The Equity Factor

City Council Candidate: We Need to Shed Parks

New York and others are raising funds by selling off “excess” green spaces.

Atlanta Skyline, Atlanta Park

(AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

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Despite the health and wellness benefits of green space, cities are choosing to sell off parkland in order to pay their bills. And space isn’t the only thing for sale — “naming rights” have increasingly become an item on the bake sale table. Recently, San Diego County Parks and Recreation Department announced plans to exchange the names of trails, playgrounds, roller rinks, recreation fields — even rooms in community centers — for money.

A few new stories about city governments peddling green space for cash have recently caught my eye.

Carving Open Space Out of Public Housing Developments
Even though the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has gone back to the drawing board with major plans to lease land for the development of luxury housing, it has been quietly putting smaller plots of land on the chopping block. In the past few years, green spaces, playgrounds and parking lots have been sold piecemeal for the creation of affordable and senior housing.

The New York Daily News reports that since 2013, the housing authority has sold 54 parcels totaling around 441,000 square feet of NYCHA-owned land to private developers.

Calling the land “underutilized,” NYCHA hopes that the sales will help to put a dent in their $98 million budget gap for the year. In a statement, NYCHA director Shola Olatoye told the paper, “Given this reality, we are exploring all options available to bring in additional revenue that will help us better serve residents.”

But residents have a number of concerns, including questions about how these transactions intersect with other privatization plans the authority has and if the land might be worth more than the price at which NYCHA is selling it. They also see the land as a much-needed amenity: A tenant leader from the Van Dyke Houses in Brownsville, Brooklyn mourned the loss of a parking lot by saying, “This is where the kids learned to ride their bikes … If you take that, where are they going to go?”

NYCHA is discussing selling off another lot in the development that’s used for football, basketball and social gatherings. Olatoye has promised more clarity about the housing authority’s plans to sell and lease land as the upcoming Next Generation NYCHA plan is rolled out.

Fort Lauderdale Brushes Aside Plan for Downtown Park
Residents of the city’s Flagler Village are urging the city to create a new park out of a 3.5-acre site close to the city center.

But City Manager Lee Feldman is claiming that a future park would only end up being another hangout space for the city’s homeless population. Meanwhile, a real estate consultant’s report says that the value of the land could be between $11 million and $13 million if redeveloped, potentially for a multi-family or senior-living development.

Feldman told the Sun-Sentinal that the property is “clearly the gem of the [city’s] portfolio.” Locals see this fact as the perfect reason to ensure the space is preserved for the public. “We can’t just not do parks because we’re working on a management issue with homeless people. We need to do both,” the president of the Flagler Village Civic Association told the paper.

Will Evansville Choose a Leslie Knope or a Ron Swanson?
The Parks and Recreation Department of the Indiana town maintains more than 2,500 acres between 65 parks. But since the department is more than $500,000 in the red, whether or not to sell land has become an issue in Evansville’s upcoming City Council election.

One candidate for a position representing the Second Ward, Steve Davis, is arguing that sales are necessary to guarantee maintenance and upkeep of the remaining parks. The ward’s incumbent, Missy Mosby, is arguing that alternative funding streams and increasing residents’ ownership of local green spaces is key to improving park quality. Davis told the Evansville Courier & Press:

“We’re not taking care of our parks. We’re not maintaining them. They’re not safe. They’re not being utilized by the public. So I would like to downsize the parks department,” Davis said. “We need to shed them.”

The Democratic primary on May 5th might determine the future of park preservation in Evansville.

The Equity Factor is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

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Alexis Stephens was Next City’s 2014-2015 equitable cities fellow. She’s written about housing, pop culture, global music subcultures, and more for publications like Shelterforce, Rolling Stone, SPIN, and MTV Iggy. She has a B.A. in urban studies from Barnard College and an M.S. in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Tags: parkspublic space

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