Parks and Partnership in New York city (A) Adrian Benepe’s Cha.docx

Parks and Partnership in New York city (A) : Adrian Benepe’s
Challenge. (B) : The Sepctrum of Engagement.
Case Issues:
· Efficiency
Workers did not have the ability and adequate training and they
were not eligible to work hard because they were over fifty
years old.
· The relationship between the police and the management of
parks
The police did not respond to accidents and rapid intervention
to adjust behaviors within the parks and conservation
regulations, and the establishment of the authority to impose
fines on violators
· Accountability
There was no punishment for errors and lack of interest.
· Psychological
There was a racist perception of inferiority between park
workers and cleaners.
· Complaints community
The city was suffering from sabotage by gangs that inhabited
the gardens. Also they did not save the rights of workers from
abuse and there were increasing crime rates.
· Decentralization
Centralization was hindering the speed of decision making
among officials directly.
· Communication
The relationship between the citizens and workers in the parks
was tense. Also, communication with different races in the
community was used to identify the importance of parks.
· Culture of the community
Parks, neighbors and visitors did not care about hygiene and left
their own waste. Also they did not have a culture of

volunteerism
· Strategic Partnership
Cooperation between companies and private organizations and
citizens provide facilities for business people to get financial
support and increased revenue to help in the parks maintenance
work.
· Social participation
Citizens participate in the activities of the parks like sports and
educational programs and special events in the city.
· Competition
Competition between companies in the provision of services and
maintenance made their operations more efficient and lessened
expenses.
Public Administration Issues:
· The organizational structure and centralization
Heads of parks cannot make decisions by themselves.
· Accountability
By executives of the workers and by the security for the visitors
was in conflict with the laws.
· Efficiency
Lack of accountability has caused inefficiency.
· Incentives
unmotivated employees caused a leak of talented and skilled
employees.
· Goals
The objectives of the organization must be clear to employees,
citizens and the private sector.
· Political influence
The parks department’s performance was affected by
government policies and laws, as well as by procurement and
contract law which caused delay in the completion of tasks.
· Work ethic
Lack of respect for the professions of lower skilled workers and
racial discrimination, against workers' rights did not save them
from humiliation and abuse which impacted the performance of

the workers.
· Privatization
Privatization of some governmental sectors facilitated the
provision of services and made it more efficient.
· Evaluation and motivation
There needed to be evaluation of administrative and technical
practices and training on modern technology.
1
1
Kennedy School of Government
Case Program CR16-04-1744.0
HKS229
This case was written by John D. Donahue (sections II., III.,
and V.), Raymond Vernon Lecturer in Public Policy and
Director of the Frank and Denie Weil Program on Collaborative
Governance, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
and Susan Rosegrant (sections I. and IV.), Case Writer, John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
with suggestions by Center for Business and Government Senior
Fellow Alan M. Trager. (1004)
Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, revised, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
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Parks and Partnership in New York City (B):
The Spectrum of Engagement
I. Vehicle Maintenance and Repair
Ask an average group of New Yorkers to list jobs offered by the
New York City
Department of Parks and Recreation and they might suggest
park ranger, landscape architect,
garbage collector, even lifeguard. One of the agency’s less
visible occupations, however, is that of
auto mechanic: maintaining and repairing the 2,000-vehicle
fleet—made up of more than 40
different types of vehicles—that the department employs to
keep the parks in shape. Agency
vehicles include tree-pruning bucket trucks, wood chippers,
garbage trucks, beach rakes, and sand
cleaners. But although maintaining a high percentage of the
department’s trucks in good working
order is essential to smooth operations, many Parks officials
have complained for decades that the
agency’s vehicle maintenance and repair shops are inefficient
and unresponsive.
When Mayor Rudolph Giuliani took office in 1994, his
administration urged city agencies
to look for ways—including outsourcing and privatization—to
make their operations more

efficient. One strategy put forward was managed competition.
Unlike straight outsourcing,
managed competition generally included three steps: comparing
existing operations with costs and
services in the private sector; contracting out selected services
that private industry might do
better; and using the outsourcing experience to create an
atmosphere of competition and
innovation by exposing department operations to new ways of
working.
As Giuliani put out his call for improved operations, the new
Parks administration under
Commissioner Henry Stern was hearing pleas from the agency’s
borough chiefs of operation and
For the exclusive use of E. LARSEN
This document is authorized for use only by Emily Larsen in
Seminar in Public Management taught by Matt Thomas
from August 2013 to January 2014.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
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division managers to address chronic problems at the agency’s
eight automotive repair garages.1
Out-of-service rates for the fleet had been in the 20 to 25
percent range when Parks first began
tracking in the 1980s. According to the city’s fleet management
system, FAMIS (Fleet Automated
Messaging Interface System), by 1994 those distressingly high

rates had been brought down to 14
percent, which meant that an average of 266 vehicles were off
the road at any given time. However,
many Parks officials believed FAMIS, which was tabulated by
the auto mechanics and overseen by
their union supervisors, routinely undercounted the vehicles that
weren’t working by as much as
one third, bringing the real out-of-service rate closer to the old
20 to 25 percent.2
Previous efforts to address the repair problem had foundered.
According to the members
of the two union locals who staffed the garages, the high out-of-
service rates were the result of bad
management, coupled with the difficulty of getting parts
quickly. Parks was constrained by city
procurement rules requiring it to bid and maintain contracts for
every single automotive part it
used.
Having a
substantial number of trucks out of commission was a particular
problem in the mid-1990s as
staffing levels fell at Parks and the agency largely abandoned
fixed-post work groups dedicated to
individual parks in favor of mobile crews, which could travel
and operate at a number of sites each
day.
3
After both an internal Parks study and an outside report by
consulting firm Stone and
Webster, Inc., found widespread concern within the department
about vehicle downtime, messy
garages, and apathetic mechanics, and suggested privatization

as a potential answer, Parks in 1995
began studying whether to implement managed competition in
the agency’s garages.
Keith Kerman, then executive assistant to the Parks deputy
commissioner for management
and budget, says the unions were right, to a point. The parts
procurement process was unwieldy,
bureaucratic, and slow. Moreover, since maintaining vehicles
was not a core function of the Park,
officials tended not to have expertise in managing mechanics
and overseeing garage functions.
However, a bigger problem, Kerman insists, was the attitude of
the “uncooperative and
aggressive” unions, whose contracts provided members with
high base salaries and ample job
security, but little chance for promotion, except as part of a
group. “Our mechanics are smart and
rational,” he says, “and if they can’t be fired, and they won’t be
promoted for their individual
performance, there is some advantage to them doing as little
work as possible.”
4
1 Stern returned as commissioner in 1994 after having earlier
served from 1983 to 1990 under Mayor Ed Koch.
According to
2 In one instance, the Flushing Meadow garage, which had
reported an admirably low out-of-service rate of two to
three percent and whose supervisor had been named employee
of the month, was found to be only reporting the
vehicles being serviced at the time by mechanics in the garage,

not the ones sitting broken down in the garage
parking lot, sometimes for weeks at a stretch. The reporting
discrepancy came to light after a borough
commissioner called to complain about a Parks truck with three
broken windows and two flat tires that had been
sitting outside the garage for months.
3 Local 246 represented the auto mechanics, and Local 621
represented repair supervisors.
4 Parks first applied managed competition to park maintenance
in 1994 and 1995 with promising results, but the
approach was discontinued when the agency began relying on
participants in a citywide workfare program to clean
the parks.
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Kerman, Parks had never before done a serious analysis
comparing internal and private sector
costs, and the results were illuminating. While Parks core
operations often were under-funded
compared to other park systems and public expectations, he
says, the automotive operation was
over-funded in comparison with the private sector, and its

mechanics were among the highest paid
in the state. “[The unions] were very forceful in establishing the
number of mechanics we should
have and their working conditions,” Kerman says. “We had one
group to go to, and if you didn’t
like how they fixed trucks, you didn’t have a whole lot of
options. You did what they said.”
Based on the reports and analysis, and feedback from the
boroughs, Parks decided to try
managed competition in its vehicle maintenance and repair
operations, starting with the Bronx, the
garage with the worst service record of any borough. The
proposal listed three goals:
• To determine if the private sector could provide fleet services
more efficiently than
the public sector.
• To assess the management and technical practices and methods
a private firm
would utilize to maintain the Bronx fleet.
• To stimulate an environment of competition and innovation
throughout the
department’s other automotive repair operations.
Depending on the success of the pilot, Kerman says, and on
whether the in-house garages
responded to competition, it was possible Parks could bring the
Bronx back under agency
management, or, conversely, privatize all its garages.
“Ultimately the goal was to institutionalize
the idea of competition,” he says.
Working with garage managers and a union mechanic who

supervised the garages,
Kerman began preparing a contract for the Bronx garage. The
cost analysis predicting the benefits
of privatization had been compelling, but support within the
department was not unanimous.
Although Parks had promised there would be no layoffs, some
employees still worried that union
mechanics would lose their jobs. In addition, it was unclear how
private sector garage employees
working on site would interact with public sector and union
employees, particularly since the
agency’s garages generally were directly adjacent to other Parks
in-house civil service operations,
such as forestry or skilled trades.5
5 The Bronx garage, for example, was surrounded on four sides
by administrative operations.
Finally, those who had been responsible for garage
management
felt threatened by the move toward outsourcing—with some
cause. Once the Bronx garage was
privatized, it would report both to the Bronx borough
commissioner for Parks, as its primary
customer, and to the managed competition office, rather than to
the chief of technical services, who
previously oversaw all the garage operations.

