Lincoln Center Nightmare- Neighbors Crying Foul Over Takeover Of Damroach Park

Public Park? Lincoln Center Cash Cow. Under a license with the Parks Department the Bloomberg administration is allowing a private corporation to exclusively occupy the entire 2. 4 acre Damrosch Park on W. 62nd Street behind Lincoln Center for non-park purposes for more than nine months each year including Fashion Week (above). State Alienation approval was never received. Under the terms of the deal Lincoln Center, a private corporation, is allowed to keep all revenue including the more than $ 17 million over five years from Fashion Week. (Photos: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates) Click on images to enlarge.

Besides being denied access, neighbors have a number of quality-of-life issues including the park being dramatically altered as well as noise and pollution complaints.

Manhattan

The front page story of the West Side Spirit on the community's outrage over the city handing over a public park for commercial uses. Read the comments.

For designers, buyers, reporters, photographers and clothes-conscious consumers the world over, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week conjures images of the latest and greatest designs paraded around in a swirl of parties and publicity. For residents of the area surrounding Fashion Week’s Lincoln Center home, however, the event conjures headaches, concerns over safety and anger over limited access to a public park, according to The West Side Spirit.

(Photo: Westside Spirit)

“I don’t think Fashion Week belongs in this setting,” said Susan Koeppel, a resident of The Alfred at 161 W. 61st St. The residents there already combat construction from Fordham University and the Third Water Tunnel; many have rallied together to complain to the community board and local officials about the grievances they endure during Fashion Week’s set-up, shows and breakdown period that stretches for four to five weeks twice a year.

Enormous generators line the street.

W. 62nd Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues have been given over to the event including the entire northern sidewalk.

“There should be other venues that wouldn’t have to impact the community in this way,” Koeppel said, citing noise as well as overflowing trash and loud parties disrupting the neighborhood. “It’s not an asset for the community. It may be an asset for people who are involved commercially, but for the people who live here and the people who work here, it’s a huge inconvenience.”

Each year Damroach Park is transformed for commercial events and the general public is denied access.

Fashion Week, a eight-day event that draws an estimated quarter of a million people and over $230 million in revenue to New York, used to be anchored in Bryant Park. While that area is much more commercial than residential, Dan Biederman, president of Bryant Park Management Corporation, said that its neighbors had some of the same complaints about noise and crowding.

“There were things we didn’t like about having the shows at Bryant Park,” Biederman said. “We had complaints about generators that were necessary for both the shows and the ice rink we run.” Ultimately, he said, the shows were cutting down the time they could have the ice rink open in the winter and crowding out the popular spot for regular parkgoers in the summer.

“A lot of people think I’m out of my mind for giving up $2.5 million in fees,” Biederman said. “We couldn’t run the park the way we wanted.”

The Big Apple Circus moves in for four months directly after Fashion Week in September and stays until January at which time Fashion Week returns for its February shows. The public is further denied access to the public park over the next four months as a reult of Lincoln Center being allowed to rent out the park for a series of private events which they keep the revenue from. The cycle begins again in August when Fashion Week begins to set up for its September shows.

Two years ago, the organizers moved to Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, which offers more space and affords more designers the opportunity to show their collections. IMG, the producers of Fashion Week, have coordinated with City Council Member Gale Brewer’s office as well as with the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District and Community Board 7 to address residents’ concerns, but some say not nearly enough has been done to mitigate the negative impact of the glitzy event.

“They go nonstop, 24 hours a day with construction equipment,” said another Alfred resident, Neil Lawner, describing the banging and beeping of trucks late into the night.

“What’s really being done, to the people in our building specifically and anyone who’s using 62nd Street generally, because it’s a popular thoroughfare, is [they’re] being held hostage, because private enterprise is doing what they want to do,” Lawner said.

“It has evolved. I think the positive is that there is lots of economic opportunity all around, from the restaurants to the ancillary to the catering,” said City Council Member Gale Brewer. “We dealt with noisy generators last time,” she said, noting that Fashion Week has been obliging in modifying their generators to be less loud.

“The real issue for me is the issue of Amsterdam Houses and people who wouldn’t normally have opportunities getting opportunities,” Brewer said. Fashion Week hires a handful of temporary employees from nearby NYCHA housing, but she would like to see their efforts expanded. “I still think we need to do a lot more for the NYCHA residents who are back to back with Fashion Week.”

“Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week takes its role as a community member seriously,” said a spokesperson for IMG in an email. “Since moving to Lincoln Center, we have worked diligently with the surrounding neighborhoods to make our presence as positive and unobtrusive as possible. MBFW and event producer IMG are grateful for the patience and cooperation the community has shown us thus far and remain committed to working with them to address any concerns that may arise in seasons to come.” The company sent out community notices in advance of construction this year, and also maintains a 24-hour hotline to address concerns.

Even more pressing for some is the use of Damrosch Park for private events for much of the year, between the February and September Fashion Weeks and the Big Apple Circus commandeering the spot for much of the time in between. According to the Parks Department, the park is managed by Lincoln Center through a license agreement with the city. Parks spokesperson Phil Abramson wrote in an email that the park “consists of a hard-surfaced seating area and receives low visitorship levels during the winter.”

Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates, takes issue with that characterization and said that it’s because of the private intrusions that people stay away from Damrosch Park.

“It’s certainly an issue that the public does not have access to that park for the majority of the year,” Croft said. “That parks belongs to the public, not to a private corporation.”

He also voiced what has been a frequent critique of the Parks Department, that they allowed 67 trees to be cut down to accommodate the park’s new tenants.

“All these trees were destroyed, all that flora and fauna, the hedges and stuff; they were destroyed. The public looks at tents most of the year now,” Croft said.

Regarding those trees, Abramson wrote, “As restitution for the 67 trees that were removed, we planted 220 trees in the one-mile area around Damrosch Park. In addition, Lincoln Center planted a net increase of 88 trees on its campus and arranged for 11 trees to be transplanted.” Many are not satisfied with that answer.

Cleo Dana, another outspoken resident of The Alfred, testified at Community Board 7’s last full board meeting, questioning whether Lincoln Center is the right home for such a big event.

“Where to put Fashion Week? Not to the Javits Center where it belongs or to an Armory or even Carl Schurz Park, but to Damrosch Park, a New York City park that had the misfortune of being geographically located in Lincoln Center, the cultural heart of New York City’s performing arts,” Dana said.

“Damrosch Park does not belong to Lincoln Center, although it is managed by it. It was deliberately created by Robert Moses as a separate entity from Lincoln Center. It was and is under the jurisdiction of NYC Parks and Recreation and as such must conform to city and state statutes that apply to terms of its use, noise, concessions and sanctity of its trees,” she continued.

Sam Salant, who said that he used to regularly spend time in Damrosch Park and always noticed residents of the nearby Amsterdam Houses doing the same, said that he was pushed out of the park when he inquired about new construction.

“One day I walked in and there was something being constructed where there was formerly a bandshell,” Salant said. “I asked about it and was told to get out of the way. They’re just chasing people out. There was nobody I could call who could answer me and tell me why that happened.”

Idling Away- Amsterdam Avenue and W. 62rd Street. In September 2011, a delivery truck waited for more than 25 minutes with its engines running across from the Amsterdam Housing projects and adjacent residential buildings. A few years ago the city passed a strict anti- idling law to help combat pollution. During Fashion Week however the law is apparently suspended. When an NYPD officer posted to the area was asked why a line of trucks were not being told to shut off their engines the officer bluntly responded, "They don't have to. That order comes straight from the top, City Hall. This is Fashion Week. They do what they want. We're supposed to help them out however we can. It's all political."

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Fashion Week Nightmare

Neighbors cry foul over takeover of neighborhood park

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NYC Allows 56 trees To Be Destroyed For Fashion Week In Damroach Park

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Bloomberg Lincoln Center Fashion Week Park Deal Diverts $ 17 Million From City Coffers

A Walk In The Park - September 11, 2010 - By Geoffrey Croft

Golfweek - Inside The Ferry Point Park Project

The New York skyline forms the backdrop for what would be the short par-4 seventh hole at Ferry Point. (Golfweek/Bradley S. Klein)

Bronx

The story of Ferry Point Park is one that only this great city could produce. It’s a story that spans decades and is filled with characters worthy of a novel, according to an article in Golfweek.

It began more than 70 years ago with a man who came to be known simply as “the power broker.” More recently this tale has included a bombastic billionaire tycoon with a serious golf habit. The cast also includes a pair of strong-willed mayors and the greatest golfer in history.

