Learn the importance of parkland

Dear Editor (Queens Chronicle):

Madison Square Garden, AEG Live and Founders Entertainment, extremely wealthy entertainment giants, are seeking to use Flushing Meadows Corona Park for paid-for-admission music festivals this summer. Queens Borough President Melinda Katz has launched a pre-emptive strike against such use and she is correct.

For too long the NYC Parks Department has been complicit with myopic politicians and wealthy special interests in dumping all sorts of intrusions that do not belong in an urban park like FMCP. It is the most abused park in our municipal park system and that abuse must stop. The Parks Department fails to understand FMCP is important for many Queens residents who do not have summer homes or rear yards in which to relax during summer months. The park is wall-to-wall people during the summer months. Large paid-for-admission events are nothing less than an unwarranted commercialization of public park property which must never be permitted, and particularly as to those with political connections. There are many nonpark facilities in this city that would be available to these entertainment giants.

That Mitchell J. Silver, the NYC Parks commissioner, said he would explore a new rule to approve live large scale multi-day events in the park is unacceptable. It should immediately be rejected with no ifs, ands or buts. Mr. Silver’s attempts to compare this proposal to a charitable AIDS walk in a park or to concerts in other parks that are over in a few hours, free to all persons who which to attend, is political nonsense. There is a difference between such short, free concerts and those events that last for days, that people must pay to attend and given the inadequate parking in the park, will result in mass parking on park grass throughout the park. Public park users will for all practical purposes be denied use of their park so billionaire entertainment owners can make more money and the little people who use and need the park be damned.

Over 100 hears ago Frederick Law Olmstead, the genius who created Central and Prospect parks in this city and important parks elsewhere, said:

“The survival of our park system requires the exclusion from management of real estate dealers and politicians and that the first duty of our park trustees is to hand down from one generation to the next the treasure of scenery which the city placed in their care.”

If Mr. Silver is not familiar with the above or if he is uncaring about its meaning, it would suggest he has no place as an urban parks commissioner. If Mayor de Blaisio is likewise unfamiliar or uncaring about its meaning and fails to prevent Mr. Silver, his parks commissioner, from further desecration of FMCP, he should be aware it will be an issue he will have to confront should he seek re-election.

Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing

Festivals still may come to Flushing Meadows

From the Times Ledger:

Borough President Melinda Katz has launched a pre-emptive strike against the city Parks Department and three entertainment giants that are seeking to use Flushing Meadows Corona Park for paid-admission music festivals this summer. Madison Square Garden, AEG Live and Founders Entertainment have all filed applications with the city to close off large portions of the park in order to stage events.

“Without a fair policy in place, I remain opposed to any applications from for-profit organizations to run paid-admission events in Flushing Meadows Corona Park,” Katz said. “The absence of a revised policy, including a set selection criteria and process approved by the community, renders the process arbitrary and unfair. Cutting off public access to our treasured parks flies in the face of the very principle behind our parks, which is space designated for public access and equity.”

The same three companies attempted to stage music festivals in Flushing Meadows Corona Park last summer, but their applications were denied after fierce opposition from Katz and numerous civic associations. Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver said he would explore new rule-making to create an appropriate framework for approving large-scale multi-day events in the park, including limits on the potential number, scale and nature of any such events so as not to have an unreasonable impact on the park and its users.

These new rules have not been established as the Parks Department reviews the applications. The city has until Dec. 19 to approve permits for the entertainment giants.

Parks playing with PEP officer numbers

From the Queens Chronicle:

At a March 3 City Council hearing about the mayor’s planned increase of 67 Parks Enforcement Patrol officers for the fiscal year 2017 budget, Parks Department Commissioner Mitchell Silver spoke about the planned allocation of officers for Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

“We have six dedicated to the Flushing Meadows Corona Park; there will be an addition of eight, which will make 14,” he said.

According to a Parks Department spokesman, the park has 12 PEP officers reporting out of it, six of whom are dedicated to patrolling the park.

In addition, a department spokeswoman said, there are four city seasonal aid officers and three urban park rangers assigned to the aquatic center in the park, in addition to five job training participants who are assigned to the Al Oerter Recreation Center.

Behind only Central Park, which has a police precinct dedicated to it, FMCP has the second-highest crime rate out of any park in New York City.