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In January, Parks bid a contract for the Bronx garage that
represented a very different way
of doing business. Bidders were required to offer a fixed price
for maintaining the vehicles.
Preventive maintenance would be an increased priority, and if
the managing company failed to
achieve an out-of-service rate of five percent or less, it would
face a penalty. It would also have to
submit a new Daily Vehicle Out of Service Report, developed
by the managed competition office,
that drew on information from both mechanics and customers to
provide more accurate
information than that collected under FAMIS. In March, Parks
announced that the winning bid had
come from JL Associates, Inc. (JLA), a Virginia-based support
service company that proposed to
run the garage for 38 percent less than the existing in-house
cost.6
Under New York City law and municipal labor agreements, once
the contract had been
publicly bid, the unions had to be allowed to submit a counter
proposal. According to Kerman,
both the auto mechanics and the supervisors unions fought the
privatization effort at every step,
criticizing Kerman and other Parks leadership at City Council
meetings, lobbying for political
support, and eventually seeking a judgment in the New York
Supreme Court to keep Parks from
proceeding.

7
In June 1996, after more than a year of analysis, meetings, and
preparation, Parks arranged
transfers for the nine Bronx auto mechanics—either to another
Parks garage or to the Department
of Sanitation—and JLA took over operation of the garage and
began servicing its more than 300
vehicles.
The counter proposal submitted by the mechanics union in
April 1996, however,
posed no competition to JLA’s bid. “We were asked to compare
a 250-page private contract to a
two-page union proposal that anyone could have written within
15 minutes,” says Kerman. “So we
rejected it.”
8
At the end of one year under JLA, the Bronx garage had shown
startling improvement,
Kerman says. Out-of-service rates—as measured with the new
daily reports—had dropped from 16
to six percent, in part because JLA used a single source supplier
for parts that delivered on demand
and allowed the company to complete repairs more quickly.
Bronx Parks officials were reporting
Although Kerman, who had been named director of the
managed competition office,
acknowledges there was initial discomfort about having
outsiders interact with Parks personnel,
that tension faded as operations began to improve. JLA

immediately cleaned and reorganized the
garage. It contracted out some specialized types of repair—such
as engine overhauls—to save time
and money. Moreover, in order to encourage department-wide
innovation, the managed
competition office had JLA give a presentation to all senior
Parks Department managers—
including the in-house garage managers—to outline how it
ordered parts and ran inventory, what
it expected of its mechanics, what training it offered, and how it
reinforced good customer service.
6
In fact, JLA was the only bidder. Other potential bidders may
have held back, Kerman says, because of the
unknowns of operating this kind of pilot program in New York
City.
7 The union’s petition was dismissed without action.
8
JLA also began servicing Bronx vehicles that previously had
been repaired at the Five Borough Garage in
Manhattan, the department’s largest garage facility.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0

5
not only faster turnaround times, but more courteous and
responsive service. In addition, JLA had
kept to its budget of $728,000, 38 percent less than the previous
year’s $1.17 million. Sharply lower
personnel costs were the single greatest factor in the reduced
cost: Not only did JLA cut staffing by
about half, its non-union mechanics earned in the range of
$25,000 to $40,000 per year, Kerman
says, versus the $52,000 typically earned by top level union
mechanics.
As the Bronx garage posted improved service rates and lower
costs, the seven remaining
in-house garages began to respond with small improvements,
Kerman says. But there were still
serious problems. Brooklyn’s two garages at Coney Beach and
Prospect Park, for example, were
reporting more than 20 percent out-of-service rates, and during
the summer of 1996, a majority of
vehicles necessary for maintaining and cleaning the sand at
Coney Beach were out of service
within weeks of the beach’s opening. After this “operational
disaster,” Kerman says, Parks officials
and the managed competition office decided that Brooklyn
should be the next candidate for
privatization.
Kerman says the bidding process was notably different this time
around. Parks first asked
representatives of Local 246, representing the auto mechanics,
to submit a proposal for fixing the
problems in Brooklyn by incorporating operating procedures
used in the Bronx. When the union

didn’t offer a proposal, the bidding went forward, and in late
March 1997, JLA again submitted the
winning bid, this time for 30 percent below the current in-house
cost. The union did less to oppose
the bidding process than the first time, Kerman recalls, and its
counter proposal in late May was
more substantial and included some of the changes instituted in
the Bronx. Nevertheless, the
managed competition office rejected the union proposal as
inferior to the JLA bid. Instead,
managed competition offered to work with the five remaining
in-house garages to improve their
operations, with the implicit understanding that a failure to
improve could lead to further
privatization. Parks also contracted with outside companies to
perform preventive maintenance
and small repairs on the agency’s light duty cars, thus relieving
all garages of most of that repair
responsibility.
JLA took over the Brooklyn garages in August 1997, and by the
end of the year the
operation was on target to achieve the required five percent out-
of-service rate, and to cut costs by
30 percent. The Bronx and Brooklyn garages, now under private
management, were servicing 35
percent of the agency’s vehicles.
In January 1998, at the beginning of Commissioner Stern’s
second term under Giuliani,
Parks officials met to evaluate the next step for managed
competition. Although they debated
privatizing the remaining garages, Kerman says, they decided
against it for two primary reasons.
First, there was concern about the implications of replacing a
public sector monopoly with a

private sector monopoly. “If we have all our eggs in the private
sector basket, what happens if they
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renegotiate their prices, go out of business, or start providing
poor service?” remarks Kerman.9
To make sure those changes were reinforced and monitored,
Kerman in March gave an
ultimatum to the agency’s chief of technical services, manager
of the remaining in-house garages:
unless he transferred oversight of both the in-house and the
privatized garages to the managed
competition office—with the unions’ support—Kerman would
recommend that all the garages be
outsourced. “He agreed to that, the union agreed to work with
us, and we had a meeting with the
union and toured an in-house garage and showed them some of
the problems,” Kerman says.
“And the union president agreed unambiguously that there were
problems, and they were at least
part of the problem.” In line with the increased scope of his
operations, Kerman was promoted to
chief of operations, with ongoing responsibility for managed

competition efforts.
Second, the competition created by the outsourced garages, and
the threat that all garages might be
privatized if they didn’t improve significantly, was finally
having an impact. Out-of service rates
were falling at all garages. In addition, the mechanics union had
just agreed to a written proposal
to support changes modeled after the operations in the Bronx
and Brooklyn.
With the reporting change, Kerman began instituting new
policies. He reduced staffing in
the in-house garages either through attrition or transfers, and at
the same time began requiring
more preventive maintenance inspections. Certain repair jobs
were contracted out. All garages
received updated equipment, including new computers,
inspection machines, and diagnostic
equipment. Parks began to inspect the in-house garages
regularly for cleanliness and order.
Moreover, since New York City had redesigned its parts
procurement rules to more closely
resemble private procurement practices, the in-house garages
began buying most parts from a
single national parts supplier.
A final change, Kerman says, was the requirement that all
garages complete the Daily
Vehicle Out of Service reports. Every Tuesday, Kerman met
with garage supervisors and managers
to compare the results of the Bronx and Brooklyn garages with
the in-house garages, and to discuss
operational practices.10

The impact of all these changes was dramatic. Out-of-service
rates fell immediately, and
other measures of performance improved steadily over the next
six years. By 2003, vehicle
maintenance and repair costs were 18 percent lower overall than
in 1996.
The meetings, he acknowledges, were usually testy, but they
kept everyone
aware of performance expectations. “The competition is real,”
Kerman says. “Our in-house guys
know that we look every day and every week at what goes on in
the private garages.”
11
9 That concern led to a general consensus that if all garages
were ever to be privatized, Parks would attempt to
diversify and contract with more than one company.
Civil service staffing
had been reduced by 34 percent and auto parts inventories for
the in-house garages had been
10 The same set of reports was delivered the following day to
all Parks borough commissioners.
11 Cost savings would have been more than 18 percent were it
not for increased salaries for union members under a
collective bargaining agreement reached in 2000. Parks re-bid
the contracts for the privatized garages in 2000 and a
new company, First Vehicle Services, took over with a similarly
priced bid.

