New York City's neighborhood parks showed a small improvement overall this year, according to the second annual Report Card on Parks released by the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, although a quarter of the city's parks still have failing grades. Like last year, the city's worst performing parks are largely in the outer boroughs, while four of the ten top-scoring parks are in Manhattan.

To compile the report card, the group sent inspectors last summer to the each of the city's 195 neighborhood parks (whose size measures one to 20 acres) to rate parks in eight different categories, including playgrounds, passive recreational areas, athletic fields and courts, bathrooms, and drinking fountains. These features were graded for cleanliness, maintenance, safety and structural integrity. Attention was paid to whether repairs, lawn-mowing, painting, and other maintenance jobs were neatly and properly done.

The good news is that slightly more than half the parks received an "A" or a "B" up from 43 percent in 2003. In addition, areas where the parks department has focused capital investment in recent years - the playgrounds, pathways, and sitting areas - scored as well as they had the previous year.

But the other side of the coin is that nearly half of the city's parks were rated "C" or lower, and 25 percent received a "D" or an "F." Sixty-five percent of the parks that received an "F" in 2003 got the lowest grade again this year. The most problematic areas continue to be the bathrooms, drinking fountains, and athletic fields. Citywide, the average score for these features ranged from 52 to 66 percent.

New Yorkers for Parks found that the grades received by many parks depended on how recently maintenance crews had been there and how carefully they had done their jobs. The parks department uses roving crews that move from park to park because it lacks the resources to staff every park. In addition, most of the workers are participants in state and federally funded job-training programs, not parks staff skilled in plumbing, horticulture, or lawn care. "The maintenance is inconsistent," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. "If you have a person for each park, a fixed position instead of roaming crews, you would see a marked improvement."

Sternberg Park in East Williamsburg, one of the ten lowest scorers for the second year in a row, illustrates the type of problems that led to poor report card scores. On a sunny day last spring, locals filled the benches to eat lunch, relax or watch their children play. But the garbage cans overflowed and trash lined the fences. The drinking fountain was choked with dirt, and the bathroom was locked. A bumpy ball field with large bare patches looked as if it had been neglected for years. A large capital investment is now slated for Sternberg Park, an expensive way for the city to compensate for the shortfall of funding for ongoing maintenance.

"While two years doesn't make a trend, if you look at the last two years of our report card, about 50 percent of the parks have received a 'C' or lower," said DiPalermo. "New York is not a 'C' city in the arts, in finance, in law. But in parks, we seem to be accepting that we are a 'C' city. And I think we fail our communities when we say a 'C' is acceptable."

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

In the discussion about whether the city should allow protesters to rally on Central Park's Great Lawn before the Republican Convention, one issue has been left out: Where would the money come from to fix the trampled grass and plants? The New York Post was wrong when it editorialized, "Plant a new lawn. Grass seed is cheap." It requires money and skilled staff to keep a lawn green and lush. Even with ordinary use, the city's collective backyard needs frequent soil repair and reseeding. Yet New York City spends less than most major cities in the country on maintaining its parks. City funding for operating the parks has dwindled over the past two decades to less than half a percent of the city budget. That's why the lawns in many parks — those without the substantial private funding of Central Park — are little more than weeds and dirt.

This situation is unlikely to change in next year's budget, which will be finalized in negotiations between Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council this spring. With tax revenues up and increases projected for the next fiscal year, Mayor Bloomberg is proposing to increase spending in a number of areas. But just a small amount of extra money would trickle down to the parks department..

Although the numbers in the executive budget look good - $187 million in city funds to parks maintenance and operations, up from $164 million last year - the mayor is allocating about the same amount of money to parks as last year. Most of this increase reflects a shift in funding sources for the parks job training program, which is covered by state and federal funding through the Human Resources Administration. Next year, however, the city will be paying the program's supervisors through the parks department budget.

There is some real new funding, however. The mayor's budget provides money for 34 new employees to run the recently opened Chelsea Recreation Center. It is the first recreation center opened in the city in more than 30 years, offering state-of-the-art facilities and numerous activities for children and adults in an area with few parks or other places for recreation.

The budget also provides for hiring 40 new architects to work in the capital division on renovation and new construction projects.

Aside from those new items, the executive budget sticks mostly to the usual game where the mayor eliminates previously funded services only to restore them in negotiations with the City Council, although there are slightly fewer cuts from the current budget than in recent years. This tactic diverts attention from the larger issue of the need for significant increases for a department that has lost more than half of its fulltime staff over the past 15 years.

Unlike last year, when funding cuts originally proposed by the mayor would have closed the Queens and Prospect Park zoos, Mayor Bloomberg allocated $9.2 million to the Wildlife Conservation Society for the city's three zoos. He also put $6.3 million in the budget for seasonal park employees, about half the money needed to keep staffing at the current level during the months when the parks are most heavily used. However, he eliminated all funding for street tree pruning, while adding $6 million for fighting the Asian long-horned beetle to make up for cuts in federal funding.

More than 200 people, organized by the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, descended on the City Council offices in April to lobby for the restoration of tree-pruning and seasonal worker funding, and also to ask their council members to allocate an extra $20 million to the parks department for gardeners, tree pruners, enforcement officers, and other fulltime professional staff. "The city is in a better economic position," said Christian DiPalermo, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks. He noted that when the economy improved in the early 1990s, the parks operating budget was never restored. Sacrifices were necessary after 9/ll, he said, but "we don't want to be the forgotten child again."

"We've shown from our Ernst & Young study how parks investment pays its way," said DiPalermo. The study found rising real estate values and higher tax revenues in neighborhoods where parks were restored and continued to be maintained. "That's the economic side," he said. "One just needs to look at Central Park to understand what investing in parks means to the quality of our city life."

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

For six months in 2003, Florence Lugo cleaned parks in Lower Manhattan while participating in the Parks Opportunity Program, a paid welfare-to-work program that has trained thousands of welfare recipients, mostly women, over the past three years. "The program helped motivate me to get off welfare and look forward to the future of having a permanent job," she said. But even though she received excellent evaluations, she said, so far she has been unable to find long-term work.

