Will new leadership lead to a better Vannie?

By N. Clark Judd

A new organization is taking over the running of Van Cortlandt Park.

Instead of direct city control, Vannie will be operated by a joint public-private partnership called a conservancy, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said Friday. A conservancy is already responsible for Central Park.

The new group will be responsible for managing the city workers who keep up the park and will also seek to drum up money for projects the city has said it can't fund. The group hopes to renovate the park's downtrodden stadium building, where the conservancy could establish an office; improve horticulture and landscaping; improve a playground on the park's Woodlawn side; update the park's last master plan, now more than a decade old; convert an asphalt field for wheelchair sports; and attract special events, like the classical concert already held there annually.

The organization will work in the mold of the Central Park Conservancy, Mr. Benepe said.

But its creation places Vannie in the crossfire of a longstanding battle between public and private, and raises questions about the future of a group of veteran park advocates who stepped in to raise money for the park's maintenance when they felt the city had neglected its duty: The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park. The group also works to maintain trails used regularly for nationally-known high school and collegiate competition.

"When [Vannie] began to deteriorate again, it was the Friends that really pushed on getting the department to resume its maintenance responsibilities and then obtained the $50,000 contribution from the Road Runners' club to the Parks Department explicitly for the maintenance," said Eric Seiff, a Friends board member.

"That's been one of the sources of tension," he continued, "that we've felt that it hadn't been adequately maintained."

Mr. Benepe said the city will continue to fund the park. But if the conservancy works, it will be responsible for raising money for big improvements and events.

A citywide organization, 250+ Friends of NYC Parks, opposes the privatization of city parks and views conservancies as potentially dangerous.

"Everybody's paying taxes to have the parks maintained," said Carol Greitzer, a former city councilwoman and member of that group.

"I'm not saying … that they're not going to do a good job," she continued. "I'm saying that the whole notion of a conservancy is really anti-democratic."

Where, she asked, are the conservancies for poor neighborhoods with parks that are in general disrepair?

When issues of capital investment - such as the stadium - have come up, Parks pleads poverty. Other sweeping improvement projects, like the ongoing reconstruction of the ballfields on Vannie's Parade Ground, came from the millions the city agreed to spend on Bronx parks as compensation for building a filtration plant on what was Mosholu Golf Course's driving range and part of its front nine. The course will also be rebuilt.

After a March meeting where Mr. Benepe explained the new conservancy to the Friends, it's unclear to Mr. Seiff how the two groups will work together.

"Why he wants to start a new group as opposed to work through the Friends, that's something that I'm not sure I understand," Mr. Seiff said.

"We have met with them, told them that it's our intention to keep working with them, that we value their work," Mr. Benepe said of the Friends, later adding, "we'll be addressing areas they don't currently address."

The conservancy's board currently includes: Dan Biederman, the current president of the Bryant Park Corporation and 34th Street Partnership; Tony Cassino, Community Board 8's traffic and transportation committee chairman, a City Council hopeful and former board chairman; Thomas Kelly, the headmaster of Horace Mann; the president of Timberland's Authentic Youth category, Gene McCarthy, a Riverdale resident; Nina Habib Spencer, a former city Parks and federal Environmental Protection Agency staffer who lives in Riverdale and has her own public relations firm; and Edith Williams, the international finance and business consultant. Park Administrator Margot Perron will be a non-voting member of the board.