____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
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chopped by more than two-thirds, from $1 million to $300,000.
In 2004, overall out-of-service rates
were five percent, down 61 percent since managed competition
began in 1996.
Still, with all these improvements, Kerman says, keeping the
mix of union and private
garages working well—both apart and together—remained
challenging. “We still operate within a
difficult bureaucratic system, and the union is still pushing to
get rid of those private vendors, and
they’ll use whatever mechanisms they can to achieve that,” he
says. At the same time, Kerman was
receiving pressure from some borough managers with in-house
garages to privatize further.
Although in-house out-of-service rates had fallen to five to six
percent, for example, they still
weren’t as good as the three to four percent achieved by the
private operations. “The truth is that
while out-of-service rates have improved in the in-house
garages and costs have improved,” he
says, “they have never been fully competitive in any of the
seven years we’ve done this with the

rates that we’re getting privately.” Nevertheless, Kerman says,
Parks was not likely to outsource
more garages based on bottom-line results alone. “Even if you
think this is the best thing to do,
there are other considerations: there’s the local law, there are
union negotiations, there are the
political implications, there’s that larger world of issues to
assess.” He adds: “We are finishing a
memo comparing the private and in-house garages, and we’re
going to be discussing that with the
union and asking them to address ways that they can further
improve.”
Perhaps the very difficulty of managing the ongoing tension
between private and public
operations explained why managed competition remained a
rarity, Kerman says, even in New
York City, where Giuliani and others had championed the
concept. “The idea that city services,
even if they’re done by in-house civil servants, need to be as
competitive as the private sector and
need to operate within a concept of competition,” he says, “is
still the exception in government.”
II: The Central Park Conservancy
The Central Park Conservancy was founded in 1980 as an
informal assemblage of New
Yorkers concerned about the woeful state of Manhattan’s
flagship park.12
12 Much of the information in this section comes from the
historical material of the Conservancy’s website,
http://www.centralparknyc.org/thenandnow/cpc-

history/cpchistory, accessed in November-December 2003 and
January 2004. Other information is drawn from the
Conservancy’s brochure of May 2003 entitled “Central Park
Conservancy: A Model for Public/Private Partnerships.”
Its antecedents, though,
can be traced to a number of separate sources, both public and
private. On the private side, Richard
Gilder and George Soros, two wealthy New York financiers
with diverse political and
philanthropic interests, commissioned a 1976 Columbia
University study attributing Central Park’s
decline, in part, to remediable management shortfalls. This
study formed a focal point for citizens’
anxieties about the park’s condition. On the public side,
Commissioner Gordon Davis’s
decentralization campaign at the Department of Parks and
Recreation, and particularly the creation
of the post of Central Park Administrator in 1979, gave the park
new standing as a distinct entity.
Before that there had been no budget, staff, or management
systems specifically devoted to Central
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Park, though it received a significant (if unknown) share of
Manhattan’s park resources. Betsy
Barlow Rogers’s appointment as the first Central Park
Administrator and her enthusiastic embrace
of the new role’s focused accountability and discretion set the
stage for subsequent innovations.
Rogers soon took on the joint roles of Administrator and
president of the private Conservancy. A
seemingly modest governmental decision—turning the newly-
refurbished structure known as the
“Dairy” over to the Conservancy as a venue for volunteer park
programs—provided a physical
home and an authorized mission for the nascent organization.
The success of the first Frederick Law Olmsted Awards
Luncheon in 1983 demonstrated
the Conservancy’s fund-raising potential and marked its
evolution beyond a casual cluster of park
enthusiasts. Two years later the Conservancy published a
manifesto, subsequently re-printed by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, called
Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and
Restoration Plan.13
The Conservancy became an increasingly mature nonprofit, with
an ever more ambitious
agenda, during the 1990s. Fund-raising efforts exploded,
providing resources both for major
investments and renovations and for growingly intensive
maintenance. It refurbished some Central
Park facilities that had been quietly crumbling since the Robert
Moses era. New committees and
initiatives were established to link unmet park needs with
citizens’ latent readiness to donate time
or money. Volunteers put in tens of thousands of hours each
year, and their efforts increasingly

were supplemented by paid Conservancy employees. Yet the
Conservancy was still essentially a
private voluntary organization providing discretionary support
for a city-run park—a large-scale
version of the “friends of the park” associations that were
increasingly common in New York and
elsewhere. But a fundamental shift was in store.
A further step toward institutional durability came in 1988
when the
Conservancy established the “Greensward Trust,” a $25 million
endowment with the income
dedicated to park maintenance, to insulate the Conservancy’s
mission from the vagaries of annual
funding (both public and private).
Following extensive negotiations, the City agreed in 1998 to
transfer stewardship of
Central Park to the Conservancy. A formal agreement signed by
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,
Commissioner Henry Stern, and Conservancy Chairman Ira
Millstein formalized the
Conservancy’s new role.14 The agreement’s preamble
recognized the Conservancy’s financial
prowess (with funding to date exceeding $164 million) and its
operational achievements in
restoration, maintenance, and programming—then segued to the
crucial phrase: “Whereas, the
City desires to obligate CPC to perform the services hereinafter
set forth …”15
13 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
There followed 42
pages of legal prose, plus a lengthy appendix (with an appendix

of its own).
14 “Agreement Between the Central Park Conservancy and City
of New York, Parks and Recreation,” dated and
signed February 11, 1998.
15 Ibid., p. 2. Emphasis added.
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In many respects the agreement resembled a conventional
service-procurement contract, of
the sort New York and any other city routinely signed with
providers of construction or consulting
or social services. It required the Conservancy to “provide, or
cause to be provided, services
specified for maintaining and repairing Central Park to the
reasonable satisfaction of the
Commissioner.” It set the term of the relationship to be eight
years (until mid-2005), renewable
indefinitely so long as both parties agreed.16 It specified the
mundane elements embedded in the
phrase “maintaining and repairing,” including the removal of
litter, graffiti, and tree branches;
snow and ice clearance; drain maintenance; bench repair; and

retouching the bronze on the
monuments and statues scattered through the park. The
Conservancy was required to submit a
detailed operating budget to the Commissioner, subject to his
written approval before the plan
could be considered final.17 The Commissioner could terminate
the agreement if the Conservancy
failed to “perform services at the required standards,” or even
upon a general “determination that
termination is in the best interest of the City.”18 The agreement
also delineated which facilities
(such as the Parks Department’s headquarters building, the
Arsenal), which prerogatives (licensing
and collecting money from private concessionaires), and which
park functions (including law
enforcement, and control over public streets passing through the
park) remained with the City.
Nearly a tenth of the agreement dealt with procedures for
procurement contracts, including the
requirement for competitive bidding and bars on financial
dealings with any relatives of
Conservancy employees.19
A close perusal of the document, though, would reveal
differences—some subtle, some
striking—from a conventional outsourcing contract between a
city government and a private
company or nonprofit. The specifications of the tasks to be
accomplished, for example, were
remarkably vague. Litter was to be removed and grass to be
mowed “as needed.” Snow and ice
would be cleared “within a reasonable period of time.” Plants
were to be fertilized “as
appropriate.” When the technical characteristics of the task
permitted—as in most cases here they
did—contract specifications tended to be far more precise. This

was both to permit fair competitive
bidding (an empty issue in this case, since the Conservancy was
sui generis) and to provide an
unambiguous basis for judging (if necessary in a courtroom)
whether a contractor’s obligations had
been met. Such general language would give a New York City
attorney little to work with if it
came to a legal fight over the Conservancy’s performance.
While city personnel working in other
parks operated under a formal accountability system called the
Parks Inspection Program, the
Conservancy was not required to comply with that program’s
detailed performance
requirements.
20
16 Ibid., p. 3.
17 Ibid., pp. 5-6
18 Ibid., p. 24.
19 Ibid., pp. 29-33.
20 Ibid., pp. 7-8.

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The financial provisions of the deal were even more peculiar.
Contracts conventionally
specified the sums to be paid by the city, usually with a
breakdown between direct costs of
operation and the fees earned by the contractor, frequently with
incentives linked to performance
or provisions for contingencies. But this agreement dealt at
more length with the money the
Conservancy would bring than with the money it would get. It
required the Conservancy “to raise
and expend annually a minimum of $5 million” for
“maintenance, repairs, programming,
landscaping, and the renovation and rehabilitation of existing
facilities … ”21
Despite its contractual status as a minority funder, the Parks
Department retained
important areas of control. The Commissioner had the right to
inspect the Conservancy’s financial
reports, program records, board meeting minutes, and other
documents.
The Parks
Department, for its part, would pay the Conservancy an annual
$1 million, plus an extra 50¢ for
every private dollar raised and spent beyond $5 million. In the
third year and beyond, the
Conservancy would also receive half of any increase, over a
baseline, in net revenues the city
earned from concessions in the park. (The logic here was that
the number of people using the
park—and thus spending money on restaurants, snack bars, or

equipment rental—was influenced
by park conditions, so that it was both fair and smart for
increases to be shared with the park’s
steward.) The bonus payments for extra fund-raising were
capped at $1 million, and those for
increases in concession revenues capped at $2 million. So the
annual flow of cash from the city to
the Conservancy would be, at most, $4 million. New York’s city
government would be a secondary
player in the financing of Central Park, since the Conservancy
was obligated to raise at least $5
million on its own. (It would comfortably exceed this minimum
in the following years by a factor
of three.)
22 The Conservancy was
required to “conspicuously acknowledge the involvement” of
the Parks Department in all press
releases, reports, and other communications involving Central
Park.23 And the department
explicitly reserved the right to schedule its events in Central
Park “including but not limited to
concerts, fairs, and festivals.”24 In promotional material
distributed in 2003, four pages
summarizing the Conservancy’s achievements were followed by
assurances that the Parks
Department “retains control, policy, and enforcement
responsibility … has discretion over all
events in the Park, and all revenues generated from concessions
in the Park go into the City of New
York’s General Fund.”25
Midway through the eight-year agreement, Central Park had not
just regained but, in most
respects, surpassed the standard set by Robert Moses in the days
of flush public budgets. Around

