This is not to suggest that unsafe cycling is ever acceptable, but as more people take to bikes, and the city's population continues to grow, park pathways are bound to get busier. Action by users is important, but also be operators.

As it has done with Prospect Park, following another spate of high-profile injuries, the city's Department of Transporation and Parks Department have reached an agreement to change the arrangement of traffic lanes to make more room for bikes and runners and less for vehicles. The measure is meant to make everyone safer.

“Central Park is New York City’s recreational oasis and this redesign will provide park visitors with safer and wider paths to walk, jog or bike,” Parks Commissioner Veronica White said in a release.

"Central Park's signature drives will now have even clearer markings to help every park user have the best and safest experience possible," echoed DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

In almost every place, the number of vehicle lanes will be reduced to make for wider lanes for bikes and joggers. The one exception is in the lower loop, where a defacto carriage lane exists and one must remain for cars. There, new dividers will be put in to try and separate bikers and joggers, keeping everyone separate and safe.

Will this prevent all injuries? Of course not. People need to pay attention and respect everyone. But as we see time and again, the power of the paint can be quite powerful.

Change on the tracks. (Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)

The High Line. Rejuvenator of neighborhoods, destroyer of neighborhoods.

Those are basically the two media narratives surrounding the elevated park on Manhattan's West Side, which just held the groundbreaking for its third and final phase today. Most of the attention in the past has been on how great the design-y new park is, but as locals learn to live with the millions of visitors who flock to the park each year, some of them have started to complain, most notably in the Op-Ed pages of the Times, that the High Line has actually ruined, or at least Disneyfied, the neighborhoods surrounding it.

Asked about these changes today, Mayor Bloomberg did not necessarily disagree with the situation, just the sentiment.

"Cities that don’t change—if we didn’t change, Central Park would still be a shantytown; if we didn’t embrace new technology or medicines, life expectancies would still be 25 years old," the mayor said. He then recounted what sounded like a favorite New Yorker cartoon where two cavemen discuss their wonderful lives but limited lifespan. He was not calling Chelsea long-timers troglodytes, we think, but underscoring the need for change.

Creating more park space, whatever its outcome, is not the only issue, either.

"Cities have to evolve," the mayor continued. "We have a constant influx of people from around the world moving to this city, and the needs of the people who are here change. Today people are staying because the schools are better. Today we have a challenge because we need to provide more activities for more kids than we used to have. People from around the world want to come here. There’s always a challenge how you have enough affordable housing, how you build housing when the marketplace says it’s more and more valuable because more and more people want to come."

After all, this is New York. "We’re going to keep changing, and that’s what’s great about New York," the mayor concluded.

Joshua David, one of the High Line's co-founders, went further, arguing the High Line may even be a victim of its own success.

"I also think the High Line gets too much credit and blame for the changes in the neighborhood," he explained. "The Meatpacking was the Meatpacking way before the High Line. These condos, these developments were coming to Cheslea with or without the High Line. What you do have is a free, public, open park. And despite the changes, this is a strong reminder of the neighborhood’s industrial past."

"It’s hard to think we would be better off without it. You’d still have the new development, you’d still have the new changes, you just wouldn’t have the new public open space."

Mayor Bloomberg and his Parks Commissioner Veronica White had crossed the river not only to take in the scene but also cut the ribbon on the 1.6-acre, $12 million project. It was Ms. White‘s first official public appearance after replacing Adrian Benepe, who had been in the job since 2001. It was her coming out, if a quiet one, with limited fanfare and few workers. Just another day on the job.

“Our administration has been revitalizing old infrastructure and recasting it in new ways that makes sense for New Yorkers today,” the mayor said proudly, pointing to the success of other projects like the High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park as well.

But unlike those open space developments, heralded the world over, the waterfront of Williamsburg and Greenpoint has long languished. Not only was it cut off from the surrounding community for decades, but, despite the best efforts of the administration, little progress has been made on creating an emerald chain of parks and promenades following a major rezoning of the waterfront in 2004.