The story line hardly could be more improbable. It revolves around the development of a major championship-quality golf course on the most unlikely of locations – an old garbage dump under a busy expressway on the East River in the gritty south Bronx. It will, in true New York form, be the most expensive municipal golf course ever built. And it’s a project that everyone agrees will lose tens of millions of dollars, in part because of costly union contracts.

This is a Tom Wolfe epic just waiting to be told. Think of it as “Bonfire of the Vanities” meets “On the Waterfront.”

• • •

Ferry Point is a 222-acre parcel under the north side of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, which crosses the East River and connects the Bronx with the borough of Queens. It’s bordered to the east by housing, much of it low-income, and to the north by a cemetery marked by a towering cross. The cross provides the ideal target line for the approach to the 10th green of the course that Jack Nicklaus has designed for the site. The western boundary is lined by the Hutchinson River Parkway, which carries 103,000 cars on and off of the bridge each day, enshrouding the site in a steady, high-decibel thrum.

Grandiose plans have been floated for Ferry Point since the 1930s, when omnipotent parks commissioner Robert Moses – the aforementioned “power broker” – proposed golf, sports fields, a beach and bus terminal.

For two decades after World War II, it was used as a landfill. Plans to cap the site and build a golf course have been floated since at least the mid-1970s. In 2000, a private firm, Ferry Point Partners, undertook to build a Nicklaus-designed course with surrounding park and commercial development. The initial cost estimate was $22.4 million, with the developer paying the city $1.25 million in the first year and $3 million by Year 35. The project had strong backing from then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his successor, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg, both avid golfers.

Ferry Point Partners, however, pulled out in 2006, and city officials moved to turn it into a public project. Meanwhile, the price tag was exploding. The golf course alone now is projected to cost $97 million. At least another $87 million will be required to cap the site and manage two parks adjacent to the course – a 10-acre community facility park and an 18-acre waterfront park. That doesn’t include the cost the city will have to pay to build an access road to the parkway.

The newest player in this drama is Donald Trump, who earlier this month was awarded the contract to manage the course. Trump plans to build a $10 million clubhouse, which he doesn’t have to finish until Year 5, and spend up to $850,000 annually on the grow-in process. The 7,158-yard course is scheduled to open in 2014.

“It’s a spectacular piece of land, a major-championship site literally right next to everything, in the city,” Trump said. “It’s important for golf. Golf has been suffering lately, and it’s a major course in the biggest city in the world.”

For Trump, his first foray into municipal golf was a no-brainer. “My feasibility study is my gut,” he said.

The total budget is by no means fixed. One professional involved in Ferry Point calls it “the most complicated project I’ve ever seen.”

When the city put the course development back out for bidding in 2008, the contract was awarded to the newly constituted team of Nicklaus and John Sanford, who will manage the project and coordinate the army of consultants, engineers, contractors and municipal agencies. Sanford’s credits include Granite Links Golf Club, built on the site of Boston’s “Big Dig.”

Plans are to haul in 220,000 cubic yards of sand, enough to plate the course 1 foot deep for turf cultivation. The sand will be trucked in from eastern Long Island, 60 miles away. At an average load of 27 cubic yards per truck, they’ll need 8,150 truck runs, with drivers earning $98 per hour – half in direct pay, half in benefits.

At rates like that, it’s easy to see how costs can skyrocket. One fellow sits in a truck all day at $100 per hour monitoring the fuel tank on a pump station to make sure it has enough gasoline. The maintenance building and surrounding storage areas will cost $6.8 million. The price tag for a 20-by-30-foot bathroom on the course? A staggering $1.2 million.

• • •

City officials agree that Ferry Point will not pay for itself, let alone make money. The strongest economic argument the city could muster is that the other alternatives are costlier, whereas the golf course would set the city back only $42 million over a projected 35-year period.

According to a 2007 document provided by the Department of Parks & Recreation, closing the landfill would have cost $44 million, with no revenue stream or public utilization; a nature park atop a closed landfill would cost $77 million (that includes $1 million per year in maintenance); and an actively used recreation park would cost $152 million to build and operate (at a cost of $1.2 million for annual maintenance). By contrast, according to the 2007 estimate, the golf course would cost $61 million to build, but would be partially offset by $19 million in revenue over a 35-year period.

“Our goal is to provide a public service, not to seek a return on investment,” said Vickie Karp, a Parks Department spokeswoman.

