Prospect Park Alliance In Lakeside Skate Rink $ Windfall

A rendering of the two rinks at Lakeside,  part of a 26 acre $74 million redevelopment project in Prospect Park. The project,  along the southeast shore of the park’s lake,  has been troubled by delays and money issues.   Approximatly two-thirds of the budget came from city and state funds. The new facility replaces the Kate Wollman Memorial Rink which opened in 1961.

The financial windfall predicted for the Prospect Park Alliance is coming to fruition. Under a new deal the Prospect Park Alliance will run the complex under  a licence agreement with the city.   The Alliance will be required to pay the City of New York nothing for the first year and just $ 100, 000 annually beginning the second year according to the terms of the sole source concession agreement the city "negotiated"  with the influential group.  The Parks Department is now trying to claim the Alliance will receive the same amount of revenue from the Lakeside facility as they did with Wollman Rink in the early years - whatever that means. 

Parks sources have identified a December 21st opening date.  The rink will be open for limited hours during the week  Monday - Thursday - in order to maximixe revenue and reduce costs.   The deal goes before the mayoral controlled Franchise and Concession Review Committee on Tuesday,  November 12th.  

Brooklyn

By Geoffrey Croft

Call it a parting gift from the Mayor.  The Bloomberg Administration is getting ready to award a sweet-heart sole source deal to the Prospect Park Alliance to run the $74 million Lakeside Center project.

The Alliance will be required to pay the City of New York nothing for the first year and just $ 100,  000 beginning the second year of  a  seventeen year deal  according to the license agreement obtained by NYC Park Advocates.   

The annual fee to the city increases by  just a thousand dollars a year over the life of  the deal  culminating with $ 116,  097 in the year 2030.

The lucrative license agreement -  potentially worth tens of millions of dollars over the life of the agreement - seeks to reward the public/private partnership handsomely for raising $ 19 million of the Lakeside Center's $ 74 million dollar budget, while also 

requiring  the group to continue to raise private money for the general operation of the public park which they have done for years.

Approval for years 3 through 17 are continent upon the Alliance renewing it's maintenance & operation agreement for the park which expires in July 2015. 

The indoor rink's newly installed dasher boards under the dark blue painted ceiling, "incised with a constellation of big silvery curlicues, like giant skate marks," -  frame the dance floor and cocktail area for The Prospect Park Alliance's Lakeside Ball gala held on Saturday night.  Tickets for the event began at $ 425 and went up to $ 50,000 for a table of ten. (Photos: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates) Click in images to enlarge

The city "negotiated" the sole source concession agreement with Prospect Park Alliance to operate and maintain the Prospect Park Lakeside Center including two skate rinks (one covered and one open) during the winter, a roller rink during the summer, a café with three adjacent private event rooms, boat rentals and  bicycle rentals. 

The agreement also allows the group to operate mobile push carts in the park near the facility. 

The City has also forgone the standard  "vs. a percentage of gross receipts, whichever is higher" language  found in Parks Department revenue licensing contracts. 

The flat rate locks in a low return to the city regardless of revenue generated from the facility. 

The City is also paying all utility costs - electricity,  water,  gas,  heat and sewer costs and coolant associated with the operation of the 26, 000 sq. ft. ice center.  (Operators of the Cafe however will be responsible for electrical and gas costs.)  

In other unusual provision in the agreement, if gross receipts exceed seven million dollars annually the City and the Alliance,"to confer in good faith,"  agree to discuss whether or not the Alliance should pay for utility costs. 

The Alliance is expected to make out handsomely in the new deal  as revenue at Lakeside are expected to dwarf the former Wollman Rink's deteriorated single rink ice facility earnings. 

The city received more than 45 percent of the rink revenue during Wollman's last year of operation.   In 2010,  Wollman generated $512, 000 in revenues with $232, 000 from entrance fees heading back to the city’s general fund and the remaining $280, 000 from other concessions going to the Alliance for park maintenance. Under the new plan,  the Alliance would collect all the revenues and give the city back a small flat and keep the rest ostensibly  towards maintaining the park.

The Prospect Park Alliance refused to respond to several requests seeking comment including providing Lakeside revenue projections.