“WNYC Transmitter Park is also part of an ongoing effort to convert much of North Brooklyn’s waterfront shoreline into a network of interconnected open spaces,” the mayor said. “And that’s a big part of why we worked so hard with City Planning to rezone much of the area.”

After eight years, this is the first and only new park to fully open, though even it is not finished. A recreational pier is still under construction. The old WNYC transmitter station will eventually be turned into a café. There is a lovely green lawn in place and a nautical-themed playground, of which the mayor joked “I know where Marty is going to be later,” referring to the over-the-top Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz.

Even more a Monday afternoon, the park was busy, and on weekends, it is packed. The esplanade at Northside Piers and the Edge, which was built with private funds by the developers of the adjacent Miami-esque condo towers, are equally busy throughout the year, suggesting a hunger for access to the waterfront, one that remains unmet. “I think it’s the most important unresolved issue from the rezoning,” local Councilman Steve Levin told The Observer following the ceremony.

Every park has its own unique problems, he said. At 65 Commercial Street, the city spent years negotiating with the MTA on where it ought to move its vehicles parked there, taking up valuable waterfront real estate. Neighboring Barge Park was held up for capital construction delays and complications surrounding the construction of a new $100 million Department of Environmental Protection barge, whose predecessor docks on the site (hence the planned park's name).

Even Transmitter Park took longer to build than expected, as there were struggles with neighbors to gain access to the site, and then a lengthy construction process. The park was supposed to have opened at the beginning of summer, not the end of it.

Bushwick Inlet Park, running from North 11th to North 15th Street in a crescent along Kent Avenue and West Streets, is the biggest and most challenging of all the open spaces. As with so many waterfront parks, costs have ballooned--you think building on land is hard, try doing it riverside, with the tides and the toxic post-industrial conditions--and that is before the matter of buying out local landlords is even broached. Not only do they know the city wants their land, but it is also located in one of the hottest real estate markets in the five boroughs, meaning the acquisition costs have been grossly underestimated. (Funny the city will use eminent domain to build a new arena or office tower, but not a truly public amenity like a park.)

Ms. White had witnessed the open space excitement herself, as she explained in her brief remarks prior to cutting the ribbon. “This is a great example of Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment of opening up these waters to all New Yorkers,” she said. “This park is such a great example, I was out here last week, out here enjoying the view out there, the water and the green space, people playing with their children, their dogs, etcetera. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day here.”

After the event, The Observer wanted to meet the new Parks Commissioner and ask her about the status of the other parks. Ms. White’s press secretary warned, “only on-topic questions.” In non-press speak, that means ask about the ribbon cutting, this park, that’s it. So we did.

“It’s great to have my first ribbon cutting in Brooklyn, because as the borough president mentioned, I am from Bay Ridge,” she said. “It’s great to be out here and open up another of these gorgeous waterfront parks. It‘s a beautiful park.”

So, with a little less than a year-and-a-half left, what’s next? “We have lots of parks in the works, parks take a lot of time, as described here in detail, sometimes in terms of acquisition, sometimes in terms of remediation, and in building and opening the parks up

And there was the opening. Commissioner White had mentioned lots of parks in the works, so how about the ones just to our north and south? “That’s all, we have to go,” the press secretary cut in. As she was pulled away, Ms. White mumbled, “We’re working on it. Each piece is going forward.”

Locals are desperate to have these parks sown up before the mayor leaves office, because once the Bloomberg administration is gone, there is no promise the next mayor will take the same interest in these open spaces. That said, Mr. Levin remains genuinely hopeful.

“Over the last few months, especially since we had the hearing on what was going on with these parks, there’s definitely been an uptick in interest at City Hall, from the mayor’s office,” Mr. Levin said. “I think there’s a real desire to get the rest of this commitment fulfilled.”

It is an important piece of the mayor’s legacy, after all, this return to the water. “I can honestly say, all these parks are the best thing the mayor did,” Emily Nicolson said. She moved down the block eight years ago and used to sneak onto the site when it was just an empty lot. Now she brings her two young children here often, four times she said since the park opened a week earlier.