Lugo's experience was typical of the participants surveyed in a study of the program conducted by Community Voices Heard, an organization of low-income people. The group campaigned to change the city's Work Experience Program, which required welfare recipients to do unpaid work in exchange for welfare benefits, into the paid Parks Opportunity Program, which is the largest public transitional employment program in the country.

Most of the program participants maintain and clean the parks, although a small percentage work at playgrounds and recreation centers, in security, or doing clerical tasks. The program pays participants for four days of work and one day of job search assistance and training provided by the parks department. Workers in the first two phases of the program earned from $9.38 to $12.50 an hour for jobs that lasted up to 11-1/2 months, and were members of District Council 37, which represents park workers. In the current phase of the program, positions last six months, pay $7.50 an hour and no longer have union status.

The study, Wages Work!, questioned 101 out of a random sample of 200 people who participated in the first phase of the program in 2001. It found that receiving a paycheck changed their feelings about work. Most survey respondents said they enjoyed their work, developed confidence, and were motivated to find a full-time job. Almost 93 percent said they would have liked to continue in a permanent job in the parks. But the program was less successful in helping participants make the leap to the workforce. Only 15.5 percent had gotten permanent jobs, and only 22 percent had held at least one job since working in the parks.

The study found that the training and education offered to participants in addition to the experience gained on the job was limited -- mostly focused on job readiness and search skills like good work habits, interviewing, and appropriate dress. Many participants were not offered the opportunity for more specific training, like civil service exam preparation and commercial driver's license training. More than 90 percent of survey respondents said that job search assistance could have been improved.

Because the fulltime staff of the parks department has continued to decrease, there are few jobs available using the skills participants are learning on the job. The report recommended that the transitional program offer a variety of positions in different city agencies and non-profits, and that it provide more education, including toward a high school equivalency diploma, as well as more specialized skills training. It also concluded that the program needed to offer more outside supports, like childcare, transportation money, and helping participants keep benefits like food stamps and health insurance to bridge the gap between the program's wages and what it really costs to make ends meet.

Bob Garafola, Deputy Commissioner for Management and Budget at the Department of Parks and Recreation, said that the department now offers many more training opportunities and internships including in building maintenance, computers, and even phlebotomy -- than it did when the program first started. The department is also looking to develop new courses, like a certified nursing assistance program in connection with Lehman College. He said that job placements have tripled since last year, with 1000 participants getting jobs since July 2003.

Aside from its goal of helping people off welfare and into long-term jobs, the Parks Opportunity Program has been essential for maintaining the city's 28,000 acres of parkland. As the parks fulltime staff has declined -- from 5,400 in 1980 to around 1,900 in the next year's proposed budget -- workers in the job training program are doing the bulk of the maintenance in the parks. According to figures from the Independent Budget Office cited in the study, in fiscal year 2004 there were 2,496 participants in the current transitional program, as well as 446 Work Experience Program workers, but just 850 fulltime parks employees assigned to park maintenance. The transitional workers are paid through the Human Resources Administration, using federal and state funding.

"If the program is ended, the parks department could not function," said Christian DiPalermo, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks, the parks advocacy group. But his group sees the reliance on temporary workers paid by funding outside the parks department budget as "a way that the city has been able to not invest in parks." He said, "It's a Band-Aid for the parks department, because what's underneath the Band-Aid is the lack of full-time employees."

DiPalermo also said, "It's very difficult to manage people who come in every two weeks and stay at most six months," although he thinks the department does an admirable job. "Does that model work well in the private sector? I would tend to think not."

However, Deputy Commissioner Garafola noted that the parks department has a tradition of seasonal jobs and has a lot of experience managing short-term workers. "Everyone always wants more fulltime staff," he said. "You take the resources you get and try to make the most of it, and I think we've been pretty successful in doing that."

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

Related Articles: Chelsea: The Greening of the High Line Inwood: Rowing on the River The South Bronx: Going to the River Brooklyn Heights-DUMBO: A Park Between the Bridges Build Your Future Park

The plans might seem like science fiction -- making parks out of a garbage dump, abandoned railroad tracks, old gas tanks -- but they are real. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his intention to convert the former Fresh Kills landfill into a 2,200-acre park. He negotiated an agreement with Keyspan to buy the site of the Elmhurst gas tanks and make it a neighborhood park. He endorsed the idea of greening the High Line, a 1.4-mile abandoned elevated track in Chelsea. (See story on plans for the High Line).

New York City is experiencing a renaissance in parks, and it is not just because of the mayor. Thanks to tens of thousands of park lovers, innovative parks and greenways are going up throughout the city and along the waterfront. At the same time, parks in neighborhoods that long had been ignored are being restored.

While some New Yorkers dream of making sports fields, esplanades and gardens out of underused islands and piers, former dumps and parking lots, others gleefully imagine the amazing parks and recreation facilities that would be built if the city wins its bid to play host to the 2012 Olympics.

Since 1991, the parks department has spent more than $1.6 billion in capital funding to fix up and build parks, and it is now developing plans for more spending over the next decade. The paradox of this unprecedented revival of the parks system in New York is that it is happening when the parks department has lost more than half of its full-time staff over the last 15 years; when its annual operating budget in the past decade has decreased by more than a third; when 20 percent of neighborhood park received a failing grade from the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks. So how can there be so much park restoration and innovation at the same time that there is so little public funding for upkeep and when some parks still suffer from neglect?

CITIZEN SUPPORT

One answer is that New Yorkers have a sense of ownership of their public parks that simply did not exist 30 years ago. Some 60,000 New Yorkers have registered as park volunteers. Just under half of all the parks in the city now have their own support groups, made up of local people and organizations that raise money and serve as stewards and activists on behalf of the parks they have adopted.

Citizen involvement is, of course, the heart and soul of community gardens. Residents carved these patches of green from the rubble of abandoned lots and stood in front of bulldozers to save them. Some of the nearly 200 gardens spared in a 2002 settlement negotiated by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer could eventually be added to the park system.