By comparison in Central Park Donald Trump operates two popular ice rinks that raised $6.6 million in revenues in 2011. The city got back $2.2 million for its general fund,  which pays the expenses for city services.

The rink will be open limited hours during the week  Monday - Thursday - just twenty hours - in order to maximize revenue and reduce costs.    The rinks will be open for 26 hours on the weekends. 

The project has been plagued by cost overruns, delays and a loss of funding. 

The facility is expected to open a few days before Christmas. Parks sources have identified a December 21st opening  date. 

The deal goes before the mayoral controlled Franchise and Concession Review Committee on Tuesday,  November 12th.

Bloomberg family friend Elizabeth "Betsy" Smith - head of revenue and marketing for the Parks Department will sign the deal for the City,  along with Prospect Park Alliance head, Emily Lloyd.  

The Parks Department also refused to reveal projected revenue for the Alliance and instead dumped a statement meant to deceive and without providing any information.   

"After paying the fee to the City per the concession agreement, we expect the Prospect Park Alliance will receive the same amount of revenue from the Lakeside facility as they did with Wollman Rink in the early years. All revenue generated from Lakeside and the operator will be used to support park programming and maintenance," the agency said.

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

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

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.

Influential park groups are increasing relying on revenues generated from parkland being diverted from the City's general fund into their coffers. 

Abraham Lincoln admiring the new view. The $ 74 Million dollars includes the restoration of the long-neglected shoreline, esplanade and Concert Grove. New walking and jogging paths, picnic areas, lawns and a boat dock. It also recreates Music Island, now as a nature preserve, with bald cypress, duck potato and other native trees and plants.

Abraham Lincoln holds the Emancipation Proclamation in Henry Kirke Brown's beloved statue.  Mr. Lincoln points to the words “shall be forever free.”    In 1895 the sculpture was moved from its original location - in the elliptical plaza adjoining Prospect Park, today known as Grand Army Plaza - to its current location.  For the last 50 years, the statue had faced a chain-link fence near the old Wollman Rink.

Recent financial decisions by the Prospect Park Alliance involving the privatizing of public land park for commercial uses have come under intense public scrutiny. The Alliance made peanuts from the controversial GoogaMooga booze event which destroyed parkland for two consecutive years and prevented the public being able to access dozens of acres of parkland for months. The City recently caved in and decided not to allow the event to return to the park after two years of public outcry.

The City's decision to allow the Alliance to privatize the beloved Boathouse  - the Audubon Center education center on weekends has also outraged local residents.  The group pocketed $ 200,000 in just a few months this year from renting out the historic building which prohibits public access. 

Tickets  for the Prospect Park Alliance Ball,  the non-profit's high-priced gala held on Saturday night,  began at $ 425 and went up to  

$ 50,000 for a table of ten.

Other Details include:

Ice Rink Admissions prices for are set for  $ 6.00 on weekdays, $ 8.00 on weekends and holidays, and ice skate rental is $ 5.00 at all times. 

Beginning next year the rink will be required to be open no later than November 30th.

Minimum Public Hours of Operation - Ice Skaking

Friday - 3pm to - 9pm
Saturday - 10am- 10pm
Sunday - 10am - 6pm

Addtionally another 20 hours per week shall be provided Monday - Thursday on one and or/other of the two rinks. 

The  $ 54 million dollar project also includes  the restoration of 26 acres of the Prospect Park Lake area area including its shoreline, adding five acres to the Lake and three acres of green space in the area. 

The Waterplay feature will be open from Memorial Day though Labor Day daily from 10am, to sunset.

The 54 page License agreement also contains three pages of Vending Machines Standards

Read More:

Prospect Park Alliance Looking For $ Windfall In $74 M Lakeside Center Ice Rink

A Walk In The Park - May 18, 2012

Bloomberg gives Prospect Park a nice farewell gift

New York Post - November 10, 2013 - By Rich Calder

Prospect Park ice rink deal not so slick for city: advocate

New York Daily News - November 10,  2013 -    By Reuven Blau

Delays, Cost Overruns and Funding Shortage In Prospect Park's $ 74 Mil. Ice Skating Project

“People will say, ‘Why are you building this thing, when you don’t have money to maintain the park?’ ” - Adrian Benepe

The Lakeside Center and skating rink in Prospect Park no longer includes the second story, a publicly accessible rooftop due to budget cuts. The project is not fully funded yet either.

