SoHo Residents Protest DOT Bike Share's "Illegal" Take Over Of Petrosino Square's Art Space

A R T  I N  P E T R O S I N O  P A R K. Protesters lined the newly installed bikes in Petrosino Square on Saturday to demand that the DOT restore the Parks Department property back to a public outdoor art space.  (Photos: Shawn Inglima for New York Daily News) 

Manhattan  

By Geoffrey Croft

Saturday's dreary weather did not deter dozens of people from coming out and demanding the City's Department of Transportation (DOT) remove the Citi-Share Bike docking station racks at Petrosino Square. For weeks area residents have been protesting the taking away of the park's northern most section which for decades has been used as a public art space.

Members of the Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino Lodge of the Sons of Italy in America joined the protest as did Comptroller John Liu and local councilwoman Margaret Chin.  

Former Councilmember Alan Gerson who allocated the funds to renovate the park was also in attendance.  

The DOT has already been forced to remove several docking stations as a result of lawsuits and negative publicly. 

"We do not want Citi Bank-branded and Mastercard-branded advertising in a space designated for beauty, contemplation, and independent thought," says Friends of Petrosino Square founder Georgette Fleischer.

Parks Department regulations specifically prohibit the erecting of any structure inside a NYC Park  without the "approval of the Commissioner." 

§1-05 Regulated Uses

"3. No person shall erect any structure, stand, booth, platform, or exhibit in connection with any assembly, meeting, exhibition or other event without approval of the Commissioner or his or her designated representative,"  the regulations state.  

Pete Davies of Friends of Petrosino asks how the DOT is getting away with this when the agency had previously gone on the record saying that the Petrosino location was "not an appropriate location for a bike station."   

On April 5, 2012 an email was sent to the DOT Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione and the Director of Bike Share on behalf of Manhattan Borough Parks Commissioner Bill Castro stating the agency's objection.    

Davies points out that the Parks Department has been "SILENT & INVISIBLE"  since the controversy broke.

He says the group has collected almost 500 signatures on a petition to DOT saying the bikes & racks should be moved out of the arts space at Petrosino.

Artist Minerva Durham says she been "protesting the theft of the art installation space in Petrosino Square by the New York City Department of Transportation and Citibank," since April 28th, a day after they discovered DOT was planning to install the racks.   

She said she and Georgette Fleischer stopped the bike-rack installation the night before when DOT came but the agency "secretly" came back in the middle of the night and installed the racks.

"We love bikes we just want them in an appropriate location," said Ms. Durham.     

Spring Studio held free outdoor drawing classes on memorial day at Petrosino Square to protest DOT's continued occupation she said.     

Minerva will be teaching her 9:30 am and 1:00 pm art classes out doors all this week weather permitting.  

Several members of the group attended the city's official press launch event yesterday morning at a docking station near City Hall across from the Brooklyn Bridge.  The event was presided over by Mayor Bloomberg and attended by the DOT commissioner and Michele F. Imbasciani of Citibank, a sponsor of New York's new bike share program.

Critics held up signs that read,  "Cyclists for Art in Petrosino Park" and "Artists for Art in Petrosino Park." 

Mr. Fleischer said she hand-delivered a letter to DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan asking her to remove Citi Bike from the park.

Lili Okellis, 10, protests in silence on a CitiBike in Petrosino Square in SoHo. She and others say the park space should be for art instead of bikes.  

Two weeks ago several elected officials sent a strongly worded letter to DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan demanding the bike racks be removed.

"Prior to the start of installation, the Department of Transportation agreed that placement within Petrosino Square Park was inappropriate. The Department of Parks concurred that such placement was improper,"  said the May 9th letter signed by State Assemblymember Deborah Glick,  State Senator Daniel Squadron and  Councilmember Margaret Chin.

  

"...they (Bike Share racks) should not, under any circumstances, be placed inside Petrosino Square Park," the letter continued.

"We urge the Department of Transportation to follow through on the previous agreement not to have a docking station within Petrosino Park, and relocate it immediately."

ART NOT ADS. (Photo: Peter A. Davis) Click on image to enlarge.

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City Not Complying With Park Private Funding Reporting Law

City-Wide

Four years ago, the City Council passed a law to shed light on how much money was flowing into different parks across the city. Advocates were concerned that the parks system was splitting in two: in wealthy areas of the city, gleaming, innovative green spaces, buttressed by private financing sources; elsewhere, ailing parks with far fewer resources at their disposal.

The legislation required the Department of Parks and Recreation of New York City to prepare an annual report that would detail, park by park, the contributions of nonprofits and other private donors.

