Benepe has served as commissioner since 2002

The past year was an especially green one for Lower Manhattan, especially if measured by the numerous new parks and green spaces opened or now under construction by the New York City Parks & Recreation Department. From DeLury Square and Titanic, to Imagination Playground at Burling Slip, to Tribeca’s newly renamed Capsouto Park -- downtown residents, workers, and visitors now have more shady green areas to enjoy than ever.

At the helm of the Parks Department is Commissioner Adrian Benepe, who began his career there in 1973. Benepe has served as commissioner since January 2002, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed him and launched a long-term plan to improve park facilities and programs for children, develop new waterfront parks and greenways, and make New York City bloom with millions of new flowers and hundreds of gardens.

Today, the Parks Department is managing the largest program of park expansion and renovation since the 1930s. A large part of the construction budget funds PlaNYC and MillionTreesNYC -- Mayor Bloomberg’s signature projects to green the city and develop a more sustainable future.

In Lower Manhattan, Benepe and his team have used both city funding and $46 million from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) to build or improve 19 parks south of Houston Street. Most recently, rebuilding work is active along the Pike-Allen Street Malls and three Slips in the Lower East Side. They are among several that are underway or soon to start.

We asked Commissioner Benepe three questions about the work his agency is doing to make Lower Manhattan a greener place.

How does your agency determine which parks and greenspaces to improve?
Mr. Benepe: There are many inspirational factors that lead to a park’s redevelopment. Some parks have long required a restoration, such as the soon to be constructed Collect Pond Park which has suffered from unstable soil conditions because of the courthouse basement structures beneath it. Other projects have come to us through innovative ideas, such as the recently completed and hugely popular Imagination Playground in Burling Slip, which started as an offer by architect David Rockwell to design it for free and help raise funds to support it.

Imagination Playground at Burling Slip

However, most of the projects are the result of a cooperative public process. The LMDC not only takes our and other city agencies’ suggestions and priorities into account when awarding grant money, but they also seriously consider Community Boards’, community groups’ and private individuals’ suggestions during a public-comment process. As a result, many of the projects we’ve done were already Parks and community priorities.

When trying to develop new park and green spaces in particular, we are limited by where we have the space to build them. Many of the new public green spaces in Lower Manhattan have been created from underutilized street space or parking areas, and are the product of discussion and cooperation between several city agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, Economic Development Corporation, and Planning Commission.

What are some of the most significant improvements to downtown’s parks in recent years?
Certainly Imagination Playground has quickly become a destination for children and parents from far and wide, but when we first started our LMDC-funded initiatives for Lower Manhattan, what we heard most often when talking with residents was “how beautiful the gardens and landscapes in Battery Park City are, but it’s difficult to get over there” and “why can’t we have what they have.”  The public green spaces designed and built in Battery Park City over the last 10 to 20 years have raised the bar for what the public expects of their parks.

We have tried to respond by providing the same high level of quality in design and construction, quality of the materials used, and the quality of finished parks. Consequently, the parks that can be pointed to as having the most impact are the parks that make a difference in peoples’ everyday lives -- such as Coenties Slip and Mannahatta Park at Wall Street for local office workers, and a whole list of neighborhood parks for local residents such as Tribeca Park, Washington Market Park (with its soon to be completed Comfort Station), Columbus Park and Pavilion, the Hester Street Playground in Sara D. Roosevelt Park -- and the newly completed DeLury Square and Titanic Parks. The popularity of these parks and how heavily they are used attest to how desperately parks and neighborhood green spaces are needed downtown.

Parks to be completed in the near future such as James Madison Plaza, Catherine Slip Park, Pearl Street Playground, Collect Pond Park, and the expanded and greened sections of the Pike Street and Allen Street Malls will, we hope, continue this string of new green gems for Lower Manhattan.
 
How do the new and rebuilt parks and greenspaces factor into the overall vision for Lower Manhattan?

Battery Park Bosque ribbon cutting December 2005

Lower Manhattan didn’t have the small green local parks that are so common in other parts of the city, and creating them was a particularly difficult challenge, especially considering that we are building on former roadbeds and in Historic Districts. We have worked very hard and will continue to work to find space for trees and plants amid the maze of utilities that lie beneath these new parks, while creating spaces that are appropriate to their historic settings.

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