25 million people visited the park in 2002. The number of
people using the Conservancy’s visitors’
21 Ibid., pp. 9-10.
22 Ibid., pp. 15-16.
23 Ibid., pp. 37-38.
24 Ibid., p. 38.
25 “Central Park Conservancy: A Model for Public/Private
Partnerships,” brochure dated May 2003 distributed in
Conservancy’s standard press kit.
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center was approaching a million a year; more than half a
million participated in its sports,
cultural, or nature programs. At least one multi-million dollar
restoration project was brought to
completion nearly every year, in some cases winning design
awards for excellence in architecture
or landscaping. Fashion photographers and film crews once
again were drawn to Central Park,
with over 2,000 photo or film sessions annually using the park’s

well-tended landscapes and iconic
statues and buildings as backdrops.26
The Conservancy managed the park both more intensively and
very differently than had
the Parks Department in earlier days. There were around 150
full-time staff, every one of them
(from Belinda Adefioye to Jonathan Zelkind) listed by name in
the Conservancy’s glossy annual
report.
27 Around 30 seasonal workers helped out during peak months.
The Conservancy’s
employees were strictly non-union, hired after interviews and
reviews by both the human
resources and the operations departments and retained
contingent on performance. To focus
accountability the park was divided into 49 “zones,” with a
trained horticulturalist responsible for
each one, aided by teams of volunteers and by roving crews of
Conservancy professionals
specializing in tree care, monument preservation, soil
conservation and so on. Graffiti was
scrupulously removed the same day it appeared; trash barrels
were emptied daily; the night’s
accumulation of litter disappeared by 9:00 a.m. and uniformed
staff riding quiet electric carts
patrolled manicured paths on the alert for stray coffee cups or
candy wrappers. Few fences or other
barriers marred the view, though a system of discrete “red
flags” was used to warn users away
from vulnerable areas or from ball fields temporarily closed to
let the turf recover.28
Maintaining Central Park to these exacting standards was an

expensive proposition. Fund-
raising, fortunately, had proven to be the Conservancy’s strong
suit. “Associate membership” cost
only $35 a year—the 2002 annual report pointed out that
“passion for Central Park … is not
dependent on income”
29—but the categories of membership ranged up to the
“Chairman’s Circle”
at $25,000 a year. Higher-level membership brought various
amenities (from tote bags and
commemorative paperweights to private tours and VIP treatment
at Central Park festivities), but
more potent motives seemed to be affection for the park itself
and the Conservancy’s lofty status in
Manhattan society. Its board of trustees was studded with
prominent people from New York’s
financial industry and other circles where big-ticket
philanthropy was a routine part of life.30
26 Nearly 40 major movies have filmed scenes in Central Park
under the Conservancy’s stewardship.
(Michael Bloomberg had been a Conservancy trustee prior to his
election as mayor.) Most trustees
wrote large checks themselves and, just as important, leveraged
further contributions through
boosting the Conservancy’s social cachet, and through the
intricate charitable reciprocity in which
New York’s elites cement relationships by supporting each
other’s favorite causes. Contributions in
27 The Many Faces of Central Park, Central Park Conservancy

Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2002.
28 This section draws on the 2003 brochure cited above, as
well as on the author’s observations in the fall of 2003.
29 op. cit., p. 13.
30 Ibid., p. 28.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
12
fiscal 2002 exceeded $18.6 million, dwarfing the $2.8 million
the Conservancy collected under its
agreement with the Parks Department.31
This financial robustness let the Conservancy spend $15.8
million in 2002 to restore and
maintain Central Park’s 843 acres. (The Parks Department, by
contrast, had about $190 million to
cover 28,000 acres city-wide.) Some $3.5 million was spent on
fund-raising activities and $2.9
million on management and general expenses, for total
expenditures exceeding $22 million. While
the Conservancy provided the bulk of the resources for Central
Park, New York City still played a
role. The Parks Department still had 23 employees and
subsidized the Central Park Zoo, among
other forms of support, while the New York City Police

Department continued to do the heavy
lifting on park security. By the most expansive measure, public
resources devoted to Central Park
exceeded $14 million in the 2004 fiscal year.
Total revenues that year surpassed $21 million, even after
suffering some $9 million in investment losses. Though both
annual giving and stock values had
softened in the recession, the Conservancy had an enviable
balance sheet, with assets exceeding
liabilities by better than a factor of 50.
32
A degree of skepticism had greeted the 1998 agreement
delegating Central Park’s
maintenance to the Conservancy, including a Village Voice
feature denouncing the “sell-out” of the
park to “a private philanthropic elite.”
While the Conservancy had become the main player,
it was by no means a solo act.
33
III. The Bryant Park Restoration Corporation
Every year there was occasional grumbling about private
events preempting a building or meadow, or sports facilities
getting short shrift in favor of bucolic
vistas. But the top-flight programming, award-winning
renovations, and meticulous maintenance
delivered by the Conservancy were evident to anyone who
visited Central Park. Few believed that
a cash-strapped Parks Department would (or should) devote
enough public resources to match that

standard in the Conservancy’s absence. By 2003, the voices
challenging private stewardship for
New York’s premier public park were few and faint.
The New York Public Library, with its iconic marble lions
flanking the entrance, has an
elegant park as its backyard. Bryant Park surrounds the Library
and forms a compact urban oasis
bounded by 5th and 6th Avenues to the east and west and by
40th and 42nd Streets to the south and
north. The nine acres of grass, trees, paths and terraces break up
an overwhelmingly commercial
stretch of Manhattan, with a dense concentration of some of the
city’s more expensive office space.
It is the only park in the neighborhood, and one of the most
elaborately maintained parks in all
New York.
31 Ibid., p. 14.
32 Personal communication from Chris Osgood, December
2003.
33 Guy Trebay and Eddie Borges, “Central Park Sell Out: With
Little Public Input, a Private Elite Is Set To Take
Over the Crown Jewel of Urban Parks,” The Village Voice,
October 14, 1997, p. 44.

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As recently as the early 1800s this tract was on the city’s semi-
rural northern fringe, and
served as a pauper’s graveyard. As New York expanded to the
north, a reservoir replaced the
cemetery. At mid-century the site was the venue for New York’s
first World’s Fair, the famous
Crystal Palace Exposition. The Public Library was completed in
1911 at the corner of 5th Avenue
and 42nd Street, and around the same time the green space
behind it was named in honor of the
poet William Cullen Bryant. But Bryant Park remained a rather
bedraggled affair until Robert
Moses reshaped it into a classical terrain of lawns, terraces, and
hedges as part of his park-building
boom during the 1930s.
The ebbing tide of money and ambition following the Moses era
dragged Bryant Park into
an even deeper decline than the park system as a whole. The
neighborhood—dense with offices,
scant on housing—had few residents to press Bryant Park’s
claim on tight city budgets for park
maintenance or police patrols. And when the office workers
went home at night, the area was
abandoned to the more downtrodden and lawless elements of an
increasingly troubled New York.
Bryant Park—more commonly known in those days as “Needle
Park”—became deserted by day
and dangerous by night. The drug trade was nearly non-stop.
Muggings and even murders were
frequent enough to motivate all but the reckless or the clueless

to shun Bryant Park, especially once
dusk fell. Media entrepreneur Michael Fuchs, whose late-1970s
venture Home Box Office was
based across the street, equipped HBO’s headquarters with its
own cafeteria, gym, and other
facilities so that staffers would not have to leave the building.
“It was the Wild West down there,”
he later recalled.34 A 1979 report commissioned by the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund (headquartered a
few blocks away) declared, “If you went out and hired the dope
dealers, you couldn’t get a more
villainous crew to show the urgency of the situation.”35
The next year, Rockefeller Brothers created the Bryant Park
Restoration Corporation,
naming as its chair Andrew Heiskell, who headed the media
giant Time, Inc. and also led the
board of the New York Public Library. An ambitious Harvard
MBA named Daniel A. Biederman,
who was beginning to build his reputation as an urban-
development consultant, was hired as the
new organization’s executive director. Heiskell and Biederman
confronted a conundrum: People
were afraid to go into the park because there were so few people
in the park. How to lure enough
law-abiding citizens to make Bryant Park feel safe for strolling
and lunching, and inhospitable to
the drug scene?
With the support of the Parks Department and money from
foundations, the Bryant Park
Restoration Corporation experimented with various tactics to
break the cycle of desertion and
danger—removing litter, installing booths where people could
buy books, flowers, and discount

theatre tickets, offering free lunchtime concerts. The tactics
worked, to a degree. By the early 1980s
34 Fuchs is quoted in an op-ed by Julia Vitullo Martin, “The
Rise and Fall of Bryant Park,” The New York Sun,
January 21, 2004.
35 Historical section of Bryant Park website,
http://www.bryantpark.org/history/bryant-park-today.php,
accessed
January 2004.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
14
workers from surrounding offices were flocking into Bryant
Park at lunchtime on pleasant days.
But the New York Times still found “a Jekyll and Hyde
character” to the park. It was sometimes
vibrant by day, especially in good weather. But when dark fell
or the weather turned rainy or cold
“the crowds disappeared and the park resumed its sinister
appearance.”36