“We wanted to see just how large the disparity is,” said Geoffrey Croft, the president of NYC Park Advocates, which supported the legislation. The City Council agreed, and after the measure was approved by a vote of 48-0, the new reporting requirements became Local Law 28 of 2008.

Yet the reports from the parks department fall far short of the law’s requirements, according to The New York Times. 

A report on the 2010 fiscal year fails to list the city’s largest parks nonprofit, the Central Park Conservancy, which spent $28 million during that period. Other major parks groups, including the Union Square Partnership, the Madison Square Park Conservancy and the Friends of Washington Square Park, are also missing.

“It doesn’t reflect a real effort to comply with the law,” Alan J. Gerson, a former councilman who sat on the parks committee in 2008, said.

“Whether it’s for schools, or parks or any public place, the public should know where the private money is coming from and what it’s buying. It’s basic good government,” Mr. Gerson, a Manhattan Democrat, said.

“That’s what we wanted to establish,” he said.

In 2008, the law was praised by council members and the parks department during public hearings. Liam Kavanagh, the first deputy commissioner for parks, said at the time that the legislation was in sync with the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to increase government transparency, adding, “I want to reiterate our shared commitment to full disclosure.”

The reports, however, were never posted on the Web sites of the City Council or the parks department.

Of the over three dozen park conservancy groups listed in a 2007 study by the Citizens Budget Commission as having expenditures high enough to meet the law’s reporting thresholds, the parks department included only seven in its 2010 report.

Dozens of other donors are also missing from that report, including Columbia University, Cabot Creamery, and real estate and construction firms that do business with the city. At least 40 such donors contributed to the parks department during fiscal year 2010, according to filings at the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, but the 2010 report lists only six of them. Columbia and Cabot were listed on the latest report encompassing the 2011 fiscal year.

Many organizations that are listed on the reports appear without the precise dollar amounts of their contributions. The Prospect Park Alliance, for example, is listed on the 2010 report, but its expenditures of $10 million are not. Instead, the group appears with a code indicating expenditures of “$1 million or more.” The codes are borrowed from the Conflicts of Interest Board, where they are used to protect donors’ privacy.

“It’s clearly not the most illuminating,” said Doug Turetsky, chief of staff at the city’s Independent Budget Office, referring to the 2010 report. “You’d want to see more detail in terms of specific amounts.”

The parks department initially defended the reports. But after receiving detailed questions about their content, a department spokeswoman, Vickie Karp, wrote in an e-mail that “questions about who should be reporting through this document are fair and deserve further review.” The department did not offer an explanation for the missing data and declined to make a parks official available for an interview.

The current chairwoman of the parks committee, Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito, a Manhattan Democrat, declined to comment.

A spokesman for Councilwoman Helen D. Foster, a Bronx Democrat who was a co-sponsor of the bill in 2008 and shepherded it through the parks committee, which she led at the time, said Ms. Foster “did not feel she remembered the legislation.”

The disparities are evident in Pelham Bay Park, which sprawls over 2,700 acres in the northeast Bronx. It is the city’s largest green space — three times the size of Central Park — but its budget is far smaller, and clearly strained, despite the efforts of parks employees and an active volunteer group.

“The staff is passionately committed to the park,” said Lizbeth González, the president of the Friends of Pelham Bay Park. “But we need more resources.”

Along the park’s eastern edge, the waters of the Long Island Sound lap up against a crumbling retaining wall. A quiet beach alcove is strewed with meteor-size chunks of brick and mortar, and piles of trash in decay.

“We would collect all the trash and burn it,” said Aníbal Lugo, a retired handyman who was angling for bluefish along the shore. “Then the police gave me a ticket.”

He produced the citation, which he carries in his wallet, and explained that now, they let the trash be.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 14, 2012

An article on Aug. 27 about the compliance of the Department of Parks and Recreation of New York City with a law requiring annual reports on nongovernmental support of its parks included several errors.

A report covering the 2010 fiscal year is not the most recent report. A report encompassing the 2011 fiscal year has indeed been submitted by the parks department; it is not the case that the 2011 report, due in December, is still incomplete. (The 2011 report was not made available to the reporter until after the article was published.)

While the 2010 report did not include information on the city’s largest parks nonprofit, Central Park Conservancy, or donations from Columbia University and Cabot Creamery to the parks department, some of that information was included in the 2011 report.

And Pelham Bay Park is about three times the size of Central Park, not four. That error, introduced during the editing process, was repeated in a picture caption.

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