deegan Expressway. The waterfront park site – the largest segment at 9.88 acres – is a 20 to 30 minute walk from residential areas.

Residents say that all these bits and pieces can never replace the breathing space an expanse of trees and grass provides, or the way such a centrally located park binds together a community and creates a sense of place and identity. In a neighborhood that suffers from some of the highest asthma rates in the city, they are also concerned about an increase in exposure to pollutants from the highway and fumes from the parking garage.

The felling of 377 mature trees and careless construction practices has exacerbated the air pollution. Throughout the construction process, trucks idled from 6 a.m. on, residents say, and the air was frequently filled with dust from construction trucks tracking dirt through the neighborhood.

Residents are also concerned about maintenance and safety in the new parks. Jose Rodriguez, district manager of Bronx Community Board 4, said that because the pedestrian plaza from the Metro North station to the stadium will be open 24 hours a day, neighbors are worried about the potential for crime and have asked for security cameras.

Locals also say that Macombs Dam Park suffered from lack of maintenance and wonder whether the city will be able keep up the new parks properly, especially given the current dire budget situation. Moser said that the parks department is "committed to maintaining the new parks with a combination of 'fixed post' and district maintenance and operations crews."

The Yankees, long accused of being a bad neighbor to the low-income community that surrounds the stadium, promised to donate $800,000 a year to neighborhood organizations through a Community Benefits Agreement made with local politicians, but none of the funding will go to parks maintenance.

That agreement has been criticized for lack of community input and delays in distributing the money; the organization set up to divide the money recently was sued for mismanagement. "There is no relation between parks and the Community Benefits Fund now, but we may consider how that money could be used to maintain parks," said Moser in an email.

Meanwhile, three springs after they lost their Central Park, the families of Highbridge – and the players and coaches on the soccer, football, baseball and track teams for the local schools and sports leagues – still wait for their parks.

When the partial field and running track opens on the garage roof later this month, the temporary ballfield will close to allow construction of another parking garage. Baseball players will be out of luck -- their new fields will be the last completed, after Yankee Stadium is demolished and Heritage Park is built.

Sean Sullivan, the principal and baseball coach at All Hallows High School, a parochial school whose teams used to play in Macombs Dam Park, told the Daily News, "We're like gypsies, running around the city trying to find a field to play in." The Yankee Community Benefits Fund recently turned down the school's request for $40,000 to help defray the $60,000 the school spent to replace buses to take the teams to their games.

"The Yankees are going to open up and the community still doesn't have what it's been promised," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks. "And we did this all for the purpose of a private, for-profit corporation not to miss a day of making money."

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

Photo (c) NYC Dept of Parks, Photo by Malcolm Pinckney

Harlem River Park Daffodils

To balance New York State's budget in the deepening recession, Gov. David Paterson is proposing a thousand painful cuts in state services from education to health care to the arts. But his proposed cuts would fall disproportionately on parks and open space, particularly on the principal state funding source for this, the Environmental Protection Fund. The dedicated fund, as well as other state money, has been instrumental in the city's reclamation of the waterfront over the last decade and in protecting some of its last natural and open spaces.

The Environmental Protection Fund was set up in 1993 to provide a consistent source of funding, in good times and bad, to protect the state's environment and public health and invest in its future sustainability. The fund's revenue comes primarily from the state real estate transfer tax, and the money is supposed to be spent only on open space, solid waste, parks, recreation and historic preservation.

The New York City projects that have relied on this funding source include the Hudson River Park, the Bronx River, the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, the Harlem River Greenway and the effort to recover Jamaica Bay's disappearing wetlands. A report recently released by Friends of New York's Environment, a broad-based coalition advocating for real increases in the fund, highlights projects throughout the state that were made possible by the fund.

'Sweeping' the Fund

Over the last decade, appropriations for the Environmental Protection Fund have fluctuated between $100 million and $150 million a year.

Like a child's piggybank to an unscrupulous parent, however, the fund often presented a tempting target for governors seeking to balance the budget. They have frequently "swept" unspent money from the fund and used it for unrelated programs. "Over the years, the Environmental Protection Fund has been raided to the tune of half a billion dollars," said Tim Sweeney, director of the Campaign for Parks, a state parks advocacy coalition. "They couch it in terms of loans but none of the money has been repaid so far."

"It's not really extra money – it's money that should go to environmental programs," said Jessica Ottney, director of state government relations at The Nature Conservancy. It often takes longer than a year for new programs and complicated transactions like land acquisitions to spend allocated money, she said. Taking unspent funds "eliminates money for projects that are already under way and then it may not be there when it is needed."

In 2007, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and the legislature agreed that there was a need to significantly increase funding and passed legislation to boost appropriations to $250 million in fiscal year 2008-2009 and nearly $300 million for the 2009-2010 fiscal year and subsequent years.