Geoffrey Croft, president of New York City Parks Advocates, a watchdog group, said the golf course is preferable to an unused, closed landfill. Still, he says, “The whole project is a waste of taxpayer money. The city has so many other needs, for education, police and fire, and for our rundown parks. We’re flushing our money down the drain for a billionaire.”

There is strong demand for golf in New York. Tee sheets for the city’s 13 munis are booked solid. The first Saturday in January, in unseasonably warm weather, Douglaston Park in Queens registered 250 golfers. Lee Finkel, regional director of Northeast operations for American Golf, which operates six city courses, said his courses do 300,000 rounds per year, adding that “we’re making money and the city is making money.” Peak green fees typically are $40.

Trump plans to charge city residents $125 to play Ferry Point; non-residents will pay more. Trump is not required to pay any fees to the city for the first four years; thereafter, he’ll pay $300,000 or 7 percent of annual gross revenue, whichever is greater, with payments escalating to $470,000 by Year 20.

For Croft and other critics, none of the math – the total bill, Trump’s obligations – adds up. But Ferry Point Park’s redevelopment seems destined to proceed. By 2014, Trump says golfers will be beating balls in the shadows of the Whitestone Bridge. At some future date, the irrepressible developer hopes to bring a major championship to the south Bronx.

It’s a scenario that even Tom Wolfe would have difficulty imagining.

Read More:

Klein: Inside the Ferry Point Park project

Golfweek -  February 3, 2012 - By Bradley S. Klein 

Yankee Garage Developer Giant Tax Deadbeat

"The simple fact is that Bloomberg and his aides made a costly mistake when they succumbed back in 2005 to the Yankees’ demand for a 9,000-space garage system. It was all part of the deal for the team to build a new stadium in the Bronx."

Garages at 153rd St. and River Ave. near Yankee Stadium have few fans, or customers, and owner has become a tax deadbeat. Bronx Parking Development has turned into a giant tax deadbeat. The firm has failed to pay any rent or property taxes, even though the garages sit on 21 acres of leased public land. It currently owes the city a whopping $25 million.

The developer of the 9,000-space Yankee parking garage system now projects less than a 38% occupancy rate on game days. The city's Economic Development Corp., which authorized $237 million in public bonds for the garages back in 2006, is facing at one of the biggest defaults of a New York City bond in decades. (Photo: Howard Simmons)

Bronx

THE FIRM that built and manages the new Yankee Stadium parking garages can’t repay $237 million in tax-exempt bonds the Bloomberg administration arranged for it four years ago, new financial records show, according to the New York Daily News.

Bronx Parking Development Company LLC is running perilously low on cash reserves and faces a looming default by the end of the year, according to a report filed Friday by a trustee for the firm’s bondholders.

Time is running out, in other words, to avoid one of the biggest failures in decades of bonds issued by a New York City agency.

The simple fact is that Bloomberg and his aides made a costly mistake when they succumbed back in 2005 to the Yankees’ demand for a 9,000-space garage system. It was all part of the deal for the team to build a new stadium in the Bronx.

But Yankees fans have shunned the garages, where game day self-parking rates soared last year to $35 — up from $23 previously and more than double the original $14 charge. Valet parking now goes for $48.

So many fans are staying away, in part due to the lure of cheaper local competition, that Bronx Parking Development now projects only 3,500 paying customers per game for the upcoming season.

And that occupancy rate — a measly 38% — will exist only on days when the Bronx Bombers take the field. For the rest of the year, the garages will remain a ghost town, since a mere 70 South Bronx residents currently park there each day.

At the same time, Bronx Parking Development has turned into a giant tax deadbeat. The firm, which is not connected to the Yankees, has failed to pay any rent or property taxes, even though the garages sit on 21 acres of leased public land.

It currently owes the city a whopping $25 million.

In a desperate effort to preserve cash, the company plans to slash the salaries of a handful of full-time garage employees and to reduce the number of game-day parking attendants from 76 to 57. But those cuts are unlikely to stave of its collapse.

For the second year in a row, garage revenues will be “insufficient” to cover debt service payments due in April and October, the bondholder trustee said, thus triggering default provisions of the bonds.

The company’s chairman, William Loewenstein, has repeatedly referred all questions about the garages to the city Economic Development Corp., the agency that sponsored Bronx Parking Development’s creation. Two of Bronx Parking Development’s board members, in fact, are officials from the EDC and the Parks Department. Another is a representative of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

“There’s no way this crisis can continue this way into next year,” one board member said.

