"Park advocate" in favor of alienation joining HUD

From Crains:

New York City parks advocate Holly Leicht will join the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as the director for New York and New Jersey. In that post she will be responsible for rolling out continued recovery efforts in response to Superstorm Sandy. Ms. Leicht was appointed to the post by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. She is currently executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, a nonprofit advocacy organization, where she will have worked for nearly three years when she leaves Jan. 10.

I can't think of a better place for this hypocrite. Buh-bye!

Phony park group stands on phony platform

Parks Platform 2013 - White Paper

Note #7:

"Parkland alienation should not occur unless no other land is available to serve an essential public need."

Of course! That's why this partner of the NYC Parks Dept and self-proclaimed "park advocacy" group, New Yorkers for Parks, not only gave their blessing to parkland alienation for a non-essential private need: a walkway at the USTA National Tennis Center, but they also brokered the deal that allows the USTA to dictate where their paltry annual donations to the park will be spent, and also will be looking the other way while cars are parked on grassy parkland that the USTA doesn't lease during their annual tournament, which amounts to a secondary alienation.

And #8:

"State and local laws regulating parkland alienation should be strengthened to require earlier and broader notification of alienation actions, and to mandate acre-for-acre replacement of lost parkland."

Another no brainer! Which is why Holly Leicht, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks, squealed with delight to the newspapers when the USTA pulled some phony baloney and "swapped" tennis courts it was leasing for land that it wants (and will still get to use the land it "gave up").

It's so easy to see through this group's hypocritical bullshit, yet the media takes them seriously. Well their free ride ends here.

These people are not park advocates and do not speak for us. They are nothing more than shills for the City of New York.

Silly electeds prefer tweeding to budgeting

Here we have State Senator/Public Advocate candidate Daniel Squadron promoting the idea that not only are public-private partnerships good, but that we should fund our entire park system off the back of the Central Park Conservancy. Peter Vallone has endorsed the idea in the City Council.

And then there's NYC Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio shilling for the same thing over the weekend at the Unisphere.

No morons, we shouldn't rely on money from charities. We should stop the corporate welfare and tweeding programs and use that money to fund park maintenance, as required by law. You guys also realize that forcing a charity to fund other charities is most likely unconstitutional, right?

Here's former Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, his biggest defender, Holly Leicht of New Yorkers for Parks - a partner group with the NYC Parks Dept, and a landscape architect who reaped the benefits of working for the Central Park Conservancy, defending having charity pay for necessities, vs. Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates, who wants the city budget to allocate adequate funding.

Public-private partnerships hurt the general public

From the NY Times:

The Central Park Conservancy manages $220 million in assets, and has four officials who make more money than the city parks commissioner, Veronica M. White. At a High Line fund-raiser, a host held aloft a million-dollar check and asked for a match. Another $1 million check was written on the spot.

At the other end of this spectrum, the cracked path around the Shore Park-Verrazano Narrows offers an exercise in horizontal mountain biking. At Flushing Meadows-Corona Park children play in dry wading pools and lake paths are unnavigable without machetes.

Prospect Park occupies a middle ground. It has overseen a stunningly beautiful reconstruction of its lake side. It also rents out its Audubon Center on weekends to the wedding-bar mitzvah-birthday crowd.

Our lame duck mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, has started to turn off his charitable money shower. His foundation informed the Prospect Park Alliance that it intended to end its quarter-million dollar annual contribution. (Ms. Lloyd declined to discuss this.)

Those who defend privatization are candid. Ask about inequity and they talk of commodities; the emerald brilliance of Central Park draws tourists. The High Line is a brooch in the luxury transformation of Chelsea.

As for Flushing Meadows? When told that partisans hoped to transform a homely asphalt-ringed fountain into a grass-edged lake, John Alschuler Jr., co-chairman of the Friends of the High Line, offered an exasperated sigh. In his day job, he lobbies to place a U.F.O.-size professional soccer stadium in the midst of that Queens park.

Cities, he said, no longer pay for parks properly. Such exuberant hopes will not be realized in my life, he said, or that of my child. Find a corporate sponsor, he suggested.

So condescension passes as realism.

Holly Leicht of New Yorkers for Parks is a vigorous parks advocate, and would demand transparency and accountability from conservancies. But she would not upset the conservancy lords until the Parks Department is properly financed and revamped.

This feels backward. Former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton transformed a hidebound Police Department in months; why demand less of the Parks Department?

Phony park advocate contradicts her own position on FMCP

Photo from A Short Story

From an Op-Ed in the Daily News written by New Yorkers for Parks Executive Director Holly Leicht:

Supporters of the stadium point to the drab condition of the once-iconic Fountain of the Planets and claim building atop this long-neglected space will improve the park. But the current state of this historically significant park - under-resourced and ill-maintained for decades - is no rationale for further privatization. Five years ago, the Parks Department unveiled an ambitious plan for the park that included a proposal to fill in the Fountain of the Planets to create a great lawn - a vast, central gathering space which the park sorely lacks - and to daylight the Flushing River to help ameliorate the park's endemic flooding and drainage problems. New Yorkers for Parks calls upon the city to make this part of the park the grand public space it has the potential to be rather than giving up on it and turning it over to private hands.

