Prospect Park

The Daily Plant : Thursday, June 27, 2002

A NEW PLAN OFFERS PARK PATRONS RELIEF

At the 100 Days Lecture in May, Deputy Commissioner for Operations Liam Kavanagh announced a new initiative called "Operation ReLeaf/Relief" whose integrated three-pronged approach will improve the appearance, infrastructure and service at neighborhood parks and playgrounds. Of the ten sites that were targeted this spring, 8 involved both landscape and comfort station improvements.

The first component addresses landscapes. High quality horticulture is a hallmark of successful park systems, so Parks plans to improve or add green spaces to neighborhood parks and playgrounds citywide. Using a model developed for the Greenstreets Program, horticultural requirements contracts have been adapted to quickly renovate degraded planting areas with hearty plant material and to provide protection for the new gardens. Parks horticulturists will give hands-on training to district maintenance staff and provide them with site specific plant care reference manuals to use in the future. Plant replacements will be available from Parks nurseries if needed after the plant guarantee period has elapsed. "Working on Greenstreets taught us how to implement rapid, fairly simple, yet hardy landscaping projects . Now we are moving our focus on greening from the street beds back into the playgrounds," says Chief of Forestry & Horticulture Fiona Watt.

The second addresses infrastructure, specifically the 700 comfort stations, 2600 drinking fountains and 600 spray showers Parks maintains citywide. "We will use roof and buildings requirement contracts to improve many of these facilities both inside and out, operating on the premise that it’s our business to help New Yorkers do their business," says Commissioner Kavanagh. Initially, 25 comfort stations were targeted for work, and Parks hopes to attract financial support to continue the effort. A long-term goal is to create a list of troublesome facilities and develop a mechanism to quickly address future disruptions to water services. To this end, water services and comfort stations are being added to the Parks Inspection Program so Parks can track and measure our ability to manage these important amenities. Commissioner Kavanagh reports, "We have met our goal to have all drinking fountains and spray showers turned on by Memorial Day, and we will be keeping an eye on them throughout the hot summer months."

The final prong is service. Parks will assign staff, primarily POPs, to provide a consistent maintenance presence in local parks. This will enable Parks to protect our capital investments, give the public a familiar face to turn to, and give the POPs a sense of ownership and the kind of customer relations experience that can help them in their search for permanent employment. Parks will also develop scheduling and staffing plans that follow the change in seasons and park usage patterns to provide more staff during busy seasons.

Mayor Bloomberg stresses the importance of remembering who we work for. With Operation ReLeaf/Relief, our bosses, the people of the City of New York, will find more attractive parks, features, and amenities that make their visits more pleasant and a more consistent maintenance than they’ve enjoyed in the recent past.

(Thursday, July 6, 1989)

Where can you learn what a dormer does, how to make a broom and how to cane a chair? Under the bell-shaped gambrel roof of Lefferts Homestead, an 18^th century farmhouse in Prospect Park that is offering a summer-long series of programs about the history, architecture and customs of old New York.

The summer activities in Brooklyn’s flagship park includes demonstrations of early American crafts, family workshops, an architecture exhibition and special tours. Lefferts Homestead, which housed more than four generations of the Lefferts family, is one of the few surviving Dutch Colonial farmhouses in Brooklyn.

"I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark,
but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world."

Helen Keller
(June 27, 1880- 1968)