Then the financial crisis hit, and Paterson reduced spending mid-year to $205 million and swept $25 million into the general fund. For next fiscal year, the governor proposes to keep the fund at $205 million and sweep $45 million of unspent money.

In the most draconian cut for the coming year, he entirely eliminated the fund's program that supports zoos, botanical gardens and aquariums, which would force severe cutbacks in hours, public programs and free visiting days at some of the city's major tourist attractions.

State capital funds to continue building the Hudson River Park remain for the coming year, but the governor is proposing zero funding –- both capital and operating -– for Governors Island, which relies on both city and state funds, although not through the Environmental Protection Fund.

The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corp., the city-state partnership that operates the former military base and is developing it for green space, recreation, education and other uses, has been opening the island to the public every summer. Last year, more than 128,000 people took the short ferry ride to listen to folk music, picnic, tour the historic military sites and bicycle around the car-free island.

Without state funding, the island would remain shuttered this summer. Although the city has said it would provide its share of the $14.8 million in operating funds requested by the corporation, it may withhold that money if there is no state match. Uncertainty over state funding could jeopardize millions of dollars of private funding from the arts and concert groups that are now planning next summer's programs. Keeping the island closed this summer could cost the city several million dollars in lost tourism revenue, according to Robert Pirani, executive director of the Governors Island Alliance.

Eliminating capital funding would bring to a halt plans for developing the island and creating more than 100 acres of parkland, and allow further deterioration of the historic buildings. "We're nervous that if you're not moving forward, you're moving backward," said Pirani.

No Deposit, No Return

Under Paterson's budget proposal, funding for parks and open space would be cut not just in the upcoming fiscal year but permanently diminished through a change in the funding formula.

Revenue for the fund now comes from the real estate transfer tax. In past years, that tax has generated about $1 billion a year, but receipts have fallen with the decline in the real estate market. Many other states use a similar mechanism, tying a fee on real estate transactions to funding for projects that would mitigate the impact of development, provide recreation and green space for growing communities, and protect water bodies and natural areas.

Paterson wants to replace this source of environmental funding with money from unclaimed bottle deposits. That would require the passage of an updated bottle bill, the so-called "bigger better bottle bill," which would expand the 5-cent bottle deposit to sports drinks and bottled water and require beverage companies to turn over unclaimed deposits to the state.

If the updated bottle bill were to pass, the amount of unclaimed deposits is estimated at $118 million. For parks and open space, the governor proposes an additional $80 million from the real estate transfer tax and $7 million from a variety of other sources. That would keep future spending at the level proposed for next year, a third less than the amount legislators agreed in 2007 was long overdue to meet the state's needs to protect open space, farmland and water supplies, build and maintain parks and revive waterfronts.

"Two years ago, the state was facing a very different financial outlook," said Jeffrey Gordon, a spokesman for the New York State budget division. "Clearly New York is facing a fiscal decline greater than any we've seen since the Great Depression and reductions were taken across all areas of state spending."

Environmental and parks groups argue that the savings generated from reducing Environmental Protection Fund spending would only be illusory. "These programs are much less expensive than the costs associated with environmental clean-ups, public health impacts and lost revenue from recreation and tourism," said Norreida Reyes, conservation director of the Sierra Club Atlantic chapter, in a prepared statement.

In their reaction to the financial crisis, said Ottney of the Nature Conservancy, state officials appear to view open space, parks and other environmental programs as discretionary items. But, she said, "they are not options, they are necessities."

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

Image from Talk Bronx

Four years into the construction of a controversial underground water filtration plant in the Bronx, a steep rise in projected costs has revived questions about whether the city made the best financial decision in choosing the location over an aboveground site in Westchester.

The city's economic crisis has made these questions more pressing than ever, adding to the concern over the amount of debt the city has taken on for capital projects and the future cost of paying the interest on that debt.

The escalating cost of the facility, which will be one of the largest water filtration plants in the world, is one of a number of complaints raised by critics, who opposed ever placing it in the Bronx and say the city is mismanaging the project. As they watch over the construction of the plant as well as associated work at nearby Jerome Park Reservoir, they want to ensure that the city keeps its promises to provide jobs to local residents, minimize the environmental impacts of construction in residential neighborhoods and spend an additional $240 million on Bronx parks.

Local politicians and state officials agreed to let the city build the filtration plant after the Bloomberg administration made these promises. Other projects throughout the city -- from Willets Point to Atlantic Yards to Yankee Stadium -- also faced local opposition and entail similarly elaborate agreements for community improvements, affordable housing and more. The ongoing saga of the filtration plant in the north Bronx shows the need for constant vigilance by residents and elected officials to make sure these promises are kept.

Going Underground

The plant's roots go back to the late 1990s. The federal government has deemed much of the city's water so pristine that it need not undergo filtration. Since 1998, though, the city has been under a court order to begin filtering the portion of its water supply that originates in the Croton watershed, east of the Hudson River, so that it can meet federal drinking water standards. For nearly two decades, residents and elected officials in the northern Bronx fought the city's attempts to build a water filtration plant there. They succeeded in blocking the first proposed location at the Jerome Park Reservoir.