“Everything else he’s done is up for debate,” Ms. Nicolson continued. “But the parks, and the bike lanes, are pretty great.”

A new dawn for the old boardwalk? (Kevin Richardson/Save Coney Island)

With crowds packing the Coney Island Boardwalk, what better time to debate its famous fate.

In the spring, after a heated year-long debate, the city’s Public Design Commission decided to allow the Parks Department to replace the world-renowned walkway with a combination of concrete and plastic promenade that still has locals more steamed than a bucket of boardwalk clams.

Earlier this week, local activist groups and neighbors brought a suit in State Supreme against the city saying the process was materially wrong, according to The Times. Because the city failed to subject the new plan to either its own or the state’s environmental review process, there is no way to know its impact, and therefore the project must be thrown out and reapproved, with the proper reviews.

The plaintiff feel as though they, and the boardwalk, have been mishandled by the city, according to the Post. "Rather than spend the money to properly maintain the boardwalk," Ida Sanoff of Brighton Beach told the tab, "the Parks Department wants to destroy this beautiful piece of New York, and replace it with a different structure altogether without any environmental review or community input.”

The city insists that this is the only reasonable alternative to tropical hardwoods, as any other wood lacks the necessary durability of the tropical strains, which the Bloomberg administration promised to stop using in 2008. So it’s history versus the environment. We know which one wins in the Coney of today.

When a tree falls in Central Park, everybody hears about it.

Looks like the leafy canopy in Central Park will finally receive a much-needed trim, thanks to the City Council’s decision to more than double the budget for tree pruning.

The council added $2 million to the existing $1.45 million budget to be used for snipping the park’s overgrown limbs, The New York Times reports. The additional money was part of $30 million in last-minute funding restored to the Parks Department’s budget after citizens and council members cried out against the proposed cuts.

While we’re not looking forward to the awkward growing-out phase of blunt limbs that will soon border the park’s walkways, the decision will help alleviate the city’s fear of falling limbs.

“Tree pruning is something where you don’t see the impact of deferring until there’s a tragedy,” Councilman Brad Lander told The Times. “As incidents have shown, there’s a real risk, and, hopefully, getting pruning back on a better schedule will mean New Yorkers will be safer.”

The Parks Department summons outside contractors to trim 600,000 street trees, whose falling branches have caused severe injuries and one death in recent years. Lawmakers and city officials also added $16.8 million to the budget to preserve job-training program to secure about 845 full-time maintenance positions, The Times reports.

But even with additional funding, the forecast for efficiently pruning the trees is somewhat dismal.

In years past, pruning was mandated far more often than it is today. The Times noted that the current pruning cycle takes place once every 15 years (thanks to budget cuts)–in 2008, pruning was mandated every 7 years.

Looks like the city needs a little more green to maintain its green.

sgrothjan@observer.com

Endangered species. (Getty)

“My name is Michael Greco, and I am a direct descendent of the Greco Romans.” Mr. Greco stood before an overflow crowd in a fluorescent-lit conference room on the fifth floor of 253 Broadway on Monday afternoon, for an otherwise routine meeting of the Public Design Commission. “They built roads, bridges, aqueducts, great structures. My ancestors would be rolling in their grave if they saw this.”

To the 50 or so people packed into the conference room with Mr. Greco, the Rigelmann Boardwalk on Coney Island is their modern day Apian Way, and the New York City Parks Department is a band of marauding Visigoths. Instead of pickaxes and torches, the city is attacking with slabs of concrete and faux wood beams made from recycled plastic.

As part of the mayor’s PlaNYC sustainability program, the administration promised to stop using tropically harvested hardwoods. Since 1975, the city has cycled through seven different species of tropical trees in its park benches and boardwalk slats, moving from one wood to another as they were harvested to near extinction.

