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Parks Department

By Krista Carter 2/02 11:44am

Greensward

Storm damage in Grand Army Plaza. (CP Conservancy)

A Million Trees Too Many? City Greenery Program Hits Some Knots

It seems that the prayers of Dr. Seuss' lovable Lorax are finally being answered—in the form of MillionTreesNYC. But like all things, it comes at a cost.

Having recently reached its halfway point of planting 500,000 trees in October 2011 (a year ahead of schedule), MillionTreesNYC now faces its biggest obstacle yet: the U.S. economy. Just as nearly every other industry's budget and workforce are being trimmed, the greenery program is no exception, according to City Limits. Read More

2 By Stephen Duffy 11/30/11 6:13pm

Greensward

Open 'er up. (Spencer Tucker)

When Some Blacktop and Monkey Bars Will Do

One of the cornerstones of the Bloomberg administration's PlaNYC 2030 was ensuring every New Yorker lived within 10 minutes of a park. That is tricky, real estate being the valuable commodity that it is, so building new parks is not always easy—we had to construct one on a derelict railway, for godsakes!

So the administration came up with the clever idea of opening up city schoolyards to the community after school. Today in Jackson Heights, Mayor Bloomberg and the Parks Department celebrated the 200th playground opening. Read More

6 By Matt Chaban 11/15/11 10:11am

Occupy Wall Street

Protest art!

Why Do Vendors Get Tents in Parks and Not Occupy Wall Street?

Robert Lederman, a crusading artist and a bit of crank who was a frequent antagonist of Mayor Giuliani, thinks the Bloomberg administration is being two-faced in expelling the Occupy Wall Street protestors tents from Zuccotti Park. He points to tents set up for holiday markets as the unjust, commercial expropriation of public space.

The holiday vendors have permits, of course, and a portion of their proceeds goes to the parks they occupy, so there appears to be a public good here, whatever your opinion of overpriced tchokes. Mr. Lederman has his own agenda, as he has run afoul of the city for trying to sell art in parks without permits. Still, his thoughts, which he just emailed around, are intriguing in light of last night's events. Read More

2 By Matt Chaban 10/31/11 10:34am

Greensward

NIMP! Not in my playground. (NYC Parks Advocates)

Related Irradiates Ruppert Playground to Win Over Pols

As The Observer recently chronicled, the East Side of Manhattan is so starved for parkland, locals will do just about anything to hold onto every blade of grass and monkey bar. At Ruppert Playground, neighbors have been fighting the powerful Related Companies, which is preparing to replace the open space with a new apartment tower possibly reaching 40 stories.

The developer has every right to do so, as it built the playground three decades ago and only had to keep it open through 2008. This has not kept those on the block and their elected officials from fighting the plan, but now Related seems to have found its secret weapon: photon rays! Read More

3 By Robert Moor 9/06/11 10:41pm

The Transom

(Michael Browne/Parks Department)

Who Will Think of the Trees?

A week after 9/11, Bram Gunther, the head of forestry for the Parks Department, was dispatched to Ground Zero to survey the ecological effects of the attack. What he found resembled a volcanic blast zone: an ashen, smoking moonscape of dust and debris. Amid the rubble, he and his co-worker, Michael Browne, discovered a burnt, decapitated Callery Pear tree “sort of soldered in between the cracks of the cement at the World Trade Center.”

Mr. Browne wanted to rehab it, to restore the arboreal casualty to health, but Mr. Gunther was pessimistic. “The damage to that tree,” he explains, “in those circumstance, any arborist, any forester, is going to leave a tree like that alone.”

And not just because it was damaged. Read More

By Eliot Brown 5/24/10 10:56pm

Parks and Wrecked?

On May 17, Governor Paterson and several other officials and community leaders assembled on Manhattan's West Side for a ribbon cutting at Hudson River Park, the 5-mile-long strip of green space, converted piers and bike lanes along the Hudson River. They were on hand to christen the new (and growing) park's latest section, a 9-acre Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 5/21/10 1:08am

Serious Reservations

Tavern on the Green Talks Collapse; Restaurant Up for Grabs Again; Meantime, a Snack Bar

Restaurateur Dean Poll has officially withdrawn from talks with the labor union representing Tavern on the Green's 400 workers, forcing the city to search anew for an operator to run one of the country's most storied—and lucrative—restaurants.

In a statement issued late Thursday, Mr. Poll said, “It is with great regret that we are unable Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 4/12/10 9:41pm

Relief

In Loo of Behind a Bush: City Reveals Washington Square’s Eco-Friendly Bathrooms

They're a far cry from today's graffiti-covered, bathroom-stall-deprived johns.

Washington Square Park's spiffy new bathrooms, pictured in the renderings to the right, will have solar thermal panels on the roof and a geothermal system, according to Parks spokeswoman Cristina DeLuca. The men's room, apparently long the site of amorous hook-ups, will even have a coupling-friendly, handicapped-accessible Read More