From the Daily News:

A Queens lawmaker is in talks with the city to create a public-private alliance to fund the upkeep of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) said such an alliance could solicit donations from Queens residents and businesses for the borough’s 1,255-acre, flagship park.

It could also eventually seek a cut of the rent paid to the city by Citi Field and the U.S. Tennis Association, which are located in the park, she said.

“Flushing Meadows-Corona Park has not received the attention and resources it deserves,” Ferreras told the Daily News on Wednesday. “We get such a small percentage of the dollars that are generated by our park reinvested into our park.”

Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Park Advocates, said if an alliance profits from the stadiums located within its perimeters, this could create an incentive to rent out more parkland to other private companies.

“It is the elected officials’ job to adequately fund public parks — not private businesses,” he said.

A city Parks Department spokesman said the idea is under serious consideration.

“Public-private partnerships create significant benefits for both parks and their visitors,” an agency spokesman said in a statement. “These partnerships, which exist in parks throughout the city, help to connect people, engage community members, provide programming, and keep parks clean and beautiful.”

Printed in the Queens Courier, 4/13/2013

BY GEOFFREY CROFT

In a recent op-ed (“A new alliance for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park,” March 10) Councilmember Julissa Ferreras argues for the need to create a new nonprofit alliance dedicated for Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (FMCP).

The alliance would collect money from the USTA and other businesses using the park and spend it exclusively on the park. Agreeing to a deal that puts money into a park fund in exchange for a yes vote, along with a few other “concessions”  is a misguided policy that would allow the USTA to expand and set the stage for more businesses to try and take more public parkland.

That is exactly what is not needed for the park.

It is the city’s legal responsibility to properly fund our public parks, not that of private businesses.

Make no mistake this is NOT like the Central Park Conservancy or the Prospect Park Alliance model as she has attempted to claim.  There is a huge difference between receiving philanthropic contributions from civic-minded people seeking nothing in return and establishing a fund explicitly created for extracting money from businesses exploiting the park.

She said she is doing this to ”to help protect this irreplaceable park.”  The park does not need this type of “protection.”

A detailed plan on how this alliance model could work has already been drawn up.  It was devised with the help of a Parks Department partner group New Yorkers for Parks, in concert with the councilmember, working behind closed doors.

Despite repeated requests Ferreras has refused to voluntarily provide a copy of this plan.  For the first time in 15 years I’ve had to resort to FOILing a councilmember. This is not a good sign.

These deals only weaken communities and make it easier for the next encroachment. They also allow the very people whose job it is to properly fund and protect our public spaces off the hook.

The councilmember was correct, though, when she said the park has not received the attention and resources it deserves.

Whose fault is that? Does anyone think our elected officials are doing their jobs when FMCP has only 14 employees for a 1,200-acre park?  That’s disgraceful.

Each year our elected officials allocate a fraction of the funds desperately needed to properly maintain, operate, secure, and program our 29,000 acres of public parks.

This year is no different.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s current $70.1 billion proposed budget allocates just $ 283.2 million or o.4 % in tax levy funds for parks.

Over the last 40 years no other city agency has lost a greater percentage of its workforce than the Parks Department.  This happens year after because the public does NOT demand accountability.

The city continues to try and abdicate its responsibilities by entering in these public/private agreements that officials are not only allowing but actively encouraging.  They are increasingly resorting to these pay-to-play funding schemes.  This welfare mentality has to stop.

These deals hand over enormous power and decision making authority to these groups with little transparency and accountability on what is supposed to be public land.

We need our elected officials instead to allocate proper resources for our parks; it’s what the public pays taxes for.

Until communities begin to stand together and demand accountability from officials and “so called” park advocacy groups, the public can expect more of the same – our parks being sold out.

Geoffrey Croft is the founder and president of NYC Park Advocates, a non-profit watchdog group dedicated to improving public parks. He is also a founding member of Save Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, a coalition of community-based civic and environmental groups opposed to the commercial encroachment of FMCP.   

(An Open Letter to City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras)

Over 100 years ago Frederick Law Olmstead, the genius who created Central and Prospect parks in this city and many other parks elsewhere, said, “The first duty of our park trustees is to hand down from one generation to the next the treasure of scenery which the city has placed in their care.” That requirement rests squarely upon the shoulders of all elected officials in this state and city, and, with due respect, it includes you.

While Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens is the second most-used park in our city, primarily by the poor and middle class, it is also the most abused, littered with all sorts of illegitimate nonpark structures that would not and should not be allowed in Central, Bronx, Prospect or Clove Lake parks. This has occurred over decades through the malfeasance of many elected officials, primarily in Queens, who viewed their constituency as real estate moguls and businesses and not the little people who are the users of the park.

The claim that FMCP is different from other parks is nonsense and a ploy to justify the constant attempts to trespass on it. There is nothing in the City Charter that designates FMCP as being different than any other park. And the abuse is not justified for economic reasons. Apart from how the claimed economic benefits are, in terms of the city’s gross economy, paltry and of little or no significance, a civilized society does not sell or barter public parkland.

In the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s, this city did not sell or barter parkland. Indeed, if you believe parks should be for sale, you should state publicly you would support what has occurred in FMCP happening in Central Park. Of course you would not, and the time has come for you to insist on similar treatment for FMCP.

Your attention is directed to the Queens Chronicle Jan. 31 edition and its comprehensive, well-thought out editorial opposing Major League Soccer’s attempt to construct a stadium in FMCP (“Flushing Meadows soccer stadium must be stopped”). It is clear there is no justification for yet another assault on the integrity on FMCP, and the proposed stadium must be rejected. Like most private for-profit businesses, MLS is free to purchase property on the open market. Enough is enough, and the desecration of FMCP must stop.