That same spirit that fostered community gardens is present among the residents and civic groups in downtown Brooklyn, who organized, educated, planned, lobbied and sued for 15 years to get a park on the waterfront -- and in the alliance that is aiming to string together new parks and greenways to bring the Bronx River and its waterfront back to life. (See related stories on Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Bronx River.)

PRIVATE FUNDING

Citizens are not doing this alone. Non-profit, community-based conservancies have been raising money to fix up and maintain -- and sometimes even manage -- major parks in Manhattan and some of the other boroughs. And this movement has revived and even created some small parks as well. The New York Restoration Project, for example, has brought in private money to create a boat house and other facilities at Swindler Cove park in upper Manhattan. (See related story on Swindler Cove)

The Bloomberg administration wants to take this private involvement even further. It has launched an unprecedented effort to attract private money for all kinds of public services, including parks. The parks department has established special funds -- or endowments -- to which people can donate to pay for the improvement or maintenance of specific gardens or other facilities. Individual private donations, some given in memory of people, helped build a $1 million maintenance endowment for the recently restored Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park, as well as for several smaller neighborhood parks.

Shortly after becoming mayor, Bloomberg suggested that the city might sell naming rights to facilities in the park. While critics complain this could commercialize the few remaining places where one can go to escape advertising, the initiative recently led to a $10 million gift from Carl Icahn for a track and field stadium on Randall's Island, part of a large planned recreational complex that will include 65 new and refurbished sports fields and a water park. The centerpiece of the complex will now be named Icahn Stadium.

At the same time that the city is exploring such controversial revenue-producing schemes, it wants to increase traditional corporate and foundation largesse. A program recently launched by the non-profit City Parks Foundation and Partnerships for Parks, using $25 million raised from corporations and foundations, focuses on improving 16 neighborhood parks in Harlem, Highbridge, Astoria and Red Hook. The city is committing some capital funding toward restoring these parks. The private funding pays for hiring community organizers and initiating activities like concerts, sports instruction and puppet shows in the parks. The overall aim is to build constituencies that will use, take care of and fight for their parks.

FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT

The parks department and park advocates have also sought help from different levels of government and an array of public agencies, opening the way to a wider range of expertise and funding. The alliance working on the Bronx River, for instance, includes almost a dozen government agencies, such as the city and state transportation and environmental agencies, the National Park Service and even the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The city hopes that federal transportation dollars will continue to provide much of the funding to complete the 350 miles of greenways planned for the five boroughs. And the National Park Service, which manages historic forts on Governors Island, and a new city/state public corporation are collaborating on the planning of new parks on the island.

Another strategy involves the creation of independent city/state authorities. In 1998, Governor George Pataki created Hudson River Park Trust, a state-city partnership, to plan, design, construct, operate and maintain the large new part on Manhattan's West Side. The state and city have committed half of the $400 million cost of building the Hudson River Park.

In 2002, Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg formed the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation to create the new park on the downtown Brooklyn waterfront. To construct the park, the state committed $85 million to the project, and the city will provide $65 million.

COMMERCE IN THE PARKS

Once Brooklyn Bridge Park opens to the public, however, the source of funding will shift. Commercial activities, possibly including stores, restaurants and an amphitheater, are supposed to cover maintenance costs. A similar arrangement will support all of the city's part of Governors Island, which is slated for educational and recreational use, as well as the Hudson River Park.

This strategy, though, remains unproven. No one can be certain that the commercial development will generate enough income to maintain the parks. And, although cafes, sports facilities and other amenities can attract and entertain people, too many can overwhelm the park. "It's got to be at the right scale, the right balance, from a parks-first perspective, not a revenue-generating perspective," said Robert Pirani, director of environmental programs at the Regional Plan Association and the director of the civic coalition monitoring the development of a plan for Governors Island.

The parks department continues to seek new opportunities to attract parks-related businesses. Operators of these concessions, including golf courses, skating rinks, restaurants and catering halls, pay a fee to operate in the park and often must also pay for improvements to the facilities they run. "There are a number of odd corners where you can have an appropriate form of business that provides a service and generates funding," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. These could include marinas, ferry services, restaurants, boat rentals and sailing schools -- "stuff you see in the waterfronts of Chicago and other cities," he said.

Concession revenues do not go to the parks department, however, but to the city?s general fund. New Yorkers for Parks, the advocacy group, wants the parks department to keep its concession revenues -- as long as it also gets to keep its regular city funding as well.

But not all parks advocates agree. Depending so much on concessions, they say, could encourage the parks department to use public space for recreational activities that many people cannot afford. Dave Lutz, director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, points out the parks devote a sizable amount of land to golf -- which costs a lot to play but generates concession income for the city -- when the city has a shortage of facilities for other sports.

Making a park available for special, private events also can produce revenue. This has been highly successful in Bryant Park. Although an assessment on nearby property owners originally paid for much of its restoration and maintenance, revenues from concessions and special events now cover all of the park?s annual operating costs. The downside, however, is during some events, such as Fashion Week, ordinary New Yorkers cannot use the public park.

WHAT GUARANTEES?

Unquestionably, both future and existing parks will rely on support from private individuals, organizations and businesses. But can private sources really provide New Yorkers with the park system they want -- and need?

The increasing importance of the private sector will not diminish the need for adequate public funding from the city, state and federal governments. On the contrary, as the parks department expands and improves facilities, it will need increased resources to meet the public's rising expectations. Faced with this, some parks advocates say parks need a steady, consistent source of funds. And so, they want the city to establish a so-called dedicated funding stream, such as a specific tax for green space, for the park system.

Whether such a guaranteed source of funds ever becomes a reality, some mix of public and private funds will be required for parks to thrive. Joseph Pupello, president of the New York Restoration Project, likens the park system of the future to a diversified portfolio with a mix of public parks, privately run parks and "parks that live in between." He said, "We have to keep inventing new partnerships and models that enable both the private sector and the municipal department to grow."