Hey Holly, why is it ok to privatize other parts of the park? Why is it ok to hand over sections of the park to the USTA and the Wilpons in return for contributions to a park maintenance fund, but not cede another section to MLS for the same thing? In fact, you support the Wilpons not providing any replacement parkland under a bogus 1961 agreement and the USTA's proposal to swap land that the City already owns and the public already uses.

To be clear: regardless of the terms of the deal, the design of the stadium, or any offers of replacement parkland, New Yorkers for Parks cannot support a private stadium in the heart of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The location is simply wrong, and no modification or mitigation can make up for the loss of this vital open space.

But you can support an additional tennis stadium and a mall?

How about some consistency?  Where were New Yorkers 4 Parks and the Fairness Coalition last week during the CB7 meeting?

A much better opinion piece appeared in the Queens Tribune:

Stop The Nonsense

Mayor Mike Bloomberg certainly has a way about him. From the very beginning of the discussions to bring a soccer stadium to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the Mayor has alienated a large segment of Queens residents with his plans to alienate a large segment of Queens parkland.

And with each new announcement, the Mayor’s gung ho approach to get this stadium built continues to appall.

The introduction of Shiekh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a potential team owner was bad enough for some people. Then, on Monday, Mr. Mayor seemingly arbitrarily decided that any parkland taken from Flushing Meadows Corona Park could and should be replaced at the vacant Flushing Airport.

No discussions have been held, no negotiations have been made public and it seems as if no one in Queens has been contacted to discuss these plans.

Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg should just announce that process be damned, we’re doing things his way. At least then Queens residents would have an honest idea of what is actually going on.

Isn't that what he always does?

Fake park advocates think fake parkland swap is great

From Crains:

The U.S. Tennis Association, which owns and operates the U.S. Open, announced Tuesday morning it has reached an agreement with the city that will replace a sliver of public parkland in Flushing Meadows Corona Park that it needs to complete its expansion and also increase the active space available there.

The agreement ends a local fight over a 0.68-acre piece of parkland that the Tennis Association needed to acquire as part of a $500 million expansion for its 42-acre Flushing, Queens, tennis complex.
The community has been pushing the tennis association to replace the parkland, while the city had been open to accepting a financial commitment from the tennis group to make improvements to the park, rather than exchange land. One source said the land-swap agreement means there will be no USTA funding of improvements, but another said the matter is still to be negotiated.

The new agreement with the city will give 1.56 acres of parkland back to the community in return for 0.68 acres of parkland it needs. The replacement space will be located east of David Dinkins Circle and includes three-quarters of an acre of "passive open space" and nearly one acre of active space that contains five tennis courts. Those two parcels of land were added to the National Tennis Center's lease in 1993 and will be returned to the city. The Tennis Association would still be responsible for maintaining and repairing the tennis courts and would use those courts only for major tennis events.

So, they are proposing to privatize parkland by "giving back" parkland they already privatized (but still will be able to use whenever they want to). Well, that sounds like such a great deal for parkgoers! Let's hear from Holly...

"We are pleased that the USTA and the city have shifted their positions on replacement parkland," said Holly Leicht, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. "This may seem like a small amount of acreage, but it is vital to close the door on this and future attempts to privatize parkland without replacing what is lost to the public."

Once again, New Yorkers for Parks is a fake park advocacy group that is joined at the hip with the Bloomberg Administration and a "partner" of the NYC Parks Department. I'm sure local activists will take a different stance...

"It's a good first step," said Will Sweeney, co-founder of the Jackson Heights Green Alliance and member of the Fairness Coalition of Queens. "We felt this was the most important thing the USTA had to do, mostly for precedent purposes."

So Sweeney and his fake coalition think that setting a precedent of replacing parkland with other parkland is good?

Heaven protect Queens from our so-called "park defenders."

Letter to New Yorkers for Parks

NY4 Parks:

You are either making comments about issues you know nothing about, or are being paid to sell out OUR communities. You are hurting OUR communities.

Why are you promoting policies that allow all these businesses to destroy Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in exchange for funding it? If this is a such a great idea why not advocate the same for Central Park?

Be interesting to see how fast your funding dries up.

Again I ask, who is funding your group?

As a member of the affected community, and not an outsider. I strongly suggest you cease and desist your intrusion.

Alfredo Centola
President
Malba Gardens Civic
Member of Coalition to Save Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Rockaways want a transit line

From the Daily News:

A plan to transform an abandoned rail line into a park in southern Queens is generating a lot of buzz, but a group of transit advocates has another vision.

They believe the tracks, which have sat idle for five decades, should be reactivated to give southern Queens residents an easier commute to Manhattan.

“Certainly a quick trip to JFK Airport from the core of the city is something people have talked about from Year One,” said George Haikalis, a civil engineer who heads the Institute for Rational Mobility, a nonprofit umbrella group for transit advocates. “Nobody in the rest of the world would be so dumb as to let a valuable asset like that sit there.”

