The community responds

The involvement of private interests in Randall’s Island’s public spaces has raised concerns across the Harlem River. Manhattan and Bronx residents, public and parochial schools and advocates feel shut out of both the fields and the process.

The terms of the deal would give the private schools’ teams exclusive access to two-thirds of the fields during prime after-school hours for the next 20 years. Each school will pay $2.6 million for the construction, priority access and ongoing park maintenance.

If the project is completed, children from public schools in East Harlem and the South Bronx will have to wait for their turn to play, if they can get to the island at all. The schools lack "gym teachers, the supplies and the transportation needed to get over to the island," Geoffrey Croft of the New York City Parks Advocates said. "You can give all the permits you want to people who live in this community, but if they don’t have the means to utilize it, then it’s a waste."

Park use options

With the additional fields, open space for recreation is at risk. "They won’t have the opportunity to take their family on late spring, middle of summer picnic that they don’t have to drive three and a half hours to get to," said Matthew Washington of Community Board 11. Today, New Yorkers are a short walk or drive away from picnics and Frisbee games, but community residents are concerned that by 2009, fewer of those spaces will be available.

“I want the community to have the say in shaping how its backyard is going to look and shaping how its backyard is going to be managed,” said Washington.

Washington, along with fellow Community Board member Marina Ortiz, the District 4 Presidents’ Council, the Citywide Council on High Schools and Eugenia Simmons-Taylor of Class Size Matters, filed a lawsuit against the city. The plaintiffs are charging that the deal should have gone through the more rigorous Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP).

Parties on both sides of the lawsuit agree that Randall's Island park land needs fixing, but disagree on the number of additional fields and the ability to use them.

“An equal opportunity at sports fields -- at anything -- is just so important,” Washington said. “This was a really bad deal and we want to say no way. We want something better for our kids for our future.”

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