In using your good offices to reject the stadium you will be making it clear you understand the importance of parkland not just for current residents, but for generations as yet unborn. Let right be done, oppose the MLS stadium in our park and earn an important legacy as a public official.

Benjamin M. Haber
Flushing

Flushing Meadows soccer stadium must be stopped [Queens Chronicle] 1/31/2013

Major League Soccer is doing its best to rush a misguided plan to build a stadium in Queens through all the hurdles it faces before Mayor Bloomberg leaves office. It cannot be allowed to succeed.

League officials have been given every opportunity to be forthcoming about the important details of their proposal and to counter their critics, and they refuse to do so. A similar project they got approved in Harrison, NJ, just over the Hudson River, has failed to live up to its promises and ended up shorting that town’s taxpayers at least $3.6 million.

And, above all, their plan for a stadium in Flushing Meadows Corona Park would severely damage what remains the crown jewel of Queens, without enough benefit to residents.

The deal MLS seeks with the city would be a steal, literally, in all but the legal sense. It wants a $1 a year lease for up to 13 acres of public parkland — the classic deal politicians and private for-profit businesses cook up behind closed doors to take the citizens’ property without compensation.

That deal, which must be stopped, is at the heart of why MLS is in such a rush. If it doesn’t get public land essentially for free, the league will have to buy the 10 to 13 acres it needs for a 25,000 seat arena on the open market.

All that the public would get in exchange is 13 acres of new parkland somewhere else —but not all in one chunk — and the rehab of some existing soccer fields at Flushing Meadows, which should be a city job anyway. MLS also says it would invest tens of millions of dollars in the park, but it’s vague as to how and where, as it is on so many details, even when its president met with us last week.

One of the most frustrating vagaries is the league’s site selection process. MLS is dead set on building a stadium in Flushing Meadows, mostly because the land would be free but also because there are so many Latin Americans in nearby neighborhoods and soccer is such a force in that culture, and because of all the transportation options that get people to the park. But we don’t see why a stadium couldn’t be considered for any number of other locations, such as Aqueduct Race Track or the old Flushing Airport, and MLS has not been forthcoming in what other sites it rejected or why.

We are not against soccer in Queens; in fact we would welcome it. We are against giving away our parkland. Imagine, as crazy as it sounds, that this project had been proposed for Central Park. Of course it would be rejected out of hand. But if the mayor wants a stadium, maybe he should consider putting it there, in his own neighborhood’s crown jewel park.

Another major concern with the proposal is the question of team ownership, one of many issues discussed in this week’s Queens Chronicle story “MLS to Queens? Stop by Harrison, NJ first.” The league has yet to select an owner for the team it would locate here, but that means accountability would be hard to pursue should any problems arise as the stadium is built. And the one possible owner that’s been reported on in the press is an Arab oil sheik, a prospect we find troubling. If a Queens soccer team were to go belly up, as two MLS teams have in recent years, what would he care about an empty stadium nearly half a world away?

Standard political practice means there is one person who could stop this project today if she wants to: City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, whose district includes the northern section of the park. She should see this proposal for the land grab that it is. If she says no to it, the rest of the Council will follow suit, and the plan will be denied — if MLS doesn’t just give up on its own first. We urge you to call Ferreras at (718) 651-1917 or (212) 788-6862, or email her at jferreras@council.nyc.gov, and tell her to keep our park in our hands. MLS can come back with a better site any time.

Just when you thought that it could not get any more outrageous than the CB7 committee meeting re: USTA expansion held last week, along came Tuesday night's meeting of the Queens Housing Coalition, held in Woodside at 57th Street and 39th Avenue, with a special presentation by the attorneys representing the joint venture of Sterling/Related to acquaint the community with the proposed Willets Point / Willets West development and the housing that comes with it (in 2028).

Highlights (and there were many) included attorney Ethan Goodman emphasizing that "our project does not affect any publicly accessible open space that is parkland. We are developing only HERE [points to PowerPoint slide depicting a large parking lot filled with automobiles] and HERE [points to next slide, depicting quonset huts with automotive businesses on 126th Street at Willets Point]. Our project doesn't take away any fields, grass, etc.

And, we're going to remove 100 YEARS' WORTH of contamination at Willets Point."

A key theme of the evening was alleged contamination, with the attorneys emphasizing that Willets Point had been used as an ash dump, with some ash piles having been "90 feet high". (So what?) Attorney Jesse Masyr said "it's beyond any doubt that the area is severely contaminated" – so contaminated that "no one can live there under the present conditions" and "it would be illegal to let anyone live there under the present conditions". To which the sole resident, Joe Ardizzone, came to the microphone and replied: "I'm 80 years old, and I've lived there ever since I was born, with no problem. How bad is it really, then?"

When the attorneys closed their PowerPont with a slide summarizing all of the projects' supporters (mostly housing/developer/chamber of commerce groups), Ardizzone added that a large number of groups also oppose the project – and cited the Queens Civic Congress's vote to oppose and its representation of 100+ civics.

By and large, the audience saw through the attorneys' double-talk. The Queens Housing Coalition trying to put lipstick on this pig, in support of fantasy housing in 2028, was pathetic. They should be ashamed of themselves.

City Council Member Julissa Ferreras did not attend.  Probably because it was held nowhere near her district.  Why is it that a meeting regarding housing built in Corona/Flushing was not held in either community?