“I believe southern Queens and Rockaway would be better served if this forgotten track once again fulfilled its original purpose as a railroad,” Goldfeder wrote in an open letter. “Those same communities that are pushing this proposal are privileged with commutes of 30 minutes or less to midtown Manhattan.”

Andrea Crawford, the chairwoman of Community Board 9 who also is a member of Friends of the QueensWay, said a park would enhance the neighborhoods and prevent future over-development.

“No one disagrees that the Rockaways are underserved by public transportation,” she said. “But to say this particular right of way could be a viable rail of some sort does not have a basis in reality.”

Anyone who thinks a greenway would prevent rather than promote overdevelopment doesn't have a basis in reality, either. If the city really wants to fix up the Rockaways it needs to provide better transit options. But since we're too distracted by digging subway tunnels to Jersey, that's not likely to happen.

Open space report reveals a dearth of green space

From NY4P Open Space Index:

The map illustrates the range of access to parks across the city. Areas colored by the darkest shade of red --in Staten Island and the northern neighborhoods of the Bronx-- have excellent open space provision (more than 2.5 acres per 1000 residents). However, central Brooklyn and Queens, depicted in light pink, are expected to receive large numbers of immigrants over the next two decades and will suffer from inadequate access to open space. Planning for new parks in these neighborhoods now will help the City to accommodate its new residents in the years to come.

I like the gerrymandered report. This isn't showing it by zip code or community board district. Instead it's broken down by tweeding standards set forth by Amanda Burden. Also begs the question why Green Shores and trust for Public Land are teaming up to present a series of listening sessions about new park access along the Ditmars waterfront when, according to this "official" map, there appears to be plenty of parkland in that area already. Why not concentrate efforts elsewhere?

NY4P's new director has not-so-stellar record

In the latest cruel ironic twist to come from the Bloomberg administration, Lee Stuart has been named Director of New Yorkers for Parks, a quasi-governmental group charged with protecting park resources, as well as community gardens.

From A Walk in the Park:

While Ms. Stuart won accolades for her role in developing housing through the Nehemiah program, others criticized her role in the destruction of vibrant community green-spaces for apartments that are out of the reach of local residents. Critics charged that at the time the median income in the districts with threatened gardens ranged from $14,000-$19,000/year while the so-called “affordable housing” had minimum income requirements of $32,000/year. At the same time numerous gardens were targeted for housing, including Cabo Rojo, Hostos-Crimmins, Eagle, Shakespeare, and Salinas Community Gardens. The Hostos-Crimmins Garden at 141st Street in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx was the site of one intense battle.

"I am dismayed that New Yorkers for Parks has chosen Lee Stuart to be their new Executive Director," said Activist JK Canepa, who worked on the campaign to defend Hostos-Crimmins. "In her capacity at South Bronx Churches' Nehemiah Corporation, she showed great insensitivity to the beloved Hostos-Crimmins Garden in the South Bronx, choosing instead to refuse to work with the gentle, elderly people who created, tended, enjoyed and shared their garden… nor to the volunteers who tried to find common ground between SBC and the gardeners. Housing and gardens can successfully go together, but only if there is communication between the groups.

Statement from Miss Stuart:

"I am excited to be the new Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks. For many years, I have supported community gardens both professionally and personally. Community gardens give people an opportunity to nurture themselves and the ground beneath in an otherwise concrete city. I look forward to working with the New York Community Garden Coalition, and other park advocates as they do tremendous work to improve their neighborhoods throughout New York City."

Ms. Stuart's credibility was called into question on March 24th during the City Council parks budget hearing at City Hall. She began her testimony saying that NY4P's was the city's only independent organization dedicated to parks. Similarly, on their website, in literature, reports, and in correspondences to funders, they contend that they are "the only independent watchdog for all the city’s parks, beaches and playgrounds. NY4P also represents their non-profit as "independent" while they are in fact a partner with the city according to the Parks Department. This relationship is clearly evidenced on the Parks Department's home page (bottom, right hand side).

During budget the hearing, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe twice thanked their "friends" NY4P's. In an awkward moment for the parks commissioner on Wednesday's Brain Lehrer Show, Mr. Benepe said NY4P's were the only "legitimate" park advocacy group. In Saturday's New York Times, Ms. Stuart said they supported the new park vending rules for artists being proposed by the administration. However the Times did not identify NY4P's various relationships and connections to the Parks Department, nor to the Co-Chair of the Union Square Partnership BID, nor to Danny Meyer who is on NY4P's board. The Union Square Partnership has been publicly critical of what they consider "congestion" being caused by vendors in Union Square Park. The park is one of the four targeted for a dramatic reduction in vendors.

For more information on NY4P's relationship with the Bloomberg administration go to Crain's New York Business and scroll to the Reader's Comments below.

"New Yorkers for Parks is a partner of the Parks Department and is not a truly independent group," one reader posted. "This relationship is clearly advertised on the Parks Department's own homepage. They are inextricably linked to the government and special-interests (e.g., Danny Meyer, shared Board members with Central Park Conservancy, etc.). "

Anyone wanna bet that she gives the thumbs up to the bulldozing of the Ridgewood Reservoir?