Daniel Biederman had been developing a “master plan” for
Bryant Park since his first days
at the Restoration Corporation, and late in 1983 the basic shape
of that plan became public. It
started with (literally) root-and-branch transformation of the
landscape—a call to rip out the tall
ornamental hedges that provided such inviting cover for illicit
doings. The bold blueprint by
Laurie D. Olin (then chair of Harvard University’s Department
of Landscape Design) envisaged
gravel paths threading through the park to welcome strollers;
lampposts to dispel shadows; a
fountain with reflecting pools; upgrades and additions to
terraces and plazas; outdoor tables and
thousands of chairs; and world-class public bathrooms. But this
was just the start. Biederman’s
vision also featured a glittering glass-and-steel restaurant with
22-foot ceilings, huge dining rooms
to seat 1,000 people, and an outdoor terrace. Warner LeRoy, the
celebrity restaurateur, initially
signed on to develop the restaurant. ‘‘What we are building is a
grand cafe that can be
imaginatively lit in the evening and that will help make the park
a great, wonderful, public
gathering place. It could be a great scene, like the Via Veneto
or the Piazza San Marco.’’
It would take something
bigger than a cleanup and some kiosks to reclaim Bryant Park.
By the mid-1980s, something bigger
was taking shape.
37
The price tag for this vision—at least $18 million for the initial
investment alone, including

the restaurant—was spectacularly beyond what New York City’s
Department of Parks and
Recreation could sink into a single small park. But government
funding wasn’t what Biederman
had in mind. Most of the money was meant to be private.
Warner LeRoy would build the grand
glass restaurant at his own expense, an investment to be
recouped through future profits, and
would also contribute $2 million toward the landscaping plan.
Millions more would come from
foundations and other private contributors solicited by the
Bryant Park Restoration Corporation.
Public funds from New York City were expected to cover barely
five percent of the total
investment package.
(LeRoy
was famously flamboyant, and was seen as merely eccentric
when he sketched an image—Bryant
Park rivaling Venice’s magnificent central piazza—that in other
voices would have sounded
delusional.)
Biederman anticipated that the new Bryant Park, once brought
to gleaming completion,
would require over a million dollars each year for horticultural
work, maintenance and cleaning,
restroom attendants, and a substantial private security force.
The Parks Department was prepared
to contribute no more than $250,000, so the plan anticipated
that private money would
36 Deirdre Carmody, “Vast Rebuilding of Bryant Park
Planned,” The New York Times December 3, 1983, p. 1.
37 Ibid.

____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
15
predominate here as well. The restaurant would pay a half-
million every year, and the Restoration
Corporation committed to provide another $250,000 on its own.
But a further source of reliable
annual cash was needed if the maintenance of Bryant Park was
to match the standards of its
construction. The solution to this final piece of the financial
puzzle was the most novel part of
Biederman’s plan.
Business owners in a few of New York’s commercial areas had
been experimenting with a
new institution called the “business improvement district.” The
basic idea was to carve out special
jurisdictions within New York City to raise taxes, and to
provide services, above the levels of the
city as a whole. A business improvement district—or “BID,” as
it was conventionally called—
would seek the formal consent of a majority of businesses
within a geographically bounded area to
levy an incremental tax, or “assessment.” (Legally only 49.5
percent of property owners had to

consent to a BID before assessments would be mandatory for all
businesses in the district, but in
practice officials required more like 70 percent agreement
before endorsing a BID.38
As Biederman unveiled his master plan, there were many
millions of dollars to be raised,
and at least eight stages of official review to be navigated,
before ground could be broken on the
project.
) Each BID had
to be approved by the state legislature, but once it was, the
assessments were legal obligations,
collected by the government and passed on to the private BID to
fund extra street sweeping,
security patrols, or other benefits that were “public services”
within the boundaries of the district.
Biederman proposed stretching the BID concept to apply to
Bryant Park. A superlative park, he
reasoned, offered real economic benefits to surrounding
property owners and business operators,
and it was entirely reasonable to pay for these special benefits
with special taxes. While the
government would collect the BID assessments, and would
retain formal title to Bryant Park, the
Restoration Corporation sought a long-term lease for the land
and the authority to manage the
park itself.
39 Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern said his Department was
“watching this carefully,”
though he pronounced himself reassured by the involvement of
the New York Public Library
(which shared both terrain and a chairman with the Bryant Park
Restoration Corporation).40

Enthusiasm for the plan was far from universal. For many
skeptics, according to the New York
Times, the “sticking point” was “the idea that a public park
would be managed by a private group.”
Park advocates, including the nonprofit Parks Council,
generally found the notion “repugnant,”
and were particularly concerned that dependence on BID
financing would make Bryant Park
beholden to corporate interests.41
38 Terry Pristin, “For Improvement Districts, Restored
Alliance with City,” The New York Times, February 18, 2002,
p. B-1.
But the paucity of housing in the Bryant Park area meant there
39 These included an environmental impact statement; the
Uniform Land Use Review Procedure; hearings before
Community Board 5; the blessing of the City Planning
Commission, the Board of Estimate, the Landmarks
Preservation Commission, and the Art Commission; and
approval by the State Legislature. Carmody, op. cit.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.

____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
16
was not much of a residential constituency to weigh in on the
issue. And the vehemence of critics’
objections was softened, to a degree, by the blunt fact that the
status quo was so far from
satisfactory. Despite a general upturn in New York City, Bryant
Park was still mostly empty except
on sunny weekday afternoons, and still recorded scores of drug
arrests and a few assaults every
month. The charge that private control threatened to corrupt a
fine public park seemed, in this
instance, rather strained.
While the details of timing and dollars differed considerably,
the reality of a remade
Bryant Park turned out to conform remarkably closely to
Biederman’s vision. “The tough thing
about Bryant Park,” he later recalled, “was it took nine years to
execute the plan; five or six years
were consumed with the process. We went through massive
approvals to get the plan accepted.”42
In mid-1985 the Restoration Corporation signed a deal with
New York City granting the
Corporation “the exclusive license and privilege to operate and
manage the Park.” The City balked
at giving the Corporation legal control of the terrain itself.
There was no lease granted, and the dry
legal language of the agreement specified that the Corporation
“shall manage and operate the Park
at all times on behalf of the City.”43
The park closed down for three years—both for reconstructing

Bryant Park itself, and for
an underground extension to the New York Public Library—
leading up to a grand unveiling in
May of 1992. Cast-bronze lampposts flanked each entrance. The
monuments had been refurbished;
the paths re-laid. The grass of the great central lawn was
fastidiously manicured. Flood lamps
beaming down from atop adjacent office buildings, along with
powerful streetlights on 42nd and
40th streets, illuminated the park. The hedges had been ripped
out, as planned, and openings
artfully cut into the interior balustrades. “All the hiding places
have been eliminated,” Chairman
Andrew Heiskell told a reporter, adding, “I’m glad I lived long
enough to see this. Look at that
lawn!”
The next year the Legislature approved a Business
Improvement District surrounding Bryant Park and authorized
assessments to pay for park
maintenance. And in 1988, the rebuilding plan finally received
the last of the required sign-offs and
work got underway.
44
42 Quoted in Donna Greene, “The Greening of Downtown
Districts,” The New York Times Westchester edition,
September 21, 1997, Section 13, p. 3.
Over $150,000 had been spent renovating the bathrooms alone
(which 10 years later,
according to the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, would be
voted “best in America” by

subscribers to an online travel service). Eight security
officers—half of them New York cops, the
other half private guards hired by the Corporation—patrolled
the park during the day, with four
more on guard duty when the gates were closed at night. Tickets
for concerts and Broadway shows
43 “Management Agreement for Bryant Park Between the City
of New York and Bryant Park Restoration
Corporation, July 29, 1985, signed by Mayor Ed Koch, Parks
Commissioner Henry Stern, and BPRC Chairman
Andrew Heiskell, Section 4, pp. 7-8.
44 Bruce Weber, “After Years Under Wraps, A Midtown Park
is Back,” The New York Times, April 22, 1992, p. B-1.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
17
could be purchased at what Daniel Biederman declared “the
best-looking ticket booth in the
United States.”45
When the centerpiece restaurant opened a little later it was
under the control of Ark
Restaurants (which ran Lutece, Sequoia, and other high-end

eateries) instead of Warner LeRoy, but
its high-ceilinged, glass-walled splendor only exceeded the
original plans. With Mediterranean-
themed dining rooms opening onto an umbrella-dotted terrace,
the new Bryant Park Grill could
seat 1,100 people and provide them with refined fare even by
Manhattan’s lofty standards. A kiosk
selling cappuccino and pastries, and another selling ice cream,
supplemented the Grill, and three
more restaurants were opened over the next few years.
Bryant Park’s outdoor bar quickly became a fixture of
midtown’s after-work singles scene;
lunchtime crowds on the benches and lawn routinely reached
4,000; on summer evenings Home
Box Office sponsored free movies that drew 10,000 people; and
the erstwhile drug bazaar was
becoming “Manhattan’s town square.”46 Alexander Garvin, a
Yale professor of urban planning,
called Bryant Park “a success that surprised a lot of us. If you
had asked me two years before they
opened whether you could eliminate the population that used the
park by redesigning it, I’d have
laughed in your face. And I’d have been wrong. Totally
wrong.”47 (Crime was beginning to decline
city-wide, but Bryant Park was well ahead of the curve.) The
reshaped park won a cluster of design
prizes, including recognition from the Municipal Arts Society
and an award for excellence from the
prestigious Urban Land Institute. Herbert Muschamp, the long-
time architecture critic for the New
York Times, pronounced the resurrected Bryant Park “one of the
nicest things New York City has
done for itself in a long time.” There was a touch of
ambivalence in his assessment, however. Much

as he admired the design, Muschamp was rueful about what he
termed the emerging “Business
Class” version of New York exemplified by the new Bryant
Park.48
The grand reconstruction plan turned out to require more public
money than originally
envisaged. Excluding the restaurants (which were, as planned,
privately funded), the restoration
cost about $9 million, of which two-thirds came from New York
City and one-third from private
sources.
49
45 Ibid.
But private funds would indeed cover the bulk of the annual
operating costs, with the
Parks Department’s contribution limited to the agreed-upon
$250,000. Through the Business
Improvement District, surrounding businesses were initially
charged 11¢ for each square foot of
commercial space, for a total of about $850,000 in the new
park’s first year. Rent charged for the
restaurants and other fees were expected to add the final slice of
the estimated $1.2 million
operating budget.
46 Bruce Weber, “Town Square of Midtown,” The New York
Times, August 25, 1995, p. B-1.
47 Ibid.
48 “Remodeling New York for the Bourgeoisie,” The New
York Times, September 24, 1995, p. B-1.