Van Cortlandt Park is number 2 on the map above.

Many pushed for the plant to be built outside of the city, at a non-residential site in Westchester County. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which manages the city's water supply, preferred the Bronx site because of its proximity to existing water tunnels as well as for various engineering issues. It also wanted to keep the filtration plant within the city borders for security reasons. City construction unions lobbied heavily to put the plant in the Bronx.

In 2003, the city won the necessary approval from the state legislature to build an underground facility on 28 acres of Van Cortlandt Park beneath the driving range of the park's Mosholu Golf Course. In return, the Bloomberg administration agreed to spend $200 million to restore and build parks in every Bronx assembly district plus $40 million on improvements in Van Cortlandt Park. It promised that environmental impacts would be mitigated and jobs would go to local residents.

The final environmental impact statement determined that building the plant in a 10-story-deep hole blasted from the bedrock, and then restoring the surface, would cost less than building at the more distant above-ground site in Westchester.

The Cost Increases

Plant opponents argue that it defies basic common sense to think that building a one-of-kind underground facility would be less expensive than a standard plant above ground. They say that the environmental agency deliberately understated the costs of building in Van Cortlandt Park to convince people it was the best location.

Since 2003, the projected cost of building the Croton Water Filtration Plant, as the project is called, and the associated off-site infrastructure has risen from $1.3 billion to more than $3 billion. It has been plagued by delays as well. Originally set for completion in 2006, the city now expects it to come on line in 2012.

The delays have already cost the city money. The federal government fined New York City $4.78 million after it missed a 2007 deadline for hiring a primary contractor for the plant.

Financing for the city Department of Environmental Protection, including debt service on large capital projects like the filtration plant, comes from water and sewer fees, not general city revenues. The department says that two recent increases in city water rates are not related to rising costs at the filtration plant. Whether or not that is true, ultimately city residents and businesses will bear the additional costs.

"The costs have turned out to be what we feared -- enormous -- and the water rate payers are the ones who pay," said Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the area and is an outspoken critic of the plant.

In April 2008, New York City Comptroller William Thompson began an audit of the project, which is still in progress, according to press officer Laura Rivera.

The city Independent Budget Office analyzed the costs in an October 2008 report. "We tried to look at how much of it is due to general construction cost escalation, sometimes known as inflation, and our sense is that explains about 45 percent of the increase," budget office deputy director George Sweeting said, according to the Riverdale Press. He added that it would be fair to assume that the plant's costs would have ballooned wherever the plant was built. He cautioned that the analysis is not an audit.

"A number of factors, including general inflation in the construction industry and the highly competitive construction market in New York City, contributed to the rise in construction costs for the Croton plant," Angel Román, deputy press secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection, wrote in an email message.

Design changes and the withdrawal of the original contractor further added to the cost.

The report from the budget office shows that more than $600 million in projected costs were not included in the 2003 final supplemental environmental impact statement. These costs were not included in the estimates for either location, said budget office analyst Ana Champeny.

Certainly major cost overruns are not unusual. Last week Thompson issued a report indicating that the cost of capital projects, which are funded primarily with debt, has escalated by 187 percent since fiscal year 1990.

Requests by Dinowitz and other Bronx officials for a full city, state or federal investigation of the construction costs and potential conflicts of interest in the decision to site the plant have gone unanswered.

One possible conflict, according to plant critics, involves Christopher Ward, who was commissioner of the city Department of Environmental Protection at the time of the plant's approval and now chairs the Port Authority. "We know that the main advocacy group for building in Van Cortlandt Park was the General Contractors Association. We also know that on the day the City Council gave final approval for the plan, Ward resigned, and almost a year later took the top job at the General Contractors Association," Dinowitz said. His year wait, Dinowitz charges, fulfilled the letter but not the spirit of city conflict of interest laws.

Reducing the Environmental Impact

Aside from the costs in dollars, an undertaking of this magnitude carries a number of environmental costs, bringing significant noise, dust, vehicular exhaust and other possible hazards.

"The project requires enough concrete to build a sidewalk from New York to Miami and enough pipe to reach the top of the Empire State Building 140 times over. Workers carved out enough dirt from the ground to fill more than 100,000 dump trucks," Roman wrote in an email.

The project's environmental impact statement called for minimizing the effects of such a mammoth effort on the adjacent community, home to about 26,000 people in a half-mile radius.

Residents say that construction crews successfully muffled the noise of blasting to prepare the underground site, but it took several years before the Department of Environmental Protection was able to get pollution controls installed on construction vehicles at the site, as promised.

The Croton Facility Monitoring Committee, which includes representatives of local community boards, elected officials and the parks and environment departments, was established to provide oversight of construction.

