The study was commissioned by New Yorkers for Parks and prepared by Public Works Partners.
“…Taken as a whole, they call for significant changes to the culture of capital project management within the agency.” – NYforParks study.
Since 1998 this community has worked for the return of the Stanton Street Park Building to its original use as a community center. We’ve been asked to be the park that stores equipment for all of Manhattan parks, houses the alarm system for all five boroughs and another building used for Parks Dept. engineering staff. This means that 3 out of the 4 buildings in this park are not available for this neighborhood. None of this makes sense for a park that serves a community badly in need of green space and with rising costs for space for organizations serving low income neighbors. The Parks Department usage brings cars and trucks parking in the park itself and now a large cargo container- taking up yet more park space.
There was money awarded by our Council Member, and money in the pipeline possible from our Borough President to put bathrooms into the Stanton building for public use. The costs keep rising as we wait.
Thankfully, our new Commissioner Silver said that he too is concerned about the lengthy waits “…the issue [is] a priority for his first 100 days as parks chief, Mr. Silver said he was meeting with his staff to address the problem and would issue recommendations by late summer…” – New York Times.