49 Weber (1992) op. cit.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
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The Restoration Corporation’s mission statement declared its
commitment to “run our
operations using the best techniques of private business.”50
With an eventual budget approaching a
half-million dollars per acre it could afford far more intensive
nurturing than any publicly run
park, but Bryant Park’s managers also displayed creativity to
supplement financial brute force.
Hoping to attract more families (both natives and tourists),
Biederman installed an elaborate
carrousel on the park’s southern edge.51 Bryant Park became
one of the country’s first outdoor areas
equipped with wireless Internet technology, permitting New
Yorkers to relax on the Great Lawn
while surfing the Web. The roster of events was diversified
from the usual dance performances and
holiday fairs to include, for example, a gala celebration for
couples who had met or married in
Bryant Park. Bryant Park’s private managers even developed
innovative tactics for combating any
urban park’s perennial nemesis—pigeons—that ranged from

scattering corn kernels laced with
avian birth-control drugs to hiring a falconer to patrol the park
with his birds of prey.52
Complaints about Bryant Park’s transformation were few,
mostly mild, and (if anything)
had to do with an overly enthusiastic commitment to
businesslike operations. Daniel Biederman
had parlayed his success as executive director of the Bryant
Park Restoration into simultaneous
leadership roles in two more Business Improvement Districts in
midtown. The 34th Street
Partnership, founded in 1992, focused on a commercial stretch
of mid-Manhattan a few blocks
south of Bryant Park, and followed a similar model: Special
taxes on neighborhood businesses
were used to fund extra sanitation and security, programs to
promote business and tourism, and
other services to raise the tone of the area.
53 The Grand Central Partnership carried out a similar
mission for a sprawling area centered on New York’s premier
land transportation hub.54
Biederman deftly deployed the money and leverage that came
with joint control of these
three organizations into an integrated and business-led renewal
strategy for midtown Manhattan.
His combined pay package of more than a third of a million
dollars raised some eyebrows, though
few denied his drive and initiative. But in the late 1990s,
Biederman quite publicly ran afoul of
Mayor Rudy Giuliani—a man with his own quotient of drive and
initiative. Giuliani was
apparently uneasy about so much quasi-public power being

concentrated on one man; possibly
concerned about reports of heavy-handed tactics against the
homeless by the Grand Central
Partnership; and conceivably irritated at frequent press
references to Biederman as “the mayor of
Midtown.” In 1998 the Giuliani administration moved to strip
the Grand Central Partnership of its
50 “Our Mission” section of the BPRC website at
http://www.bryantpark.org/park-management/mission.php,
accessed
February 2004.
51 Glenn Collins, “All the Pretty Horses, and a 6-Ton Gear
Drive,” The New York Times, June 1, 2002, p. B-5.
52 Eleanor Blau, “Pigeons on the Pill Bring Cleaner Bryant
Park,” The New York Times, May 28, 1994, p. 23; Robert
F. Worth, “In Bryant Park, Hawks Are Circling and the Pigeons
are Nervous,” The New York Times, April 17,
2003, p. D-1. In 1994 Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern
conceded defeat in the struggle against pigeons in the
public park network, saying his department had fought a “long
twilight struggle with pigeons, and it’s coming out
in favor of the pigeons.” (Quoted in Blau, op. cit.)
53 http://www.34thstreet.org/partnership/index.php.
54 http://www.grandcentralpartnership.org/home.asp.

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ability to collect special assessments, leading to a noisy legal
and public-relations skirmish that
ended when Biederman agreed to step down from his Grand
Central role and content himself with
running just two major BIDs.55 Three years later, the
administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg
was considering a rule to bar simultaneous leadership of
multiple BIDs, a debate that everyone
knew focused on Biederman. “This is something we need to
discuss as a city,” said the Bloomberg
aide in charge of BIDs, adding in reference to Biederman that
“it would be a lot easier if he weren’t
doing a good job.”56
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation—while
formally Bryant Park’s
owner—was not a highly visible partner in the enterprise. This
rankled some at the Department’s
headquarters. Compared to the Central Park Conservancy, for
example, the Corporation’s
interaction with city officials tended to be limited and arm’s-
length, and the Parks Department did
not figure at all prominently on Bryant Park’s signs, Website, or
promotional material. Yet Bryant
Park remained a public park, neither charging admission nor
requiring membership. It was locked
for security late at night, but open to the public for 12 to 16
hours each day, depending on the

season. (New Yorkers who donated $10,000 to the Corporation
for a concrete bench could get
security to unlock the gates for private access after hours,
though Biederman said “we started that
benefit tongue-in-cheek.”
57) At times a terrace, plaza, or the Great Lawn was reserved
for private
events. But generally anyone was welcome to enjoy the park so
long as they observed the rules,
which barred drugs and panhandling, putting on performances
without a permit, sitting on the
balustrades, unleashing dogs, “organized ballgames,” wading in
the fountain, feeding the pigeons,
or “use of plastic on the lawn.”58
A park that used to be dependent on meager shares of tight
government budgets,
meanwhile, turned out to be able to generate a strengthening
stream of its own resources. Paid
events had always been part of Biederman’s plan, but they
became a runaway success after the
restoration was completed in the mid-1990s. An early hint of
Bryant Park’s potential cachet as a
cultural venue came in 1995 when MTV televised its Music
Video Awards program from the park
(featuring Michael Jackson and Rudy Giuliani on the same
stage).
Thousands of New Yorkers and visitors each day were happy to
use Bryant Park on these terms.
59

55 Thomas J. Lueck, “Business District Vows to Fight City’s
Order to Shut It Down,” The New York Times, July 31,
1998, p. B-1.
Each year thereafter the roster
of performances, fairs, weddings, corporate parties, and other
events grew longer and more lavish.
Bryant Park’s week-long fashion show quickly developed into
an annual highlight of the
international couture scene. The Restoration Corporation
prepared an eight-page brochure for
groups wanting to hold private events in Bryant Park,
explaining that fees depended (among other
things) on how much of the park would be closed off and for
how long. (The brochure also
56 Quoted in Pristin, op. cit.
57 Elaine Louie, “Chronicle,” The New York Times, August
26, 1995, p. 20.
58 Bryant Park website rules page,
http://www.bryantpark.org/park-rules.php, accessed February
2004.
59 Weber, op. cit. 1995.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0

20
mentioned, on page three, that the Parks Department had to
approve the event as well as the
Restoration Corporation.60
The commercial potential of Bryant Park made the Parks
Department’s quarter-million
contribution a secondary, then a superfluous, part of the park’s
budget; the annual payments were
reduced in 1998, and stopped altogether the next year. By 2003
annual fees from private events
reached $1.85 million. Rents from the restaurants and other
concessions, plus revenues from
private sponsorships for park amenities, provided another $1.3
million. Assessments through the
BID had actually been reduced from their original level, and at
$750,000 covered less than one-fifth
of the annual budget.
)
61
In perhaps the surest sign of success in image-conscious New
York, other players were
poaching on the Bryant Park brand. “It has become a beautiful
word,” said a leading
businesswoman in the real-estate industry. “Bryant Park is
known internationally because of
functions like the fashion shows. It’s a global address.”
The Restoration Corporation’s total revenues, at nearly $4
million, dwarfed
the $1.2 million Biederman said was required when the park re-
opened. The flood of money from

rents and events had freed the Corporation to reach and then go
beyond what had seemed a
quixotic vision when the master plan was unveiled two decades
earlier.
62 The upscale Bryant Park Hotel opened in
2000. On a once-tawdry corner adjacent to the park, work was
soon underway on a 50-story office
tower to be called “One Bryant Park;” the land alone had
changed hands for $12.5 million. In 2003,
after the New York City Transit Authority relabeled the nearest
subway stop as “42nd Street-Bryant
Park,” a reporter asked Daniel Biederman about future plans for
extending the franchise. The
“Bryant Park Library,” perhaps? “That would be nice,”
Biederman deadpanned. “What’s it called
now?”63
IV. The Bronx River Alliance
The Bronx River, New York City’s only freshwater river, passes
through varied terrain and
neighborhoods. It starts in affluent Westchester County, north
of the Bronx, and after 15 miles,
enters the city. About a third of its eight-mile journey through
the Bronx is through the 662-acre
Bronx Park, encompassing both the New York Botanical Garden
and the Bronx Zoo. That scenic
setting ends south of the park, however, as the river runs
through the South Bronx, an
economically depressed region known for decades as one of
New York’s most neglected and
troubled neighborhoods. Hemmed in by highways, apartment
buildings, and industrial
development, the river at last empties into the East River.