Lyn Pyle, who lives across the street and was on the monitoring committee during the first year of construction, said the environment department was unable to do anything to reduce pollution from the parade of trucks going back and forth through the neighborhood. The situation improved after the city passed a law in 2007 requiring trucks to have the best available pollution controls.

Residents say that, with prodding from community representatives on the monitoring committee, the Department of Environmental Protection has become more sensitive to the neighborhoods' concerns. The process at Van Cortlandt Park is much better than the one at Yankee Stadium, which does not have a mechanism for community oversight, said Karen Argenti, a former Bronx resident who has remained involved in both issues.

Nevertheless, there remains a legacy of mistrust of the city. It was reinforced last summer when the environment department announced that it would use explosives to dig a shaft at Jerome Park Reservoir, across the street from the Bronx High School of Science. A judge blocked the blasting, and the agency ultimately decided to use surface drilling instead.

Longtime watchdogs also are concerned about the leakage of large amounts of groundwater at the underground construction site, which they said is enormously wasteful. The project has a permit to discard up to 1.2 million gallons of groundwater and stormwater runoff a day into the city's sewage system during construction.

The design for restoring the surface includes creating artificial wetlands to filter and hold runoff as well as any remaining groundwater flows. “We anticipate that the final design will incorporate several beneficial reuse and management strategies,” Román wrote in an email.

Jobs for the Community

As with many projects, the city sold the filtration plant on the promise of jobs for local (typically minority) residents. Very few of the jobs have materialized, however.

At the Croton plant, federal restrictions against hiring people based on where they live hampered such efforts. The lack of a labor agreement with the contractor to set aside apprenticeships for non-union members has also hindered job creation efforts. In addition, many young Bronx residents don't have the high school degree or training to gain entry to the various construction unions that control the jobs, said Gregory Faulkner, who has been deeply involved in this issue as chair of Bronx Community Board 7 and the monitoring committee.

In seeking subcontracting jobs, minority businesses, which tend to be small, face obstacles such as the prohibitive cost of insurance, the lack of political connections and a demanding certification process.

"It is very troubling when you have a community that needs jobs and you see billions of dollars being spent and they don't go to the community," said Faulkner. He said, however, that the Department of Environmental Conservation and Skanska, the contractor constructing the plant, are making improvements.

Several programs show promise, he said. Skanska has trained two classes of local contractors in a program it created, and the environment department provided funding to Project H.I.R.E., a construction skills training program of Bronx Community College, which has trained 60 neighborhood residents so far.

The environment department reported to the monitoring committee that Bronx residents held 23 percent of the filtration plant jobs in the last month. Faulkner said that percentage is greater than several years ago, but the agency's goal of 25 percent is too low. "I'd like it at 80 percent," he said.

The parks department does not have figures on how many local workers or contractors have been hired to build or renovate Bronx parks. "Our contractors have employed Bronx residents for the Croton park projects and we encourage them to continue to do so whenever possible," parks spokesperson Jesslyn Moser wrote in an email. "Parks seeks the lowest bidders for our park construction projects. Unfortunately, some of the Bronx based subcontractors are not the lowest responsive bidders to our projects so they are not hired."

Parks Benefits

When the water plant was approved, many people expressed skepticism that the $240 million for fixing up Bronx parks would really come through. Much of it has, though. So far, the city has spent $120 million to complete 23 of the 67 promised park projects, according to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. Another 20 are under construction and the rest are in the pipeline. Asked if the current economic crisis might affect the funding, he said, "I think it's highly unlikely these things will be cut."

"I think the real story here is how much good has been accomplished for the citizens of the Bronx in addition to the public good created by the filtration plant," Benepe said.

Even critics agree. The parks are "the one positive that's come out of this project," said Dinowitz. But he and many residents say that it was too high a price to pay. "The Bronx should not have to accept such an awful project in its midst to get money for parks," he said.

Photo from NYC.gov

The newly renovated Sachkerah Woods Playground.

The $2.3 million Sachkerah Woods Playground adjacent to the filtration plant site was one of the first projects. It was designed with a great deal of community involvement, and residents are very happy with it, said Ora Holloway, a 32-year resident who led a long community effort to rid that corner of the park of drugs and prostitution and build a playground.

Restoring the golf course has proved more controversial. Many people predicted that security concerns would prompt the city to restrict public use in the area over the plant. But plans are moving forward for a new driving range, golf clubhouse and parking lot on top of the plant.

These plans, however, have drawn some opposition. At a recent presentation of the design, residents were dismayed to find that the clubhouse and a 75-car parking lot encroached upon a grassy field next to the new playground, a space where families picnic and young people play pick-up sports.

"In the summertime, that area is so full it is unbelievable," said Holloway.

Barry McLoughlin, executive director of the Mosholu Golf Course, which is run by the nonprofit youth development program The First Tee, said, though, that the city had agreed to restore the parking once the plant was complete and that the spaces are needed to accommodate golfers and school buses and provide revenue for the program.

