County lawmakers criticized Sustainable Playland Inc. Tuesday, saying the nonprofit chosen to take over management of Playland was avoiding hard questions about the group”™s plans for the future of the park.
Rye-based SPI, in an April 9 letter to Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, said it would continue to sit on the sidelines due to legal issues and because lawmakers lacked any shared vision of what should be done at the park. Kim Morque, SPI”™s president, said in the letter that county officials had differing ideas of attendance goals, parking and if year-round athletic fields should be built there.
“This lack of a cohesive overall county view of what Playland should be has left SPI and its operators at a loss as to where to turn next,” Morque wrote in the letter.
Rye-based SPI was chosen by Westchester to take over management of the park, which is county owned but located in the city of Rye. SPI removed itself from the Board of Legislators”™ review process earlier this month, saying it was awaiting the resolution of a turf dispute between Westchester and the city of Rye over which entity has zoning jurisdiction for any construction in the park.
The group had previously likened their backing away to stepping off the playing field until the municipalities decided who was going to be referee, but SPI may soon find itself out of the game altogether. Board Chairmam Michael Kaplowitz, a Democrat, called the backing out “astonishing” and took the group”™s letter to mean it was refusing completely to cooperate with county lawmakers
“The problem is not SPI”™s or the county”™s vision; the problem is SPI”™s inability or unwillingness to provide answers to the critical parking/traffic, environmental and financial concerns,” Kaplowitz said.
Kaplowitz, who became board chairman in January, had anticipated bringing the plan to vote by May 13 and said the review process was on schedule despite the turf dispute and two lawsuit from County Legislator Ken Jenkins, a Yonkers Democrat. Jenkins had sought in a civil suit to void the signed management deal between the county and SPI. A prior lawsuit, against the county executive and currently on appeal, asked the court to rule that the deal constituted a lease and therefore required a full vote of the county board.
Kaplowitz said the process has stopped not because of the jurisdictional or legal issue, but because SPI hasn”™t addressed the concerns raised in the review process. “To expect the legislature to approve a project as complex as SPI”™s without asking these fundamental questions is, frankly, naive,” Kaplowitz said.
The group”™s improvement plan for Playland, which included the proposed construction of an 82,500-square-foot field house, was being vetted by the board amid community concerns over issues like parking and the size of the facility. Deirdre Curran, a Port Chester resident, has been at the forefront of the opposition to SPI, which formed specifically to seek to manage the park.
“They don”™t have any track record to prove they could do a project this large or this expensive,” she told the Business Journal. Curran said SPI used the turf dispute as an excuse to get out of having to answer questions about its financials and the vaguer aspects of the improvement plan. “Who goes to a job interview and tells the company, ”˜I don”™t like how you”™re conducting the interview process,”™” she said.
Legislator Peter Harckham, a Democrat who chairs the board”™s parks committee, said that SPI”™s concerns cited in its letter could have been part of the vetting process. “We can”™t ask the taxpayer of Westchester to turn the keys of an iconic park over to any entity without a thorough review process,” he said. “It is counterproductive for them to further walk away from the process.”
Geoff Thompson, a spokesman for SPI, said in a statement the group had not withdrawn from the approval process. “SPI believes our plan is the right approach for securing Playland”™s future,” he said. “Yet it is only prudent that certain legal issues involving the county and city of Rye are resolved, as are varying opinions on what a revitalized Playland should encompass.”
Still, as the relationship between the nonprofit and the county continues to unravel, a clean break from SPI appears to be increasingly inevitable.
Two other finalists that bid on management of the park continue to watch the entanglement closely, Central Amusements and Standard Amusements, each with amusement park management experience. Legislator Catherine Parker, a Democrat who represents the district where Playland is located, said without SPI the county could reconsider other finalists rather than issue a new request for proposals.