The $74 million 26-acre Lakeside Project, "designed to invigorate the long-neglected southeastern portion of Prospect Park," is behind schedule according to the New York Times. The center's cost was originally $50 million when it was unveiled in 2007 but has increased $25 million. Work was set to start in 2009 but it did not begin until December 2010. Officials had wanted to open the rinks in January 2013 but that has been pushed back until the fall of 2013. The facility is replacing the Kate Wollman Rink which was torn down two years ago.

The project was caught up in New York State Senator Carl Kruger bribery scandal. The disgraced senator was charged with trading political favors for more than $1 million in bribes over the past five years. According to the Federal complaint, in December 2010 Bruce R. Bender - a vice president for government relations and public relations at Forest City Ratner (FCR) - asked Kruger for $11 million in state funds for three FCR projects in Brooklyn – including $4 million to renovate for the Lakeside skating rink in Prospect Park near Bender’s Park Slope home. Amy Bender, Bruce's wife, is a board member for the fundraising organization Prospect Park Alliance.

In December the Senator resigned and pleaded guilty to various federal corruption and bribery charges.

Brooklyn

Inside the fencing proclaiming “Lakeside is for you” at the southeastern end of Prospect Park, tractors sat beneath a canopy covering a future outdoor hockey rink.

Beside it, a second rink was outlined like an oval pond, as ice-making equipment slept under plastic in a nearby building. Saplings basked in the sun where workers had already left one recent afternoon.

Lakeside, a $74 million, 26-acre undertaking, is the first major construction project in 50 years in Prospect Park. It is intended to reinvigorate a long-neglected portion of the park and accommodate the 10 million visitors now streaming to the 585-acre Brooklyn oasis each year.

Now, more than five years after plans were announced and two winters after the decrepit Kate Wollman Rink was torn down, the project is half-built and half-imagined. And behind schedule.

Park officials had wanted to open the rinks alone in January 2013 but will not open them until the fall of that year when the entire project — including the rinks, cafe, education center, island and buildings topped by grass — is complete.

“Our biggest concern is that we really hate to disappoint people who would like to be skating,” said Emily Lloyd, the president of the Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit organization that operates the park in conjunction with the city. “Hopefully, when it opens in 2013, all will be forgiven.”

The project is emblematic of a park in transition — from a crime-ridden, dilapidated den of 25 years ago to a vibrant, rustic haven struggling to keep pace with maintenance and use demands despite a thinning budget.

Bicycle riders peddle past advertisements highlighting the delayed project. (Photo: Eric Michael Johnson for The New York Times

Trash is an enduring problem in Prospect Park, in and around its lake. The water quality of the lake, which is brimming with blue-green algae, has also caused officials concern. There have been battles over barbecuing and the discarding of charcoal near trees. Recently, the park has dedicated resources to creating a new road-sharing plan for cyclists, runners and vehicles, which has drawn complaints from motorists. Community boards are anxious about new traffic patterns.

As a reduced staff scrambles alongside volunteers to maintain the park, Lakeside’s gleaming promise offers a striking contrast to the cracked paths, puddles and careworn sections in the eastern part of the park, like the Vale of Cashmere.

“People will say, ‘Why are you building this thing, when you don’t have money to maintain the park?’ ” Adrian Benepe, the city’s commissioner of parks and recreation, said in a recent interview. “As if somehow, the money is fungible. Capital money and operating money are not fungible. You don’t stop building just because it is difficult to maintain the park. You have this opportunity to replace a 50-year-old building.”

Ms. Lloyd said that replacing the rink that Robert Moses built in 1960 would be the linchpin to other restoration projects. But financing is always an issue.

Prospect Park has never enjoyed the same rich resources afforded by its Manhattan cousin, the 843-acre Central Park. The Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit group that manages the Manhattan park for the city, has a $42.4 million budget; 15 percent of that total comes from the city, while the rest is raised privately.

Prospect Park has a $12.3 million budget, including $8.3 million from the alliance and $4 million from the city. Since 2007, the alliance’s budget has been trimmed by $1.1 million.