After objections from residents, the city's Design Commission gave preliminary approval to the project on the condition that the agencies restudy the parking lot design. Benepe said that the parking lot has since been moved. The final design is expected to be released in a few months.

From Park to Plant

Although the city seems to be fulfilling its promises on improving parks, the placement of the filtration plant in the park remains troubling to advocates, who say that city infrastructure doesn't belong in parks, unless there is no alternative.

The project, they say, set a disturbing precedent for taking over, or "alienating," parkland for a non-park use over the objections of elected officials who represent the community. In effect, this deprives the community of a say in what happens in their park. To add to advocates' concerns, the filtration plant decision was soon followed by the taking of Macombs Dam Park for a new Yankee Stadium before the community had a chance to protest.

"Parkland is an easy mark," said Dinowitz. "No one lives there. The city both under this and the previous administration treats parkland as prime real estate and that should never be."

Benepe noted, however, that numerous city parks, including Central Park, have city infrastructure. Because of the mitigation money, he said, "parks in the Bronx are replete with hundreds of acres of recreational facilities that are being dramatically improved. That has never happened before with any public facility put into a park."

Yankee Stadium presents a more troubling picture. As of last spring, the cost of replacing the parkland the Yankees took over for their new stadium had almost doubled, and many of the new parks, set to open along with the new stadium this spring, had fallen two years behind schedule.

Residents say that the new parks are not a fair trade because they are much farther from where people live than the old facilities were, and part of the replacement is artificial turf on top of a parking garage.

The Yankees say they are fulfilling promises to provide jobs for minorities and woman, construction contracts to Bronx businesses and a job-training program made in a Community Benefits Agreement with Bronx officials. So far, though, there has been no independent oversight to verify this. In addition, the team was supposed to set aside money -- about $1.2 million a year -- for local nonprofit groups, but it took more than two years before the first grants were distributed.

The recent parkland takings have led park advocates to seek greater protection for public land. The nonprofit advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks is exploring legislation that requires the city to complete an environmental review before parkland can be taken.

"Outcomes are important - you can't delay projects forever," said Christian DiPalermo, the organization's executive director. "But the more people are heard, the better your development or your change of use is going to be accepted in the long run."

Photo (cc) Chris Tofu

Over the past eight years, federal support for urban parks has largely evaporated. Now parks advocates hope that a new administration with strong city connections will put urban parks back on the agenda.

This would come at a time of increased appreciation for parks in cities. Even as federal dollars for parks have dwindled, a renewed investment in parks and public spaces from city, state and private sources has helped revitalize urban centers. Cities all over the country are realizing that fixing up parks, adding recreation and greening the cityscape not only improves residents' quality of life and the environment, but also attracts business investment and raises real estate values.

Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley has been in the vanguard, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also been building a green legacy, adding more than 300 acres of parks and renovating parks and playgrounds throughout the city, continuing the effort to restore parks that was launched by nonprofit conservancies beginning in the 1980s. The Bloomberg administration has spent $1.5 billion in capital funding on parks projects so far, according to parks department spokesman Philip Abramson. New and restored parks and sports fields and the unfurling of parks and greenways along the waterfront have created outdoor recreation and community gathering spots that that make people want to stay in the city to raise their families, instead of dispersing to the suburbs.

The Change in Washington

Two federal programs provide grants for state and local park projects and inner-city park rehabilitation, maintenance and recreation programs: the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Program. During the Bush administration, both received little to none of the total amount Congress was authorized to spend when the legislation passed in the 1970s - $900 million a year for the conservation fund and $725 million over five years for the urban park recovery program.

Now, though, parks advocates see reason for optimism. President-elect Barack Obama is the first president in decades to come from a city, and he has promised to renew efforts to protect the environment. The advocates hope he will begin by including parks in his of proposed economic stimulus package of infrastructure rebuilding and energy projects.

"A lot of people on the Obama team are from Chicago and have seen what the whole investment in green infrastructure did for that city," said Drew Becher, executive director of the New York Restoration Project, which is partnering with the city on its Million Trees project and improving parks in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. "We can take this and make it something on the national scale."

Parks as Stimulus

In mid-December, the citywide advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks and a number of city park conservancies and other nonprofit park partners signed a joint letter to the New York State congressional delegation calling for the inclusion of parks in the federal stimulus package.

The letter mentions numerous projects in the city that are fully planned or already under way where work could begin within a few months, as would be required under the plan. These include the Hudson River Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway. The New York City parks department reportedly has more than 25 projects, at a cost of $1 billion, ready to be started within 120 days.

PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg's blueprint for making the city environmentally and economically sustainable as it grows over the next 25 years, aims to put a park or public plaza within a 10-minute walk of every resident, complete greenways, provide more playing fields and playgrounds, plant a million new trees, and add street plantings and "bluebelts" to help capture stormwater runoff that is polluting the harbor.

