Playland”™s day-to-day operations may be taken over by a nonprofit management company as soon as May, despite continued opposition from some neighbors of the county-owned park.
Sustainable Playland Inc., the Rye-based nonprofit likely to be handed the keys to the gates of Playland, has a 10-year management deal already in place but needs formal approval of the county legislature before anything is official.
County Executive Robert P. Astorino, a Republican, already signed off on an agreement with SPI, but the Board of Legislators is yet to bring the deal to a vote. The deal was tied up in partisan wrangling and legal disputes last year between Astorino and the Democratic majority of the board. Last year was an election year and Playland”™s management was a front-and-center campaign issue.
But with the county elections in the rearview mirror and new board leadership in place that is more likely to side with the executive branch, finalizing the Playland deal may be inevitable even as some neighbors continue to take issue with proposed changes to the park they fear will affect their quality of life.
Michael Kaplowitz, a Democrat who became board chairman in January, in a recent interview said he supported SPI to take over management of the park. Some details might still need to be worked out, he said, but there was nothing that might derail the project all together.
“That is probably job No. 1 to come to terms,” he said of finalizing the deal. Kaplowitz came into power on the strength of a nine-member coalition with the seven Republicans in the board minority and Yonkers Democrat Virginia Perez. SPI”™s deal has been deemed to be a management agreement and not technically a lease, meaning a simple majority of nine on the 17-member board is needed for approval. A lease would have needed a “supermajority” of 12 legislators.
Three county Board of Legislators committees are now mulling the latest iteration of an 80-page improvement plan from SPI. Two of those committees are headed by Republicans that are also Astorino allies: the Budget and Appropriations Committee, chaired by Legislator Sheila Marcotte of Tuckahoe, and the Economic Development Capital Projects Committee, led by Legislator Michael Smith of White Plains. The third committee, Labor/Parks/Planning/Housing, is headed by a Democrat, Peter Harckham, who is scheduling biweekly meetings specifically on the park”™s management and is on track to move the plan out of committee by May.
Harckham”™s committee heard a presentation from SPI and had a tour of Playland on Tuesday and held a public hearing on the matter Wednesday. A second public hearing will be held closer to it moving out of committee, board members said.
SPI responded to some vocal community concerns on March 12, when the group announced it had changed its improvement plan for the park, reducing the size of a proposed athletic field house.
The amendments to the plan include 100 more parking spaces than originally called for and a 12,000-square-foot reduction to the proposed athletic field down to 82,500 square feet. The size of the field house was a point of contention for neighbors in the coastal neighborhoods near Playland and some local government officials who felt the field house should be subjected to Rye City zoning laws, although traditionally developments on county-owned land are subject only to Westchester land use approvals.
The field house, to be operated by a new company called Playland Sports L.L.C., will also encroach less on the existing parking lot, sparing 615 parking spaces but still reducing the current total of 3,199 by roughly 300 spaces. Sustainable, in a written statement from spokesman Geoff Thompson, said that the reduction of the field house came from the scrapping of outdoor field space and the removal of indoor office areas and “other ancillary areas” from the building design.
“Playland Sports emphasized that 82,500 square feet is the minimum size required for the field house to be economically viable,” Thompson said. The size of the athletic areas couldn”™t be further reduced, he said, because their sizes are set to league regulations. The reduced number of spaces had been a concern of residents who felt the loss of parking would mean increased traffic in the adjoining neighborhoods (on-street parking isn”™t permitted in the neighborhoods near the park).
Community critics do not seem to be appeased by the reduction of the field house. City resident Deirdre Curran, in an editorial on the blog Patch, said that the evolution of the plan was the result of the vocal opposition.
“Apparently, they”™re listening ”“ just not quite hard enough,” Curran said. A website, nofieldzone.org, offers for sale “No Field Zone” magnets.
SPI was chosen out of 12 bidders when the county sought to “reimagine” Playland, which routinely runs in the red and has sometimes struggled with consistent attendance. Its plan would transform Playland from a seasonal amusement park to a year-round multipurpose park.