Certainly, private support will remain a key part of the equation. "There's no going back on the idea that these open spaces demand public-private partnerships of various kinds, whether they be community involvement or private commercial interests in parks supporting them," said David Rivel, executive director of the City Parks Foundation. "The future of parks is increasingly going to be about balancing those things."

Related Articles: Chelsea: The Greening of the High Line Inwood: Rowing on the River The South Bronx: Going to the River Brooklyn Heights-DUMBO: A Park Between the Bridges Build Your Future Park

The plans might seem like science fiction -- making parks out of a garbage dump, abandoned railroad tracks, old gas tanks -- but they are real. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced his intention to convert the former Fresh Kills landfill into a 2,200-acre park. He negotiated an agreement with Keyspan to buy the site of the Elmhurst gas tanks and make it a neighborhood park. He endorsed the idea of greening the High Line, a 1.4-mile abandoned elevated track in Chelsea. (See story on plans for the High Line).

New York City is experiencing a renaissance in parks, and it is not just because of the mayor. Thanks to tens of thousands of park lovers, innovative parks and greenways are going up throughout the city and along the waterfront. At the same time, parks in neighborhoods that long had been ignored are being restored.

While some New Yorkers dream of making sports fields, esplanades and gardens out of underused islands and piers, former dumps and parking lots, others gleefully imagine the amazing parks and recreation facilities that would be built if the city wins its bid to play host to the 2012 Olympics.

Since 1991, the parks department has spent more than $1.6 billion in capital funding to fix up and build parks, and it is now developing plans for more spending over the next decade. The paradox of this unprecedented revival of the parks system in New York is that it is happening when the parks department has lost more than half of its full-time staff over the last 15 years; when its annual operating budget in the past decade has decreased by more than a third; when 20 percent of neighborhood park received a failing grade from the advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks. So how can there be so much park restoration and innovation at the same time that there is so little public funding for upkeep and when some parks still suffer from neglect?

CITIZEN SUPPORT

One answer is that New Yorkers have a sense of ownership of their public parks that simply did not exist 30 years ago. Some 60,000 New Yorkers have registered as park volunteers. Just under half of all the parks in the city now have their own support groups, made up of local people and organizations that raise money and serve as stewards and activists on behalf of the parks they have adopted.

Citizen involvement is, of course, the heart and soul of community gardens. Residents carved these patches of green from the rubble of abandoned lots and stood in front of bulldozers to save them. Some of the nearly 200 gardens spared in a 2002 settlement negotiated by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer could eventually be added to the park system.

That same spirit that fostered community gardens is present among the residents and civic groups in downtown Brooklyn, who organized, educated, planned, lobbied and sued for 15 years to get a park on the waterfront -- and in the alliance that is aiming to string together new parks and greenways to bring the Bronx River and its waterfront back to life. (See related stories on Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Bronx River.)

PRIVATE FUNDING

Citizens are not doing this alone. Non-profit, community-based conservancies have been raising money to fix up and maintain -- and sometimes even manage -- major parks in Manhattan and some of the other boroughs. And this movement has revived and even created some small parks as well. The New York Restoration Project, for example, has brought in private money to create a boat house and other facilities at Swindler Cove park in upper Manhattan. (See related story on Swindler Cove)

The Bloomberg administration wants to take this private involvement even further. It has launched an unprecedented effort to attract private money for all kinds of public services, including parks. The parks department has established special funds -- or endowments -- to which people can donate to pay for the improvement or maintenance of specific gardens or other facilities. Individual private donations, some given in memory of people, helped build a $1 million maintenance endowment for the recently restored Heather Garden in Fort Tryon Park, as well as for several smaller neighborhood parks.

Shortly after becoming mayor, Bloomberg suggested that the city might sell naming rights to facilities in the park. While critics complain this could commercialize the few remaining places where one can go to escape advertising, the initiative recently led to a $10 million gift from Carl Icahn for a track and field stadium on Randall's Island, part of a large planned recreational complex that will include 65 new and refurbished sports fields and a water park. The centerpiece of the complex will now be named Icahn Stadium.

At the same time that the city is exploring such controversial revenue-producing schemes, it wants to increase traditional corporate and foundation largesse. A program recently launched by the non-profit City Parks Foundation and Partnerships for Parks, using $25 million raised from corporations and foundations, focuses on improving 16 neighborhood parks in Harlem, Highbridge, Astoria and Red Hook. The city is committing some capital funding toward restoring these parks. The private funding pays for hiring community organizers and initiating activities like concerts, sports instruction and puppet shows in the parks. The overall aim is to build constituencies that will use, take care of and fight for their parks.

FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT

The parks department and park advocates have also sought help from different levels of government and an array of public agencies, opening the way to a wider range of expertise and funding. The alliance working on the Bronx River, for instance, includes almost a dozen government agencies, such as the city and state transportation and environmental agencies, the National Park Service and even the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

The city hopes that federal transportation dollars will continue to provide much of the funding to complete the 350 miles of greenways planned for the five boroughs. And the National Park Service, which manages historic forts on Governors Island, and a new city/state public corporation are collaborating on the planning of new parks on the island.

Another strategy involves the creation of independent city/state authorities. In 1998, Governor George Pataki created Hudson River Park Trust, a state-city partnership, to plan, design, construct, operate and maintain the large new part on Manhattan's West Side. The state and city have committed half of the $400 million cost of building the Hudson River Park.

In 2002, Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg formed the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation to create the new park on the downtown Brooklyn waterfront. To construct the park, the state committed $85 million to the project, and the city will provide $65 million.

COMMERCE IN THE PARKS

Once Brooklyn Bridge Park opens to the public, however, the source of funding will shift. Commercial activities, possibly including stores, restaurants and an amphitheater, are supposed to cover maintenance costs. A similar arrangement will support all of the city's part of Governors Island, which is slated for educational and recreational use, as well as the Hudson River Park.

This strategy, though, remains unproven. No one can be certain that the commercial development will generate enough income to maintain the parks. And, although cafes, sports facilities and other amenities can attract and entertain people, too many can overwhelm the park. "It's got to be at the right scale, the right balance, from a parks-first perspective, not a revenue-generating perspective," said Robert Pirani, director of environmental programs at the Regional Plan Association and the director of the civic coalition monitoring the development of a plan for Governors Island.