The funding for this new wave of green infrastructure remains in place, said Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna, but last spring revenue shortfalls caused the city to stretch out the current (FY 2009) four-year capital plan to a five-year schedule, which will slow all capital construction, including parks. "We already have a built-in program of projects that could move forward now if we had an infusion of cash," said La Vorgna. "Within that plan, there is a heavy emphasis on parks."

Greening the Country by Greening Cities

Although the Obama team is focused on conservation, energy efficiency and the development of new energy sources, it is not clear whether it is looking at the role of green and livable urban communities as part of its strategy to reduce energy use and curb the greenhouse emissions that cause global warming.

Vehicles burn two thirds of the petroleum used in the United States and produce about a quarter of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to developing more efficient vehicles, policies and programs that encourage people to live in cities and to cluster suburban development would diminish the consumption of fossil fuels. These would include changing the patterns of where we live and how we commute. Improved mass transit, making communities more pedestrian and bicycle friendly and "smart growth" that encourages clustered development can all play a role.

Another piece is creating and sustaining vibrant cities and cohesive communities -- and the parks and public spaces that help make them that way. Making cities and towns more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly further reduces their carbon footprints, as does planting trees and other vegetation. Minimizing sprawl also protects other equally vital resources, such as clean water, farmland and wildlife habitat.

Some observers express concern that, in our rush to invest in infrastructure and get people working immediately, we could cast in stone environmentally wasteful development patterns and continue the haphazard 20th century suburban and exurban exodus.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, for one, wrote recently that he feared the stimulus plan would be the federal version of "This Old House," reinforcing the existing sprawl instead of building on the emerging movement to create town centers and meeting places that reverse the isolation and, though he didn't mention it, the unsustainability, of the suburbs.

The Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit that works to turn public spaces into community places, seconded that concern in a discussion about the proposed infrastructure investment on its forum for a new "placemaking" movement: "There is a disturbing message that this money will be spent overwhelmingly on roads and bridges and a real danger that the (stimulus) plan will retard innovation and entrench us in the past."

Assuming it comes to fruition, the billions of dollars in federal spending will shape the American landscape for the next century. Will it entrench the wasteful consumption of energy, land, water and natural resources or put us on the way toward a more livable and sustainable strategy that will give a real symbolic significance to Obama's acceptance speech in Grant Park?

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

Image (c) Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign

Illustration of the intersection of Broadway and West 97th Street from the The Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign's "Blueprint for the Upper West Side".

Last year's campaign to create more people-friendly streets on the Upper West Side was launched with visions of Copenhagen or Paris, or at least of closing Broadway to cars. But what has emerged from a yearlong collaboration of the community, transportation experts and advocacy groups is a more modest set of proposals that can be put in place piecemeal and at a relatively low cost. Together, however, these streetscape changes could make the Upper West Side a much greener and safer place and set a precedent for other neighborhoods.

The report, the Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets, proposes a number of design elements, including physically separated bike lanes in both directions along Broadway's median, extended curbs and raised crosswalks at intersections and parking spots replaced with sidewalk "bulb-outs" for seating, bicycle parking, greenery and garbage pick-up.

The effort aims to ride the momentum of the city's new focus on the streets as public space. The debate over the plan on the Upper West Side could be played out in neighborhoods across the city as the administration and transportation advocates come up with similar proposals for those communities.

The Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign "is the community's effort to put it on a silver platter for a Department of Transportation that's interested in seeing a lot of good change roll out," said Wiley Norvell, spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, one of the groups working on the plan.

The plan has the support of the neighborhood's elected officials, including Councilmember Gale Brewer, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal and Borough President Scott Stringer. So far, the Bloomberg administration is noncommittal. Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Gastel said, "The study proposed some interesting ideas for the Upper West Side, which we will keep in mind as we look for ways to improve the area."

But entrenched attitudes about driving and, especially, parking in the neighborhood could pose obstacles to implementing the full range of proposals. Any street changes would require support from the local community board, which has to balance a wide range of interests.

"I think the community as a whole is hungry for the changes," said Helen Rosenthal, chairwoman of Community Board 7, "but it does mean for some people giving up things they've become accustomed to."

A Changing View of City Streets

Although Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attempt to reduce traffic through congestion pricing failed, the Department of Transportation, under commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, has gone into high gear to make the streets more livable in other ways. Over the last three years, the department has created new pedestrian plazas, built 200 miles of bicycle lanes, closed streets on summer weekends and launched new programs for safer streets for seniors and schoolchildren. It is looking at how to improve especially congested corridors throughout the city in ways that meet the needs of all users, not just drivers..

The department presented its new planning approach in a recent report, World Class Streets. "Designing streets as great places for people and not just as utilitarian corridors for vehicles takes full advantage of New York's density and vibrancy — it's a new frontier in ensuring that New York remains the greatest city in the world," said Sadik-Khan.