Diaz has been pressing City Hall to come up with an emergency plan to restructure the bonds, tear down some of the garages, and replace them with low-income housing or even a new hotel.

But four private developers who responded late last year to a request from Diaz for hotel proposals all wanted major city subsidies, one official said.

“We continue to actively assist the (Bronx Parking Development) Board as it evaluates all options,” said EDC spokesman Dave Lombino.

Bloomberg’s aides say the city never pledged to back these bonds, nor did its Industrial Development Agency, the entity that actually issued them. Any loss, they say, will have to be borne by the bondholders.

So, while City Hall keeps washing its hands of any responsibility for this mess, overpriced garages on 21 acres of city land keep producing nothing of value for the public.

Read More:

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Lots part of new stadium deal but have turned into waste of space — 21 acres — producing nothing for taxpayers

New York Daily News - February 3, 2012 - Juan Gonzalez

City To Rescue Yankee Stadium Garage Fiasco

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Yankee Parking Garages Narrowly Avoid Default - Again. Debacle Continues

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Yankee Tax - Payer Built Parking Garages Near Default

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Yankee Stadium Parking Garage Developer In Desperate Attempt To Avoid Defaulting On Millions In Tax-Exempt Bonds

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Yankee Stadium Parking Developer On Verge of Defaulting On $237 Million Of Tax-Exempt Bonds

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Bloomberg's Yankee Follies Continue: Parking Garages Two Years Behind on Rent

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Trees Being Dumped Into Lake In Prospect Park

A popular lake at Brooklyn's Prospect Park has quietly become a dumping ground for thousands of rotted branches, boughs and trunks of diseased and dead trees. After a rash of negative publicity the Parks Department finally went in and began clearing out decades of dead, dying and deceased trees. Prospect Park activists Ed Bahlman and Anne-Katrin Titze have been sounding the alarm.

"If you are in the Park this week, you may see a large team of New York City Parks Department and Prospect Park Alliance staff clearing away fallen trees and branches and taking down some trees that are aging or damaged. It is part of a Parks Department initiative called “5 x 5”, which is short for “Five Boroughs for Five Days.” (Photo: Gregory P. Mango)

Brooklyn

A popular lake at Brooklyn's Prospect Park has quietly become a dumping ground for thousands of rotted branches, boughs and trunks of diseased and dead trees, according to the New York Post.

A Post reporter touring the 60-acre freshwater lake’s perimeter yesterday saw what seemed to be an endless trail of freshly cut tree debris sunken along its shore at the park’s southern and eastern end.

Park activists Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman, who monitor the lake by walking along it at least three times a week, said it began dramatically filling up with tree scraps over the past month as city forestry workers started uprooting and trimming many of dozens of diseased lakeside trees that park advocates told the Post in August were in danger of falling.

“It looks like a disaster area. They came and ripped the trees out as fast as they could without caring if the debris landed in the lake,” said Bahlman, who, along with Titze, witnessed some of the sloppy work firsthand.

Some of the uprooted trees were so hollow from disease that they were previously used by squatters as Keebler Elves-style tree houses.

Paul Nelson, a Prospect Park Alliance spokesman, defended the workers saying the tree debris splashed into the lake “accidently” during the pruning and uprooting process and “wasn’t intentionally dumped.”

He added that removing the pieces could be troublesome because the lake’s floor is muddy and unstable and that the Alliance doesn’t consider this a problem because “having trees in the lake can be good for its ecosystem” by providing shelter and nutrients for fish, frogs and other lake inhabitants.

However, Titze, a state-licensed wildlife rehabilitator, and other environmentalists say too much tree dumping could threaten aquatic life in a lake.

Jim Mahoney of Windsor Terrace, who was fishing lakeside Wednesday, said he wished someone would clean up the mess so his line wouldn't get caught on the debris.

“I’ve been fishing here 30 years, and I have never seen it this bad,” he said.

Much of the lakeside trees’ poor health has been attributed to a longstanding problem of barbecuers illegally dumping coal remnants nearby. Besides covering much of the soil in coal, some picnickers last summer were even barbecuing inside the hallow trunks.

Read More:

Trees float in Brooklyn

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Prospect Park Tree House Cut Down

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