The parks department continues to seek new opportunities to attract parks-related businesses. Operators of these concessions, including golf courses, skating rinks, restaurants and catering halls, pay a fee to operate in the park and often must also pay for improvements to the facilities they run. "There are a number of odd corners where you can have an appropriate form of business that provides a service and generates funding," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. These could include marinas, ferry services, restaurants, boat rentals and sailing schools -- "stuff you see in the waterfronts of Chicago and other cities," he said.

Concession revenues do not go to the parks department, however, but to the city?s general fund. New Yorkers for Parks, the advocacy group, wants the parks department to keep its concession revenues -- as long as it also gets to keep its regular city funding as well.

But not all parks advocates agree. Depending so much on concessions, they say, could encourage the parks department to use public space for recreational activities that many people cannot afford. Dave Lutz, director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, points out the parks devote a sizable amount of land to golf -- which costs a lot to play but generates concession income for the city -- when the city has a shortage of facilities for other sports.

Making a park available for special, private events also can produce revenue. This has been highly successful in Bryant Park. Although an assessment on nearby property owners originally paid for much of its restoration and maintenance, revenues from concessions and special events now cover all of the park?s annual operating costs. The downside, however, is during some events, such as Fashion Week, ordinary New Yorkers cannot use the public park.

WHAT GUARANTEES?

Unquestionably, both future and existing parks will rely on support from private individuals, organizations and businesses. But can private sources really provide New Yorkers with the park system they want -- and need?

The increasing importance of the private sector will not diminish the need for adequate public funding from the city, state and federal governments. On the contrary, as the parks department expands and improves facilities, it will need increased resources to meet the public's rising expectations. Faced with this, some parks advocates say parks need a steady, consistent source of funds. And so, they want the city to establish a so-called dedicated funding stream, such as a specific tax for green space, for the park system.

Whether such a guaranteed source of funds ever becomes a reality, some mix of public and private funds will be required for parks to thrive. Joseph Pupello, president of the New York Restoration Project, likens the park system of the future to a diversified portfolio with a mix of public parks, privately run parks and "parks that live in between." He said, "We have to keep inventing new partnerships and models that enable both the private sector and the municipal department to grow."

Certainly, private support will remain a key part of the equation. "There's no going back on the idea that these open spaces demand public-private partnerships of various kinds, whether they be community involvement or private commercial interests in parks supporting them," said David Rivel, executive director of the City Parks Foundation. "The future of parks is increasingly going to be about balancing those things."

 

This year is the 40th anniversary of the federal Land and Water Conservation Act, a visionary mechanism for protecting the country's natural areas and enhancing state and local parks and recreation. Although most people have never heard of this source of federal funding, they have probably enjoyed its benefits when visiting a national park or wildlife refuge or a state or local park.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund has funded state and local park and recreation projects in almost every county in the nation and protected seven million acres of wilderness and wildlife habitat. The associated Urban Park and Recreation Recovery Program has provided $230 million to local governments from 1978 to 2000 for park rehabilitation and maintenance and recreation programs in the inner cities.

Although New York state and city have not gotten as large a share of these funds as some other parts of the country, these two federal programs have helped pay for many of the parks and programs that New Yorkers know and love. According to Joshua Laird, chief of planning for the New York City Parks department, during the height of funding in the 1970s, the department received about five million dollars a year through the state grants program of the land and water fund.During this period, Urban Park and Recreation Recovery grants for New York City projects ranged up to $1.5 million a year. A $794,000 urban park grant in 1979 helped establish the Urban Park Rangers (Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe's first job at the department). More recently, the city received a $300,000 grant in 2000 to renovate the St. James Park House in the Bronx and a $1 million grant in 2002 to restoration the pavilion in Columbus Park in Lower Manhattan.

As important as these funding mechanisms are for protecting and maintaining the nation's natural and recreational space, they have often been accorded a low priority in Congress and the amount appropriated has fluctuated over the years. Spending from the two funds has almost never reached the level authorized, $900 million a year for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and $725 million over five years for Urban Park and Recreation Recovery. Most recently, the ballooning federal deficit has led to large cuts in appropriations from the funds.

HOW THE FUNDS WORK

Funded with the receipts from federal offshore oil and gas leases, the Land and Water Conservation Fund was meant to be a consistent, dedicated source of money for the country's land conservation and outdoor recreation needs. Urban Park and Recreation Recovery was supposed to direct federal assistance in a similar way to recreation facilities and programs in distressed urban areas. In reality, Congress appropriates money for the funds as part of the annual budget process, and land conservation and urban recreation compete for appropriations with every other discretionary domestic program.

Land and water funding is divided into two parts. One part goes to the federal land management agencies to purchase land for conservation and recreation. The other goes to the states, which must provide matching funds. The states then distribute grants for various state and local projects. In New York State, the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation administers the grants. For Urban Park and Recreation Recovery grants, local governments apply to the National Park Service.

A BROKEN PROMISE

After minimally funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Urban Park and Recreation Recovery throughout most of the 1980s and 90s, in 2000 Congress enacted a landmark bipartisan agreement that promised to set aside an increasing amount of money each year for six consecutive years in a new, larger fund it called the Conservation Trust Fund. That fund was earmarked for spending on parks, recreation, and other conservation programs, including the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Urban Park and Recreation Recovery. By 2006, the land and water fund was supposed to be fully funded at its authorized level of $900 million.

But as the Bush administration turned a budget surplus of $238 billion in 2000 to the current deficit of $300 billion, the two funds lost out. In 2002, during behind-the-scenes budget negotiations, Congress reneged on its agreement and dismantled the Conservation Trust Fund. Funding for the land and water fund went from $573 million in FY2002 to $270 million in FY2004; urban parks went from $30 million to zero.