Lakeside’s financing, relying on generous allocations from the state and city, is separate — and the project’s price tag has increased $25 million since the first design in 2007. “My major concern is the cost,” said Dany Cunningham, the chairman of the park’s Community Committee, whose 80 organizations worked with the alliance to shape the project. “It’s always amazing, the longer things take, the more it doubles and quadruples. But the old rink had more than outlived its useful life — it had to be done.”

The old rink was in use during just the winter season. Now, in the summer, the new larger rink will be for roller skating and the smaller will be a water playground.

Opening the rinks separate from the new public spaces would have cost over $450,000, officials said, because it would have required building a temporary access road for emergency vehicles and other structures. Lakeside secured enough financing so that workers could finish everything at once.

Amy Musick, a teacher living on Ocean Avenue in the small neighborhood of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, recounted the eager buzz among fellow mothers at the Lincoln Road playground last week.

“Everybody was saying, ‘We can’t wait, it’s about time this side of the park will get some attention,’ ” Ms. Musick said.

Lakeside has been buoyed by a $10 million donation, from Shelby White, 73, a Manhattan philanthropist who grew up skating on the lake. Her Leon Levy Foundation contributed to the restoration of five acres of lake shore. Park officials said they have raised about $65.5 million thus far and still hoped to sell naming rights to the rinks.

The project is rich in details. Last week, Christian Zimmerman, Prospect Park’s vice president for design and construction since 1990, proudly displayed 20,000 square feet of bluestone for the walkway beneath a majestic semicircle of London plane trees. He said workers found original granite and sandstone when they dug up the old rink, and will incorporate those materials with the new.

But the pièces de résistance are locked in a trailer by the site. “These are my babies,” Mr. Zimmerman said, showing off six new cast bronze urns, based on the original Olmsted and Vaux design. The urns account for $270,000, part of Ms. White’s grant.

“We are really layering modern design with historic preservation,” said Mr. Zimmerman, who is working with the architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, whose works include the new Barnes Foundation museum in Philadelphia and the building that once housed the American Folk Art Museum in Midtown.

The Moses rink, surrounded by a chain-link fence, destroyed vistas of the lake and paved over Music Island. Last week officials drained a section of the lake to recreate the island, and a “fish rescue” operation returned turtles and fish to other parts of the lake.

Balancing nature and modern recreation is a delicate proposition in a park where the number of visitors has more than doubled in the last 20 years. Glenn Phillips, executive director of New York City Audubon and a former official of the alliance, praised the restoration of the park’s natural landscapes, starting in the 1990s with the Ravine and progressing to the Lakeside shoreline.

“For the total restoration of the park, there’s a long way to go,” Mr. Phillips said. “But this is a big, symbolic piece."

And yet there are still those skeptical of the changes. Dobriana Gheneva, a 37-year-old mother of two from Park Slope, who has had to take her 5-year-old son, Filip, to Manhattan to skate, is worried about what will happen when the new park finally does open.

“I really liked it the way it was,” Ms. Gheneva said last week in the park. “I’m afraid it’s going to be too fancy and will get crowds of people.”

Lisa W. Foderaro contributed reporting

Read More:

At Prospect Park, a Transformation Is Behind Schedule

New York Times - March 19, 2012 - By Liz Robbins

Park Employees Evacuated From Parade Grounds Building After Another Sewage Leak

A Walk In The Park - October 26, 2011 - By Geoffrey Croft

Four Sparrow and Prospect Parks Caught Up In Kruger Corruption Probe

A Walk In The Park - March 13, 2011

Ground Broken On Prospect Park's $ 70 Million Dollar Lakeside Skating Center

A Walk In The Park - December 15, 2010

Park Employees Evacuated From Parade Grounds Building After Another Sewage Leak

"They're building a $ 70 million dollar ice rink in the park but they don't have the funds to make sure employees are safe? You see the priority."

Lunch Room Fecal Matter - The Smell Was Unbearable. Park Enforcement Patrol (PEP) and NYPD officers have long complained about conditions in the Parks Department building located in the Parade Grounds across from Prospect Park. (Photos: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates)

Brooklyn

Last evening city park workers were evacuated from a building after raw sewage overflowed into the work environment - again. The Parks Department building - located at 397 Coney Island Avenue across from the tennis courts in the Parade Grounds near Prospect Park - is also home to the NYPD's Brooklyn South Task Force.