60 Bryant Park: The Events Guide, 2003 Bryant Park
Restoration Corporation.
61 “Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, Proposed Operating
Budget with Comparison to Current Year Operations,
for the Year Ending June 30, 2004,” provided by the New York
City Department of Parks and Recreation.
62 Faith Hope Consolo, quoted in Denny Lee, “You’re a Hot
Park When Everyone Wants Your Name,” The New
York Times, April 27, 2003, p. 14-6.
63 Biederman is quoted in Lee, op. cit.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
21
In the early 1800s, romantic poet Joseph Rodman Drake, in an
ode to the Bronx River, titled
simply “Bronx,” described the 23-mile river as:
The glad spring gushing from the rock’s bare bosom: Sweet
sights, sweet
sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling …
By the end of the 19th century, though, sewage, industrial

waste, and use of the water as a
disposal trough already had transformed the river for much of
its length into a kind of open sewer.
Efforts to clean the river began in the early 1900s, in part
because the polluted water was making
animals in the Bronx Zoo sick. Still, water quality, even in the
more northern stretches, remained
poor. In the South Bronx, meanwhile, the passing decades saw
the condition of the river steadily
worsen. By the 1970s, much of the river had been forgotten
behind a wall of industrial buildings.
Where the water was visible, residents and businesses used it as
a watery dumping ground. “In
Westchester, by my home, it was a bucolic, sylvan, beautiful
place,” Anthony Bouza, a former
Bronx police commander reminisced. “In the South Bronx, it
was a yellow sewer. There were lots
of tires, hundreds. Old refrigerators, auto bodies. One or two
occasional human bodies.”64
One obstacle to addressing the river’s decline was the fact that
no single governmental
entity was responsible for the river’s health. Like most other
rivers, the Bronx River was held in
public trust by the federal government, and several agencies had
partial jurisdiction over the
waterway. The Parks Department—which oversaw 940 acres of
riverside parkland in the Bronx—
was directly affected by the river’s deterioration. But according
to Dorothy Lewandowski, a long-
time Parks Department employee who became Bronx Borough
Commissioner in 2002, although
Parks periodically cleared out obvious water blockages caused
by erosion or trash, the agency
“primarily was looking at the parkland from the shoreline up.”
In a similar vein, the US Coast

Guard had jurisdiction over safety, the US Army Corps of
Engineers had responsibility for
maintaining the channel, and the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation had
authority over the ecological integrity of land within 150 feet of
the waterway, but no one
monitored the entire river. Further complicating the question of
jurisdiction was the fact that the
river ran through—or served as a dividing line between—two
counties; eleven villages, towns, and
cities; five New York City council districts, seven city
community boards, and four federal
Congressional districts.
65
Despite such barriers, the sad state of the river spurred a range
of efforts to revive the
waterway. In 1974, Ruth Anderberg, a former member of the
Women’s Army Corps, formed the
Bronx River Restoration Project, Inc., which, in addition to
mobilizing support for the river, used
borrowed machinery to pull abandoned cars, refrigerators, and
other junked objects out of a stretch
of river just south of the Bronx Park. The Parks Department,
which had been trying for decades to
mobilize resources to improve the river and its surrounding
green space, joined with Bronx River
64 Barbara Stewart, “A River Rises,” The New York Times,
December 3, 2000.
65 “Take me to the River: Discovery and Restoration of the
Bronx River,” Partnerships for Parks, Draft, August 2004.

____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
22
Restoration in 1980 to create a master plan proposing a
continuous greenway on both sides of the
waterway. Dwindling federal support for such projects, along
with the Parks Department’s own
economic constraints, however, kept the proposal on the shelf.
In 1996, Parks; Bronx River
Restoration; and Consolidated Edison Company of New York,
Inc., an electric, gas, and steam
utility, formed the Bronx Riverkeeper program to encourage
stewardship groups along the river.
Although small improvements occurred, observers say, river
work still was limited to pockets of
support, and the river remained polluted, underused, and
inaccessible.
In 1997, that began to change. A coalition of organizations—the
Appalachian Mountain
Club; National Park Service Rivers and Trails; and the Urban
Resources Partnership, a federal
program to fund inner city natural area stewardship—launched a
small project in the southern
section of the river. At the same time, community groups

already working along the river had
begun working with Partnerships for Parks, the joint initiative
of the Parks Department and the
City Parks Foundation that acted to engage community
stewardship of New York City parks. As
all these organizations began to see the need for collaboration, a
search began for an entity to
coordinate and expand the growing but still piecemeal efforts to
help the river. The Parks
Department, as the major manager of public land along the
river, obviously needed to be involved.
Organizers, however, argued that for such an effort to succeed
in the Bronx, it would have to be
driven by the community itself.
After months of discussion, participants agreed that
Partnerships for Parks, whose mission
was to help communities care for their parks, would be an ideal
facilitator for an all-river project.
The group’s role could be set up as temporary from the start,
with the ultimate goal of having the
Bronx community assume control to the extent possible. In
addition, Partnerships could serve as an
intermediary between Parks and the community, and help both
sides realize their objectives. “We
didn’t come to the project with our own goals in mind, aside
from building a constituency and
helping them to identify what their common goals were,” says
Jenny Hoffner, hired by
Partnerships in 1997 as the Bronx River Coordinator. “We
firmly believe that the leadership needs
to come from the local community if it’s to be effective.”
Hoffner, who initially had no staff, worked out of the Parks
Department’s Bronx Park
office. Twenty groups had joined as founding members of the

Working Group, including
government agencies, nonprofits, and corporations. Although
the membership was diverse, the
South Bronx, where the river’s problems were most extreme,
was least well represented. It was an
ad hoc partnership, Hoffner notes, and none of the participants
were legally bound to the
arrangement. “They didn’t all have the same goals,” Hoffner
recalls, “but they had one goal in
common, which was to restore the river, which could mean
different things to different people. To
some, it meant restore access; to some it meant restore ecology;
to some it meant making it
available to kids and educating them about the river.” The group
quickly identified four overall
goals: creating a continuous greenway; restoring the river
ecologically; better connecting the
existing 20 groups; and reaching out to new members.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
23
Communication, Hoffner says, was critical, particularly in the
South Bronx, where the river
was so walled in by buildings and highways that it was often
virtually invisible. The Working

Group created a brochure, then bought census tract data and
sent the document to residents who
lived by the river. It put a notice in the Con Edison bill that
went to residences and businesses near
the water. Hoffner also mailed out quarterly newsletters to
residents, and sent email updates to
group members every two weeks. Finally, she located existing
community activists to explore how
the river might fit with and perhaps expand their undertakings.
More than 30 percent of the
borough’s 1.3 million residents—about 80 percent of whom
were Hispanic or black—lived below
the federal poverty level, and issues such as unemployment,
education, and crime were likely to
trump the health of the river. “Until people actually connected
to the river in a way that was
relevant to them,” Hoffner says, “there was no reason to teach
them how to plant a native grass in
the river or to talk about restoring the river ecologically.” A
small grants program—offering
funding of up to $10,000—helped kindle interest. Grantees were
required to meet on a monthly
basis to share what they were doing, which fostered additional
connections. “Often they were
facing the exact same challenges,” Hoffner says. “Prostitution
and drug use over here; people
dumping over there; how to transform that vacant lot into a
park.”
Convincing South Bronx residents of the potential of the river
was a challenge. Hoffner
tried to interest one group, The Point Community Development
Corporation (The Point CDC), in
applying for a grant, but was told by its associate director,
Majora Carter, that the river didn’t run
through that neighborhood. Carter’s confusion was

understandable, since the peninsula of Hunt’s
Point, though surrounded on three sides by water, had no access
to the waterfront. “Luckily,
Majora had just gotten this big dog, and the dog led her down
this dead end street that she never
would have gone down, and she discovered that the river was
right there, two blocks from her
childhood home,” Hoffner says. “She called me back and said,
‘Jenny, I want to apply for that
grant, I found the river.’”
Once Carter discovered the river, she became a Working Group
member and began
lobbying to reclaim the small area at the end of Lafayette Street
as an access site. Parks didn’t have
jurisdiction over the land, so there was no guarantee that it
could be kept long term as a park.
Nevertheless, in 1998 Carter’s group won a $10,000 grant for
outreach and education, and the
Working Group helped The Point CDC obtain material and
resources to clean up and improve the
site—including asphalt from the City Department of
Transportation for a pathway; heavy
machinery, loaned by Con Edison, to remove debris; and
cleanup crews from other organizations.
By the end of the year, the Working Group had created a
pocket-sized park from which residents
could launch canoes and view the water.
Building on the stir created by the mini park, the Working
Group sought other early wins.
In April 1999, the Working Group inaugurated the first Bronx
River Golden Ball. Organizers
floated a 36-inch golden orb from Westchester County down the
river almost to Long Island Sound
in an Olympic torch-like event meant to celebrate and unite the

various neighborhoods that the ball
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
24
passed, and to focus attention on the waterway’s improving
prospects.66
As the Working Group’s reputation grew and more groups
joined up and down the river,
setting priorities and keeping all participants involved became
increasingly unwieldy. To boost
focus and efficiency, the group in 1999 created four teams—
education, ecology, greenway, and
outreach—and soon after formed an executive committee made
up in part of team representatives.
The teams decided on projects; raised money, mostly from
government sources; and supported
member community groups in independent efforts to incorporate
the river in their work. Hoffner,
and a recently added staff of three, assisted with backing and
follow-up.
According to Hoffner, the
day began with some trepidation. Keeping on schedule, for
example, proved impossible, she says,

since the specially made fiberglass ball “weighed a ton,” and
actually had to be pushed, carried,
and portaged down the river. Yet, Hoffner says, the spectacle
was surprisingly effective. “Kids
hugged the ball, people sat around waiting, we had dancers
dancing the length of the river.” She
adds: “It captured people’s imaginations in a way that was hard
to do.”
67
The mounting successes of the Working Group, not just at
improving the river but at
energizing Bronx neighborhoods, caught the attention of local,
state, and federal officials. Parks
Commissioner Henry Stern declared 1999 “the year of the
Bronx River.” In 2000, Governor George
Pataki, responding to a Working Group appeal, authorized the
National Guard to help pull 25 cars
and 10,000 tires out of a stretch of river near the Cross-Bronx
Expressway, and then announced an
$11 million grant from the state Department of Transportation
to help fund the Bronx River
Greenway. The state gift kicked off a windfall of government
support as New York Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani pledged $11 million in capital funds from the
city, and US Congressman José
Serrano [D-NY] announced that he had secured $11 million in
federal money, primarily from
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA)
funds, and from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration. By early 2001, the Working
Group had received almost $60
million in pledges to support greenway construction, wetlands
restoration, and other capital
projects.

