The Great Van Cortlandt Park Debate: The City Stirs Controversy by Creating Park Conservancy

First, here's an opinion piece on why the convervancy is a bad idea.

But now let's back up for a minute in the interest of fairness.

There's a parks debate heating up in the Bronx, mostly in Riverdale, about the city's decision to create a public-private conservancy for Van Cortlandt Park. (There are also conservancies for Central Park and Prospect Park)

Why create this conservancy, critics of it say, when there's already a nonprofit organization, the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, advocating and raising money to maintain, enhance and provide programming at the huge northwest Bronx park. Well, Parks says the conservancy will only add to what Friends does, rather than diminish what it does. And the conservancy will be able to hire supplemental staffers and throw money at capital projects the city can't afford to fund on its own.

The Riverdale Press' N. Clark Judd first reported about this in December.

Here's last week's story in the Press, with more details about how the conservancy will work.

This week, Parks Commish Adrian Benepe wrote a rebuttal, objecting to what he said was Judd's mischaracterization of the conservancy and also to quiet some of conservancy critics.

Finally, here's the previously-linked-to opinion piece by another critic of the conservancy, former Community Board 7 chair and now dedicated environmental activist Karen Argenti. She says the new conservancy undermines what the Friends of VC Park have been building for years. (This was supposed to run in this week's issue of the Norwood News, but alas, we ran out of space.)

Another interesting twist is that 11th Council District hopeful Tony Cassino is on the board of the new conservancy. How will this affect his standing with Riverdale voters? Will incumbent Oliver Koppell risk criticizing the city and Parks to win over conservancy critics? Does Ari Huffnung, another Council candidate, have a position?

The VC Park debate is officially open here on the Bronx News Network blog. So, read up and let us know what you think.