POTENTIAL FOR MORE FUNDING

The federal government supports other municipal needs, from education to transportation. Significant federal funding for parks would recognize the importance of parks to the economy and quality of urban life, as well as their role in supporting other national priorities, like education and health.

Even with a projected $500 billion deficit, Congress still finds money for a lot of projects. Land conservation and especially urban parks seem to be a low priority right now, but state governments, local advocates, and national groups are working to change that.

In March of 2003, New York State Governor George Pataki revived a task force he had set up 1998 to promote the importance of the Land and Water Conservation Fund in protecting the state's natural resources and outdoor recreation. New York State Parks Commissioner Bernadette Castro organized the support of the state's congressional representatives, all of whom signed a letter supporting higher appropriations for Land and Water Conservation Fund state grants and Urban Park and Recreation Recovery.

Conservation, recreation, and park groups, including Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation, The Trust for Public Land and the City Parks Alliance, are working to educate Americans about the importance of the federal land conservation and urban park programs and to get full funding for the larger Conservation Trust Fund.

Alan Front, Senior Vice President of the Trust for Public Land, noted that the two funds are not monolithic programs so much as a mosaic of the needs of hundreds of places. "In the picture of declining support, a huge bow wave is being created by needy, meritorious projects with a passionate constituency that desperately wants to see them done," he said. "If a constituency on the ground -- folks who are supporting individual projects -- recognize the importance of federal funding that can help protect those places, it can be a very powerful force."

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

A dump truck heading north crashed through an elevated highway at Gansevoort Street, accompanied by a 60-foot slab of highway that came tumbling to the ground. The accident was a shocker, and it set off a chain reaction that has resulted, almost exactly 30 years later (the accident was on December 16, 1973), in communities throughout the city seeking to reclaim their waterfront from the highways that had cut them off from it.

Out of that movement has come the Hudson River Park. The waterfront transformation embodied in Hudson River Park was the largest physical change in waterfront land use since the early days of the Industrial Revolution when the machine age ran roughshod over agriculture and never looked back. Now thirty years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, what have we learned?

1) Dramatic and even positive change doesn't come without a fight. In this case, an entire generation has fought over the future of the west side of Manhattan. The construction of what was officially called the Miller Elevated Highway during 1929-1932 launched 40 years of waterfront highway expansion between the tip of Manhattan and the Upper West Side. The first stretch ran between Chambers and West 46th Street. Over the next two decades extensions were made to West 72nd street and south to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Based on the current proposals for the western edge of Ground Zero that would spend as much as $1 Billion on a short tunnel you might say that the Highway Age is alive and well.

After three decades of organizing, advocacy, and lobbying, the Hudson River Park is being pieced together over some 400 acres spread out downtown. Some would say the highway, with three lanes southbound and as many as five northbound, still won the fight. But in looking at where this traffic comes from and where it goes, the giant traffic generators such as the Passenger Ship Terminal or Chelsea Piers illustrate lesson two

2) Don't let private interests take over.

Nothing is as simple as "development" or "not." Rather, the unique environment of the waterfront suggests that all development that happens along the river should directly relate to the water itself. Cruise ships, sure. Film studios and exhibition space, why here? Sure, the park is more than 400 acres -- on paper. But considering the fact that nearly 80 percent of the area consists of submerged land, it becomes clear that there is not a lot of space to begin with. As with any public space issue, once there are fees imposed, and one must pay to play, then that becomes physical space that will always have a price tag attached to it. And these prices are not affordable to most New Yorkers.

3) The river should be seen as the center of the park, not the edge.

Fortunately, the waters have been discovered by a new generation of stewards who want to protect the river, but also want to use it. Even in the coldest weather, rowboats called Whitehall gigs and kayaks (some hand-built) are launched from Pier 40/ Houston Street or Pier 63 Maritime. In the warmer months, its not unusual to see swim caps turning up to catch a breath anywhere along the shore.

The re-awakening to the river is just the latest stage in our society's forty-year effort to clean up the environment. Finally, we are seeing how a river reborn can become a central part of a community's recreation and open space diet for daily life. At the River Project on Pier 26, the touch tanks are filled with real Hudson River critters, fish crabs and seahorses show the next generation of Tribeca denizens that most of the action in the park actually occurs beneath the surface of the water.

The feeling of openness at the water's edge can have a tremendously refreshing impact on stressed-out city dwellers. Take one look out across the river during the height of Seasonal Affective Disorder, otherwise known as SAD (or the Holiday Blues), and you'll feel better.

Governor George Pataki recently signed a law making the entire Hudson River a no-discharge zone (meaning boats cannot flush their toilets into the river) and now the challenge is how to enable a park to create as many on- and in-water opportunities as possible. After all, it's not simply a park it's a river.

Now, thirty years into this waterfront transformation it is clear that when the time is ripe, communities must come together to roll back the highway and the railroad to reclaim what is rightfully theirs, the waterfront. The improvements happening along the west side of Manhattan are striking, sure, but we shouldn't wait before we make strides that are equally dramatic in underserved areas such as Sunset Park and the South Bronx. We've made a good start with the Hudson, but we can't forget that it's just that, a start.

Carter Craft, an urban planner, is program director of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.

 

An attempted rape in Prospect Park in September as well as four attacks on women in city parks earlier in the year has raised concerns about whether the parks are becoming more dangerous after years of improved safety and even though citywide crime rates have remained low. New Yorkers for Parks, the parks advocacy group, has counted 25 violent crimes in parks reported in the press since July.

In mid-November, City Councilmember Joseph Addabbo, the chair of the parks and recreation committee, held a hearing to learn what the parks department is doing to improve safety and to examine the role of the Parks Enforcement Patrol. Patrol, or PEP, officers, who are under the jurisdiction of the parks department, enforce rules and issue summons for smaller offenses, acting as a deterrent to crime. But there are just 75 PEP officers to patrol the parks in the entire city, not counting officers stationed at recreation centers and special events or employed through separate contracts for the Hudson River Park, Battery Park City, and Lower Manhattan. At several public meetings organized by Brooklyn elected officials after the assault in Prospect Park, some residents complained that PEP officers do little when minor incidents are reported.