But according to a supervisory officer, the numbers provided by the department are inaccurate.

According to the source, who preferred to speak on the basis of anonymity, there are two CSA officers assigned to the aquatic center and one assigned to the Al Oerter Recreational Center, three UPRs assigned to the aquatic center and three PEPs that report out of the park but don’t patrol it. (Though four normally report there but work elsewhere, the officer said, one has recently been temporarily reassigned to Rockaway Beach.) He also did not challenge the number of JTPs, as he “does not deal with them.”

However, he said that there are no officers whose patrol is focused solely on Flushing Meadows Corona Park as a whole, rather than specific sites inside of it.

“There aren’t any dedicated to the park,” the supervisor said, clarifying that he meant officers dedicated to the park as a whole, rather than the aquatic center or the Al Oerter Recreation Center. “It’s all smoke and mirrors,” he added, referring to the information given to the public by the park agency.

“They’re misrepresenting it,” Parks Enforcement Union Local 983 President Joe Puleo said, referring to the staffing levels claimed by the Parks Department. Elected officials, he added, may be getting the wrong impression of the actual situation.

NYC Park Advocates President Geoffrey Croft put it even more bluntly.

“That’s a bold-faced lie,” Croft said, referring to Silver’s City Council testimony about the park and its officer staffing.

No music festivals at FMCP

From the Daily News:

The city Parks Department has rejected all three proposals to host multi-day music festivals at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the Daily News has learned.

Concert promoter AEG, the force behind the popular Coachella music festival on the West Coast, applied for a permit to have an event at the sprawling Queens park.

MSG and Founders Entertainment followed with applications for the site which housed both the 1939-40 and 1964-65 World's Fairs "Parks reviewed all permit applications thoroughly," said Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver. "While we are heartened by the interest in one of Queens' most historic parks, our primary concern is ensuring the park is available for the many New Yorkers who call Flushing Meadows Corona Park their backyard."

Officials said large-scale, multi-day festivals had never been held on the grassy areas of the park and were surprised by the number of applications the city received for 2016.

Lipstick on a pig?

From the Daily News:

A rusting World's Fair icon in Queens is getting a $3 million paint job — for free, the Daily News has learned.

Bridge and steel painters will donate their time in a bid to turn back the clock on the New York State Pavilion, which was built more than 50 years ago for the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Parks Department officials said the paint job will “restore the original luster and beauty” of the pavilion while “protecting its bones.” It is the first such work to be done on the building since it was constructed.

Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver is expected to make the announcement Wednesday outside the pavilion with the New York Structural Steel Painting Contractors Association and union officials.

The donated work will be done through a training program for apprentice painters, officials said.

Because the DeBlasio administration is all about the little people

From DNA Info:

Since he started his $205,180-a-year job, Silver has had sitdowns with Bette Midler, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Donald Trump, billionaire real estate investor Douglas Durst and the wife of a Russian oligarch to discuss their pet park projects, according to his daily schedules.

But Silver's schedules show that he held scores of meetings with heads of powerful nonprofits, wealthy donors, lobbyists and celebrities while he only had five meetings with local community groups.

Meet the new Parks commissioner

From Crains:

The new city parks commissioner was introduced by the de Blasio administration Friday as an "internationally-renowned planning director and expert who has worked extensively on parks policy."

The language might have been a bit grandiose for Mitchell Silver, who had been the chief of planning and development for Raleigh, N.C., but he is being asked by Mayor Bill de Blasio to fulfill a substantial mission: to bring "a holistic perspective" to the city’s parks and infrastructure, "while also expanding access, sustainability and public health initiatives throughout the city’s 29,000 acres of parkland," according to the mayor's office.

At a press conference in Seward Park in the Lower East Side—the city's first municipally funded open space, according to Mr. de Blasio—Mr. Silver was introduced as "visionary" who will bring a deep expertise in urban planning and a "passion for fairness" to the job.

"He's someone who's devoted his career to thinking where we need to go, and then finding ways to get it done," Mr. de Blasio said.

Mr. Silver's appointment had been anxiously awaited by many in the parks community, who fretted over Mr. de Blasio's slow decision-making. A native of Brooklyn, Mr. Silver worked as a planning official on several New York projects, including the Harlem-on-the-River redevelopment and the Jamaica Center in Queens, before decamping to Raleigh nine years ago.