As reported on A Walk in the Park blog and in Our Town ...
Last night, the Dept. of Parks and Recreation officially announced that plans for a year-round tennis bubble on the East Side were off the table. At the meeting of Community Board 8's Parks Committee, Manhattan Parks Commissioner William Castro cited the strong voice of the community at their public reviews as responsible for this tremendous reverse of plans.
Great news! We need the same end result in Central Park! The attendance of Mel Wymore, chair of Community Board 7, at this East Side meeting underscores the boundary-less nature of this issue. CB7 Chair Wymore's remarks at the CB8 meeting were perfectly on point: “It is about the taking of public property and making it private, and that is a consideration that really demands a public process that is much more involved than what has taken place here ... At face value, tennis in the park sounds great. But when you really think about it, it is more like putting a Post-it note on a Picasso. You really have to think about what the impacts of this are long term, what precedents it sets and what are the underlying rationales for making this happen.” (Our Town)
Whichever side of the park, borough of the city, or state in the country, it is the responsibility of all 25 million of us (oh yes!) who enjoy and benefit from Central Park each year to protect it from such degradation. The 1,300+ signatures to the online petition come from as far as Cape Cod, MA, and Riverside, IL (Olmsted's turf).
Read more on the Park's proposal for Central Park (as gathered at the March 11, 2010, meeting of Community Board 7) and prepare your comments for the May 13th meeting of CB7 (time and location to be announced)! Plan to attend!
*Photo: DNAInfo.com
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