At the City Council hearing, park advocates called for adding more PEP officers and creating a parks division within the Police department, similar to the transit, housing, and school security forces. They also recommended that the city monitor crime in parks through the COMPSTAT crime-tracking system used by the police. Because many parks fall within several different precincts, it can be difficult to detect patterns of crime inside parks and around their borders.

The parks department believes there has been no increase in crime. "Truly, the city is safer than it’s been in 30 to 40 years, and we think the parks are safer, too," said Liam Kavanagh, first deputy commissioner for the department, citing preliminary data showing a decrease in crime from several police precincts, including the one that covers Prospect Park. The crime rate in Central Park, which has its own police precinct, has also fallen over the last ten years.

Nevertheless, Kavanagh acknowledged the psychological effect. "If you’ve ever had a house or a car broken into, crime takes on a much more personal meaning. People feel the same about parks."

Just the perception of an increase in crime can be harmful if people become afraid to go into the parks. "One of the things that have made parks safer is the fact that people are using them. The more people out using the parks, the less likely it is for there to be crime and other problems," Kavanagh said. "We’re just concerned that people’s response will be to stay away from the park rather than go out and reclaim their turf."

The parks department has begun several new efforts to collaborate with the police department on tracking incidents and monitoring potential problems. The parks department is in the early stages of sharing its GIS (Geographic Information System) data with the police department so that information on parks can be included in the COMPSTAT system. The first step is to provide park boundaries, but as the parks department adds more detail to its computerized maps, the process will be refined. Ultimately, the department will have the ability to provide exact coordinates of where a problem is occurring within a park so that not only police but also fire and Emergency Medical Services personnel can respond more quickly. Emergency responders are now sent to the nearest street address, which has sometimes caused delays in getting to the right spot in time.

Since the beginning of the year, parks department sector managers have been taking precinct commanding officers on evening and night tours of the parks in their territory. This gives the park managers a chance to show where problems are occurring – usually things like graffiti, vandalism, people living in the parks - and talk about strategies to deal with them. It also helps develop personal relationships that can cut through layers of bureaucracy and get things accomplished faster.

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

 Even against the backdrop of the city's fiscal crisis, capital investment in the city's parks has continued. Just in the past month, the papers have been full of good news for parks. On October 30, the city announced a $25 million public/private initiative to improve 16 parks in four neighborhoods in Harlem, upper Manhattan/Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. The first of 13 new or restored parks planned to help revive lower Manhattan opened the following week. And just a few days after that, to the amazement of local residents and the parks department, Mayor Michael Bloomberg worked out an agreement with Keyspan to buy the site of the old Elmhurst gas tanks for a park, land the utility originally planned to sell to the developer of a Home Depot.

To maintain its growing inventory of parkland, the parks department still has a much lower operating budget and less than half the fulltime staff it had two decades ago. The city never restored funding for park maintenance and recreation during the economic boom of the 1990s, and has further cut the budget during the current fiscal crisis. Although the Parks department has become more efficient and has made good use of an army of workers in federally funded job-training programs as well as dedicated volunteers, most observers agree that it needs more resources to properly care for its green and built infrastructure. But unlike the last fiscal crisis in the 1970s, when the parks were virtually abandoned, the city is continuing to restore and build new parks.

The creation over the last decades of scores of park friends groups and a large roster of volunteers -- there are now 60,000 volunteers registered with Partnership for Parks -- has built up a critical mass of support for parks and a resource for new ideas and partnerships. The efforts of park advocates to educate the public and elected officials about the economic, health, and social benefits of parks have also begun sink in.

"There is a chorus of thousands of voices saying that parks are important," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "I think that represents a sea change in recognizing the role parks play in the city physically, spiritually, and economically. Parks are now on the radar of council members, state senators, assembly members - even members of Congress are talking about the importance of parks and allocating money."

Both Governor George Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg are strong supporters of parks, as are a number of city officials. The city's continued investment in parks "reflects the mayor's genuine interest in and concern for parks, which was a distinct part of his campaign platform," Commissioner Benepe said. "He gets parks."

NEW PARK PROJECTS

TARGETING NEIGHBORHOOD PARKS

The public/private partnership recently announced by the city focuses on groups of parks in four areas that already have a base of community involvement: historic Harlem, Red Hook in Brooklyn, Astoria and Long Island City, and the upper Manhattan and Bronx neighborhoods linked by the High Bridge. The initiative combines $20 million for capital improvements - projects that are already funded or are expected to be funded over the course of four years - with $5 million raised from corporations and foundations by the non-profit City Parks Foundation and administered by Partnerships for Parks, a joint program of the foundation and the Parks department.

So far, private funding has flowed mostly to the city's showcase parks, the heavily visited parks in Manhattan and other affluent areas. This new initiative aims to use private investment strategically, to build up and empower community groups so they can attract more resources, both public and private, for the continued improvement of their parks.

"The project is based on the premise that every park needs three things to be successful capital infrastructure, adequate ongoing maintenance, and community involvement," said David Rivel, Executive Director of the City Parks Foundation. "If you look at any successful park anywhere in the city or the country, you'll see that it has an active group of citizens who care about it and work for the park."

The private funds will be used to bring more activities into the parks, including concerts in Jackie Robinson, Marcus Garvey and Highbridge parks, track and field instruction in Astoria and Red Hook parks, and puppet shows, readings, and performing arts for kids in historic Harlem Parks. The funding also pays for a staff member in each of the four neighborhoods to help organize community groups and get more people involved. "Once you have a dedicated core of park users who've been attracted to a park," Rivel said, "you can begin to organize them into an ongoing friends group." Partnerships for Parks will support the effort with technical assistance and workshops on things like fundraising, working with the parks department, and making a map and guide of the park.

The parks department will direct the restoration projects in consultation with the community, and will continue to provide the maintenance, programs, and security already committed to those parks. Considering the present poor condition of some of these parks, there is a question about whether the current maintenance levels will be enough keep the restored areas from deteriorating. Rivel said that while "we all wish the parks department could have more money," he believes that an organized community group is what makes a difference in keeping a park well maintained.