The Upper West Side Plan

A 2006 study by Transportation Alternatives found that people living on streets with heavy traffic go out less often and have fewer friends and acquaintances. Three quarters of Upper West Side residents live within two blocks of a congested road. The designs proposed in the Upper West Side blueprint aim to make the streets greener, quieter, safer and more accessible and ultimately to create street life and a sense of community many say the increasingly dense neighborhood lacks.

"People want something green and they want to sit and they want to socialize," said Brewer. "From talking to the BIDs [area's Business Improvement Districts], it helps small merchants, too. If people linger, they buy things."

To improve pedestrian safety, the plan calls for widening curbs at all corners of every intersection — starting with temporary extensions at major street crossings — and installing bollards or planters at corners to protect people standing there. It also proposes raised crosswalks to make pedestrians more visible to drivers and re-timing the lights to allow slower-moving pedestrians time to cross.

Sidewalk extensions would be used to make the streetscape more pleasant in other ways: adding public seating, bicycle parking, trees and greenery and moving garbage and recycling collection out of the path of pedestrians.

Another goal is to calm traffic on the smaller cross-streets, making residential blocks safer places for children to play as well as for bicyclists. The prototype looks almost suburban to a New Yorker accustomed to the grid. Angled parking narrows the street to one lane. Halfway down the block, curved sidewalk extensions on opposite sides of the street create a zigzag that cars must navigate, and the parking switches to the other side. Greenery or benches go on the extra bit of public real estate.

Another major goal of the blueprint is to make bicycling safer and easier in the neighborhood. It proposes physically separated bicycle lanes along Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. The two middle lanes of traffic on each side of the Broadway Malls become protected bike paths. Slowing the crosstown streets would make it easier for bicyclists to ride between Central and Riverside parks.

Other safety features include continuing painted bike lanes through intersections and creating "bike boxes" at the front of intersections where cyclists waiting at red lights would be more visible to drivers.

The Effect on Traffic

Although the blueprint aims to reduce traffic congestion by creating more delivery zones to discourage double parking and by raising the price of parking so fewer people drive around looking for a spot, many drivers are no happier with some of its proposals than they were with congestion pricing.

Cabdriver Abubakar Abdullah told the New York Post, "It's going to cause a lot more traffic, and especially rush hour will be crazy. We already have the same problem on Ninth Avenue below 34th Street because of the bicycle lanes. Motorists have rights, too."

Bicycle and pedestrian advocates point out that only 10 percent of Upper West Side residents commute by car, yet the neighborhood is dominated by automobile traffic.

Transportation planners say that reducing space for driving and parking ultimately encourages people to turn to other forms of transportation, with the overall effect of reducing traffic. In New York City, 90 percent of people who commute by car have other options.

Speaking at the release of the blueprint at P.S. 87, renowned Danish urban planner Jan Gehl told a crowd of Upper West Siders that Copenhagen has been transformed over the last 30 years as the city gradually reduced the number of cars entering the city and put together a door-to-door bicycle network. As a result, traffic has decreased and 36 percent of commuters bicycle to work.

New York is lucky because it has wide streets, Gehl said. "Wide streets enable us to have a nice comfortable sidewalk, a nice bike lane, a nice row of street trees, a bus lane, and a median. And even have a couple of lanes for cars also."

The Parking Problem

The proposed conversion of a small percentage of parking spots to other uses could be the biggest stumbling block for some of the streetscape improvements in the plan, said the Community Board's Helen Rosenthal. Many of the elements that would make the neighborhood more livable require the sacrifice of parking spots or an increase in the price of parking at meters.

Finding a parking spot on the Upper West Side is notoriously difficult. Residents long accustomed to parking their cars for free — if they can find a spot — turn out in force when the Community Board considers requests to remove even one or two spaces.

"There are many brilliant ideas in there that won't require changing parking. We should move forward on those quickly," Rosenthal said. "The ones that do involve parking, bring 'em on. Let's address them publicly and hear from every side."

Where support is strong, changes can go into effect block by block, project by project, according to advocates and city officials who support the blueprint. At P.S. 87, they urged residents to ask the community board and elected representatives for specific changes on the street.

"This is a moment in time to meld those greening ideas and good transportation ideas," said Brewer. "If you can't do it now, I don't know when you can."

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

Photo (cc) Zhi

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.

Money for Hudson River Park

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.

Transforming the Waterfront

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.

An Unproven Funding Model

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."

A BID for Parks

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. 

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.

The Difference a Year Makes

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.

Future Plans

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. 

Photo (cc) Mike Freedman-Schnapp

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.

A Hidden Gem

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.

The Proposed Ball Field Plan

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.

Reversing the Neglect

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.

Keeping the Resevoir Whole

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.

Video (c) Robb Jett

Still from "Save Ridgewood Resevoir"

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.

Rushing Ahead?

