The city of Rye is not backing down in an ongoing turf war over who has the final say on any future construction at Playland park, according to Rye”™s mayor. The county owns the amusement park and its property, which are in Rye.
Mayor Joe Sack, a Republican and attorney by trade, called on county Legislator Catherine Parker to side with the city in the dispute. The comments came in an editorial posted Oct. 6 on the website of The Rye City Review, a weekly newspaper. The editorial was titled “It”™s called Rye Playland for a reason.”
“Respectfully, we”™d like our representative in White Plains (Parker) to represent Rye to the county, and not to represent the county to Rye,” Sack said.
The county had entered into a management agreement with the nonprofit Sustainable Playland Inc. in a deal to take over day-to-day management of the park and invest in improvements that would have included an 82,500-square-foot field house. Critics said the field house was large and out of character for the neighborhood, which occupies a scenic space on the Long Island Sound. Neighbors said the field house would bring traffic and create congestion on the predominantly suburban streets in the area.
The city asserted its authority over Sustainable”™s plan, which was later voluntarily withdrawn before the state Department of Environmental Conservation ruled on whether the county or city should be the lead agency in the required environmental review process. The county still intends to enter into an agreement to hand over management of the park to a private operator, but differences of opinion between the executive and legislative branches has slowed those discussions in recent weeks.
County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican, agreed to pay a consultant $100,000 to study operations at the park and offer recommendations in a report due by the end of November. The Board of Legislators and its Democratic majority decided not to wait for those results, meeting with two amusement park operation companies with the goal of entering into a new deal before the end of the year.
Astorino made reinventing the park a goal of his administration, saying the park has been running in the red annually and seeing attendance decline year to year. There”™s been a pronounced lack of consensus, though, on how best to reinvent the park, be it upgrading the rides and amusements or shifting the focus to year-round amenities such as the field house. There has even been ongoing disagreement about the annual attendance figures and revenue numbers, with the method for tallying of attendees having changed several times over the years.
The county board announced last month that attendance for the 2014 season was 467,948, an increase of 77,000 from 2013. Revenues also went up 24 percent, according to the board, to $8.7 million.
Legislator Peter Harckham, a Democrat and chairman of the Labor, Parks, Planning and Housing Committee of the board, said in a statement that the numbers meant there was still life in the aging amusement park.
“That”™s why it”™s so important that the park”™s revitalization plans move forward right away, and that a partner be brought on board before next season begins,” he said.