PARKS HELPING REVIVE DOWNTOWN

Last spring, Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki announced that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation had allocated $25 million to renovate or create 13 new parks in lower Manhattan. "The notion was that we could very quickly improve the quality of life in lower Manhattan by making it more attractive for residents, workers, and tourists, the three crucial ingredients for reviving lower Manhattan," said Commissioner Benepe. The plan calls for the completion of six parks by the spring of 2004 and the rest by the end of 2004.

On November 5, the city opened the first of these spaces, Drumgoole Plaza, six months ahead of schedule. The space, next to Pace University underneath the entrance ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, was an eyesore, an empty lot used for parking cars and frequented by the homeless. The plaza now has trees, shrubs and perennial beds, new paving, benches, and lights. Pace University and its student environmental club, THINK Environment, worked closely with the city to make the plaza a reality. The university paid for the installation of underground water pipes and lighting, and will supply water and electricity. The club, which volunteers weekly in parks around the city, has taken on the responsibility of weeding, watering, and other maintenance, with tools and materials to be provided by the Parks department. Vlada Smorgonov, a Pace senior who is founder and president of the club, said that she hopes at some point Pace will hire a gardener to oversee the plaza and other green spaces the club would like to see created on campus.

TANKS FOR THE PARK

It may be a while before a park is actually built on the site of the Elmhurst gas tanks, once infamous symbols of how far the traffic had backed up on the Long Island Expressway. But residents of Maspeth, Middle Village and Elmhurst are ecstatic that Mayor Bloomberg stepped in and worked out a deal with Keyspan to purchase the site. The community and elected officials of both parties, including Republican City Councilmember Dennis Gallagher and Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat, had been fighting Keyspan's plan to sell the land to a developer planning to build a big-box commercial complex, including a Home Depot. Opponents said the development would drive out small retailers and bring even more traffic and pollution to an area that is already crossed by the expressway and has truck routes through local streets.

Ten days after starting discussions with Keyspan, Mayor Bloomberg reached an agreement with the company for the city to purchase the site for a price between one dollar and a million dollars, a fraction of its market value. "We need stores, we need economic development," Mayor Bloomberg said in the Daily News, "but the parks also really make an enormous difference in this city."

"We were facing formidable opposition and big money," said Bob Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, which had fought to stop the commercial development. "This happened lightning fast. It's to the mayor's credit that he was able to do this."

The details of the agreement with Keyspan still have to be finalized, and the site needs additional environmental remediation. Community members say they would like to see a park for passive recreational use, with trees to filter the pollution and noise from the expressway. City Council District 29, which includes these neighborhoods, has just .28 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents, one of the lowest ratios of any city council district, according to the parks profile (In pdf format) compiled by New Yorkers for Parks. Parks Commissioner Benepe said that the site is roughly six acres, about the size of Madison Park in Manhattan. "I've never seen an area this size in a very densely developed residential neighborhood opening up. It's a complete tabula rasa, not a thing on it, " he said. "It's almost flabbergasting to think about designing a park from scratch."

Anne Schwartz, a writer specializing in environmental issues, was formerly the editor of the Audubon Activist and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.

 As two Olympic cyclists and a dozen roller bladers from P.S. 5 glided onto a newly restored esplanade along the Harlem River, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated the final link of the interim Manhattan waterfront greenway. With the September 30th completion of what is known as the Harlem River Speedway (a straightaway once used for carriage racing), it is now possible to circle Manhattan on bicycle, foot or skate - although adventurers who attempt this will still have the company of trucks and taxis part of the way.

The interim route connects a number of pedestrian and cycling paths that have been built on the Manhattan waterfront over the last decade as part of the larger 1993 citywide Greenway Plan(pdf format). These 23 miles of Manhattan greenway, which provide access to 1,500 acres of parkland, connect to temporary on-street detours. To mark the entire 32-mile route, the city put up 750 signs with the Greenway logo, including directional and safety signage.

The temporary linking of the greenway sections is just the first phase of Mayor Bloomberg's effort to fulfill the promise he made in his 2002 State of the City address to complete the greenway around Manhattan. Finishing the project in record time, Bloomberg overcame resistance by some community boards and bridged the bureaucratic boundaries between the various city and state agencies responsible for different parts of the greenway, including the city transportation, parks and planning departments and Economic Development Corporation, and the State Department of Transportation. This phase of the greenway received $4.5 million in city funding and $1.5 million from the state.

There is still a long way to go before a continuous green path runs around the shoreline of Manhattan. The area affected by the reconstruction of the Harlem River bridges will not be available for a decade. Another missing piece is the riverfront next to the United Nations, which has had security concerns about allowing access there. The city is working with the United Nations on a possible esplanade and greenway link tied to the organization's proposed consolidation plan. The next phase of the Manhattan Greenway, which will begin after the plans for the South Ferry station and the reconstruction of Battery Place are finalized, includes the construction of a world-class bikeway around The Battery.

Greenway advocates, like the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, and Transportation Alternatives, have been cheering on the efforts of Mayor Bloomberg and the city agencies. Dave Lutz, the director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition and one of the people who launched the Greenway Plan, said, "This is the city we've been imagining for 15 years."

Lutz was even more celebratory about Mayor Bloomberg's comments on his radio show the week following the reopening of the Speedway. "The best news, the very best news," Lutz said, "was that the mayor announced support for a bicycle and footpath over the Verrazano Bridge." Brooklyn and Staten Island residents have been calling for such a path since the bridge was built in 1964 without one. "When I drew up the inventory of potential greenways for the city, the Verrazano was the target of it," Lutz said. "We figured if we built paths all over the city, you couldn't ignore the Verrazano Bridge."

Lutz noted that a pathway across the Verrazano could be a major tourist attraction. The bridge, once the longest suspension bridge in the world (now the sixth or seventh), has spectacular harbor and skyline views, and has parks on both sides, including historic Fort Wadsworth, part of the National Parks of New York Harbor.

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