Entrance to the PEP lunch room. Once again raw sewage has come up from the drain in multiple locations. Poor ventilation and broken windows in the building make matters worse.

The putrid smell stank up building offices, a lunchroom, a locker room and other areas that house the Park Enforcement Patrol (PEP) Brooklyn command as well as on the police side.

The long time problem, according to city employees, is the aging and inaduquate infrastructure located in the basement including a pump and plumbing issues throughout the building which causes sewage to back up. Workers say the city refuses to properly fix the issues.

The pump has to be cleaned out once at least month and backs up more frequently after it rains.

"We don't know what we're being exposed to," said a disgusted Parks Enforcement officer. " We shouldn't have to work like this."

"We'd leave in a second," a NYPD Brooklyn South Task Force supervisor said yesterday.

NYPD officers described the putrid smell from earlier in the day from the backed-up sewage which had reached the building's second floor, which at times leaks from the ceiling.

Officers from both sides of the building also raised concerns about rodent issues.

"You can hear them in the walls," said a PEP officer.

Last year a hole in the wall and an uncovered radiator provided easy access for the rats.

"The city needs to invest the money and fix the problems," said another NYPD officer. "Its not a heathy working environment. If the public only knew the shit we have to put up with, literally."

Joe Puleo, vice president of Local 983 which represents parks workers including, PEP, said employees health and safety concerns in the building have not been addressed.

"I feel these employees that protect our parks, beaches and recreation centers from crime are treated as sub standard workers," Mr. Puleo said. "The parks department has been aware of these conditions for a long time and has done nothing. Only now with media attention are the employees being moved to a safe location."

"They (management) care more about the issue getting out (in the media) than the issue itself," said a PEP officer. "Its all about spin and PR."

The irony of the massive Lakeside Center ice skating project being built nearby in Prospect Park was not lost on employees charged with protecting Brooklyn parks.

"They're building a $ 70 million dollar ice rink in the park but they don't have the funds to make sure its employees are safe," said a Parks employee PEP officer who like everyone at the scene spoke on the condition that their name not be used.

"You see the priority." — Geoffrey Croft

The Parks Department building is located at 397 Coney Island Avenue across from the tennis courts in the Parade Grounds near Prospect Park and is home to the Park Enforcement Patrol (PEP) Brooklyn command as well the NYPD's Brooklyn South Task Force. The building is closed until further notice.

A rickety, city-owned building that houses peace officers who patrol Brooklyn parks had to be evacuated today — after officers claimed they were being overrun by raw sewage and rats.

“It was unbearable — sewage started bubbling up through the holes in the floor,” one disgusted officer said, according to the New York Post.

A reporter also spotted urinals in the men’s room covered in sewage, while a cat was let loose throughout the puddled offices to ward off rats and mice.

City Parks Enforcement Patrol (PEP) officers told the Post that the office building off Coney Island Avenue in Prospect Park has been plagued with sewage and rat problems for at least three years — and that their various complaints to Parks Department officials have fallen on deaf ears.

Today, the stench became so putrid that they had to bail after sewage began backing up throughout the building, stinking up offices, a lunchroom and other areas.

“We keep on asking for repairs, but the Parks Department keeps saying there is no money in the budget,” the peace officer said.

The dozen PEP officers responsible for covering Brooklyn’s 3,000 acres of parks were subsequently relocated to temporary office space in Queens shortly after the Post called the Parks Department for comment. Plumbers were later sent to the building to deal with the sewage problem.

A Department spokesperson said exterminators regularly bait the site for mice and would look into the complaints about rats.

Many of the Brooklyn officers said they spend half their time on the city clock having to clean up or deal with the office problems rather than patrol parks. Some claim to suffer from bouts of nausea and sinus problems from regularly inhaling noxious odors.

“This is outrageous that the city isn’t protecting its workers,” said Geoffrey Croft of the watchdog group NYC Park Advocates.

The Parks Department offices at Prospect Park are adjacent to offices used by the NYPD. Some cops yesterday said their building space stunk of sewage, too.

Read/View More

Park officers say their B'klyn building is being overrun by sewage & rats

New York Post - October 25, 2011 - By Rich Calder

Employees want disgusting building fixed

Eyewitness News - October 25, 2011 - By Michelle Charlesworth