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. 

(c) 2007, New Yorkers for Parks

The Open Space Index will create a set of targets to help to ensure that the park needs
of New Yorkers are met.

As New York redevelops and rezones areas throughout the city, the government envisions new parks and other open spaces as key parts of many of these projects. However, unlike Chicago or London, New York City has no statutory comprehensive plan for the city - much less for its parks and open spaces.

Consequently, the fate of parks and open space is decided in an ad-hoc manner, with little input from affected communities and without sufficient consideration for local and regional needs. With one million additional New Yorkers expected by 2030, the city must look seriously at how it manages, uses and plans for parks and open spaces.

Other Sustainability Watch articles this week:

Planning for the Long Term
By Tom Angotti

Reinventing Buses
By Joan Byron

It's Time -- Finally -- for Greenways
By Dave Lutz

Zero Mention of Zero Waste
By Maggie Clarke

Housing for a Sustainable City
By Tom Waters

A Good First Step

PlaNYC is all good news for parks and open space. Unlike the proposals in other parts of the plan, meeting the goals on parks is entirely within the mayor's power, requiring no action by the City Council or state legislature. As a result of the plan, the budget for the Department of Parks and Recreation has increased more than it has in decades. This has led to major capital investments in parks in each borough as well as the renovation of previously locked school yards so they can serve as neighborhood playgrounds. Simultaneously, the city and the private New York Restoration Project have taken steps to plant a million trees. These initiatives are all much needed and generally have been well received by communities.

PlaNYC sets a goal of having every New Yorker within a 10-minute walk to a park. Fortunately, most New Yorkers throughout the five boroughs already live that close to a park.

What is needed now is to pick up where the mayor's plan leaves off. After the walk to the park, what do I find? Is my park clean? Does it have the features that serve my community? How far do I have to walk to have my open space needs fully satisfied?

London's Example

For now, New York has no over-arching parks policy or master plan to address such issues. Other cities do. London, for one, has a plan that lays out specific strategies for its open space goals. Like New York, London dictates how close people should be to open space, but it goes beyond PlaNYC to set distances for different types of open spaces (recreational areas, destination parks, playgrounds). It presents detailed benchmarks and guidelines for achieving these goals.

The London plan was vetted through a public process and is codified in law. This ensures the longevity of the plan. PlaNYC lays out Mayor Michael Bloomberg's agenda for sustainability, but has not gone through a legislative process, leading to concern about what will happen after he leaves office in 2010.

A Tool for New York City

To begin to formulate standards for open space planning, New Yorkers for Parks aims to create an Open Space Index for the New York. Much like profiles the health department uses to assess the health of a community district, the Open Space Index will be a way to evaluate the condition of open space in a neighborhood. Through a combination of analysis of current New York City open space and of measures in other cities, New Yorkers for Parks will develop an index of targets for parks and open space access. For example, it could determine that every New York City community district should have 2.5 acres of parks and open space per 1,000 residents or 15 percent green roof coverage

The index (which is presently being reviewed by an advisory group) will evaluate neighborhood open space elements such as tree canopy cover, green roof cover, permeable land area, the percentage of parks in acceptable condition, acres of open space per 1,000 people (active recreation space people and passive space) and walking distance to a park by type of facility (pocket park, field, destination park etc.). Given the unique characteristics of New York City's geography and land use, the index must be flexible enough to be relevant across diverse neighborhoods in all five boroughs.

A Test on the Lower East Side

Upon completion of the Open Space Index, New Yorkers For Parks and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer will conduct a pilot neighborhood study in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The first phase will be a complete evaluation of the existing open space in the neighborhood using a combination of existing digital mapping data and field surveys. The project will also feature a comprehensive survey of users at at least one park in the neighborhood. This will help assess the open space priorities and needs of area residents. We will also conduct two community workshops to elicit feedback on preliminary findings and end results.

We will compare the current actual condition of open space elements on the Lower East Side with the targets outlined in the Open Space Index. Each individual factor (tree canopy cover, acres of active recreation space, etc) will receive a score based on how close the area comes to the "target."

An Open Space Index Summary Report will provide a picture of the open space opportunities, qualities and features of the Lower East Side. This report will provide a basis for negotiating with the city and with builders on how to modify and improve development plans and community benefits packages.

Once this test project is complete we will evaluate it and consider how what we learned on the Lower East Side can be applied to other neighborhoods in Manhattan and throughout the city as a whole.

As the wave of development in New York City continues, the importance of open space becomes more critical. More and more, communities must negotiate with developers to obtain their fair share of scarce open space. Building on PlaNYC, creating a clearer picture of what a neighborhood needs can empower communities to foster projects that promote the sustainable development of our city.

Micaéla Birmingham is the planning director of http//www.ny4p.org New Yorkers for Parks, the city's oldest and leading citywide park advocacy organization. To get involved in the Parks 2030 project, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 21-838-9410.