“Because the river wasn’t
the primary focus of any of our partner groups,” Hoffner says,
“we were responsible for shining a
spotlight on it and reminding people and organizations what we
all agreed we were going to do
together.” Major focuses included acquiring small pieces of
property to add to the greenway,
restoring the river channel, shoring up eroding riverbanks with
native plants, and increasing
public access to the river. In addition, the group increasingly
supported individuals and
organizations who wanted to use the river to teach young people
about community activism and
environmental justice.
66 The small park recently created by The Point CDC and the
Working Group was the takeout point for the ball,
giving the site additional publicity.
67 One staff position was supplied by Parks, and the other two
were paid for by a collaboration of Partnerships, the
National Park Service, and the Appalachian Mountain Club.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0

25
Since its inception, the Working Group periodically had
discussed incorporating as a
501(c)(3) nonprofit, but had concluded there was no need for
yet another formal organization. With
so much money at stake, however, the executive committee
concluded it was time to reorganize as
a legal entity. Given that a strong base of community,
governmental, and institutional support was
in place, Partnerships for Parks would step out of its lead
organizational role, as originally
planned. That left the question of how exactly the new nonprofit
should relate to and collaborate
with the Parks Department.
For almost a year, a special organizational structure team
debated how and whether to set
up a public-private partnership with Parks. One option, Hoffner
says, was to create a nonprofit
alliance with a completely independent structure and its own
executive director, along the lines of
the Riverside Park Fund. Although interactions with Parks
would continue, there would be no
formal relationship with the Parks Department affecting staffing
and fundraising. A second option
under serious discussion was to follow the model of the
Prospect Park Alliance, under which the
head of the organization would be jointly employed as both a
Parks administrator and the alliance
executive director, and Parks would directly contribute to
personnel and fundraising. Ultimately,
Hoffner says, the group opted for the latter approach,
concluding that both Parks and the new
alliance would benefit from a closer relationship and more

direct coordination of resources.
In November 2001, the Working Group, which now consisted of
65 members—including
community organizations; city, state, and federal agencies;
environmental groups; schools;
businesses; and elected officials—incorporated as the Bronx
River Alliance. During its four years,
the Working Group had acquired 40 acres of Bronx River
waterfront as parkland; brought in about
$63 million to implement the greenway and restore the ecology
of the river; constructed more than
1.5 miles of greenway; created three canoe and kayak launch
sites; and removed more than 50 cars
from the river.68
When the Working Group first formed, its goals had been
straightforward and targeted:
mobilizing support for a cleaner Bronx River and a more
substantial greenway. When the Working
Group established new goals in preparation for becoming the
Alliance, however, the five objectives
were both broader and more complex:
• Manage, with Parks Dept., the Bronx River corridor and
greenway, implement
small scale restoration projects, coordinate larger scale
restoration projects,
and support community-led or sponsored restoration and
development
projects.
68 The Working Group originally spoke of raising $113
million, but that included a planned $50 million storm water

holding tank project under the city Department of
Environmental Protection that was later cancelled.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
26
• Coordinate the implementation of a continuous Bronx River
greenway from
the New York City border to the East River and coordinate with
Westchester
to make critical greenway linkages.
• Provide technical assistance and support to community-based
efforts to
organize around the Bronx River.
• Develop Bronx river curricula and train teachers to bring the
Bronx River into
the classroom and promote the Bronx River as an outdoor
classroom
• Coordinate a Bronx River Watershed monitoring program to
collect and share
watershed quality data and to identify and address watershed
quality

problems.
The Alliance mission statement, created by the outgoing
Working Group, was “to serve as
a coordinated voice for the river and work in harmonious
partnership to protect, improve, and
restore the Bronx River corridor and greenway so that they can
be healthy ecological, recreational,
educational, and economic resources for the communities
through which the river flows.” On its
website, the Alliance also listed key values, including
“upholding the values of inclusion,
collaboration, environmental justice, responsiveness,
communication, ecological restoration,
innovation, respect, integrity, and public access.” Linda Cox,
hired as Alliance Executive
Director/Bronx River Administrator in June 2002, says that
while the values might have sounded
unusually far-reaching for a Parks partnership, the department
accepted the necessity of a broader
mission in order to win community involvement. “This city
knows something about great green
spaces going to ruin because of a lack of community support,”
Cox says, adding: “Many
community members here would say, in the end, if you got a
cleaner, healthier river and that’s all
you got, so what?”
Over the next few years, the Alliance, like the Working Group
before it, sought to remove
invasive plants and re-establish wetlands; improve sewage and
storm water overflow processing;
clean the river; enhance existing urban parks and river access;
and create a continuous greenway
along the entire length of the river. But it also extended its
reach. Tying river restoration into jobs

creation, for example, became a tool for increasing the
community’s engagement with the river.
With funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the Alliance hired and
helped train South Bronx residents to serve as permanent, full-
time Bronx River Crew members,
responsible for such tasks as monitoring water quality and
guarding against shore erosion.69
69 Primary training was provided by Sustainable South Bronx,
a new community development group founded in 2001
by Majora Carter.
“It’s a
real meaningful contribution to the economic development of
this area,” says Cox. “When kids
from local schools come and spend a day planting along the
river and working with our crew, they
look at our crew members and they instantly recognize them as
mentors and models.”
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
27

A handful of school teachers had begun to use the river for
lessons about biology, history,
and civic advocacy and involvement. Cooperation with
Westchester County to the north also
increased, particularly in the areas of improving water quality
and connecting greenways. In fact,
the idea of a continuous greenway that would allow bike riders
to travel the full length of the
river—from Westchester County to Soundview Park, where the
river emptied into the Sound—had
begun to seem credible.70 By 2004, capital funding
commitments dedicated specifically to the
greenway had reached about $70 million, including a pledge by
the state Department of
Transportation to help build a one-mile segment parallel to the
Sheridan Expressway that would
feature bicycle/pedestrian bridges connecting green spaces on
both sides of the river.71
In July 2004, the Alliance held two groundbreakings for the new
greenway. The 1.4-acre
clearing at the dead end of Lafayette Avenue in Hunts Point that
The Point CDC had rescued from
oblivion was officially designated as the Hunts Point Riverside
Park.
The
Alliance’s operating budget for 2004 was almost $1.6 million,
including about $860,000 in
government grants, almost $259,000 in foundation grants, and
$255,000 from Parks, primarily in
the form of salaries and loaned vehicles. Unlike some Parks
partnerships that relied largely on
business support and wealthy individual donors, however, the
Alliance still had not attracted
many corporate grants or individual donations, Cox notes.

72
Despite these impressive accomplishments, though, Cox notes
that managing the
relationship between Parks and the now 75-member Alliance
wasn’t always easy. “It requires a lot
of good will and giving each other the benefit of the doubt,” she
concedes. “It’s hard, sometimes,
for Parks to understand why there has to be discussion of a
community facility going on parkland,
when that’s not what Parks is about. Or on the part of these
various community partners to
understand why things take so long and to have some faith that
Parks is really being the best
possible partner.”
Meanwhile, work began on
a site just north of the Botanical Garden to restore the
floodplain and make the river more
accessible by adding boardwalks, opening scenic views, and
improving trails.
At the same time, however, the partnership had benefited both
sides in significant ways.
The close relationship with Parks gave community groups more
clout in dealing with funders and
government representatives, as well as insight into government
decision making. And Parks, by
collaborating with the Alliance, had more credibility in reaching
out to and interacting with the
70 The proposed greenway would have to curve away from the
river in places, for example, to avoid the gated

institutional grounds of the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical
Garden, and to skirt portions of the South Bronx where
heavy development made river access impossible. Long term,
the hope was that a cyclist would be able to travel
uninterrupted from Westchester to Manhattan.
71 The state’s $22 million commitment to the section of
greenway doubled its earlier promise of $11 million to
support the project.
72 The Department of Transportation, owner of the plot, had
agreed to cede control over the land to Parks. The
groundbreaking marked the beginning of a $3.2 million effort to
develop the park and expand it with an additional
small plot contributed by the New York City Economic
Development Corporation.
____________________________________ CR16-04-1744.0
28
Bronx community. “I wouldn’t say that this arrangement would
remain the same forever,” Cox
says. “But working together we have achieved changes that we
never would have accomplished if
we’d been working apart.”

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