The solution, the city decided, was to replace the boardwalk with concrete. Even though this will be only on a 1,000-foot section on the eastern most section of the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, the decision has enraged Coney Island locals, amusement enthusiasts, historic preservationists, even the rainforest defenders who first attacked the city for its worrisome woods. They fear it is only a matter of time before the proposal colonizes the entire beachfront.

“One day, you’re going to come to Coney Island and just gasp—‘Oh my god, it’s not that beautiful anymore,’” Carolyn McCrory said, eyes wide. “You’re going to feel it in your bones.” She was wearing an orange peacock dress, and her curly golden tresses added to the carnival air in the meeting, a mix of working class and Wonder Wheel.

Randy Ortiz feared for his bones, too. He wore a leather vest with the famous smiling Tillie on the back that identified him as a Coney Island dancer, part of troupe that throws house parties on the boardwalk every Sunday. Mention of the dancers elicited cheers from the audience. “Concrete is bad for your knees and your back,” he said. “A lot of us aren’t as young as we used to be.” The dancers also would spread out sand to aid their moves, which simply will not glide, he feared, as it would on wood.

His concerns may be overstated, as the city is no longer proposing wall-to-beach concrete, but instead a 12-foot strip running down the middle of the boardwalk, bounded on both sides by 19 feet of what is called High Friction Recycled Plastic Lumber, which looks a surprising amount like the real thing, and is actually cheaper.

The critics counter that there is no reason the entire boardwalk cannot be made of this material, or even a locally harvest, sustainable hardwood like black locust. The Parks Department insists it cannot order the wood in sufficient quantities. Representatives for two lumber companies came to say they could deliver the wood, and one even came from West Virginia to say so, though he has a clear economic interest to do so.

At the same time, the city never quite provided a satisfying answer as to why there had to be a huge swath of concrete on the boardwalk, except to insist that this was the only way, and it was needed for emergency vehicles, even though they tend to use the surface roads. “We’ve explored all the options and this is the best one,” said Alex Hart, Park’s Assistant Deputy Chief of Design. “I wish wood would work, but it won’t.”

Earnestly ambivalent was Tim Keating, director of Rainforest Relief, a group that began pressuring the city to move away from tropical wood in the 1990s. “We have an opportunity to set the standard for the world, and instead we are presenting a backward plan that no one will follow,” he bemoaned. He did say after the hearing that at least he had achieved his primary goal, even if he was disappointed in the outcome. “They’re not cutting down trees in the rainforest anymore,” Mr. Keating said.

The world is indeed disappointed. “I’m from France, and when my family came to visit, we came to the boardwalk and it felt like the real New York,” Samuel Jeanblanc told the commission. “For New York and for the world, I beg you to save the boardwalk.”

“For shame!” cried out one woman, after the commission voted 6-0 to pass the measure.

Two other women left the hearing separately, crying.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Storm damage in Grand Army Plaza. (CP Conservancy)

It seems that the prayers of Dr. Seuss' lovable Lorax are finally being answered—in the form of MillionTreesNYC. But like all things, it comes at a cost.

Having recently reached its halfway point of planting 500,000 trees in October 2011 (a year ahead of schedule), MillionTreesNYC now faces its biggest obstacle yet: the U.S. economy. Just as nearly every other industry's budget and workforce are being trimmed, the greenery program is no exception, according to City Limits.

A vital component in ensuring that the program reaches its goal is maintenance efforts. Pruning is necessary in clearing away fallen branches and promoting tree growth, however, pruning cycles have been extended with each consecutive year.

To make matters worse, Mother Nature has been no innocent bystander in all of this: New York’s recent encounters with unpredictable and extreme weather (e.g. the September 2010 tornado and October 2011 snowstorm) have left the city footing a bill for claims related to injuries and damages from fallen debris. And while New York’s iconic London Planes are loved by many of its residents, they are also the most susceptible to incurring damage in severe weather conditions.

But Parks Department is trying to be proactive. "Even in the last few hurricanes and snow storms we've experienced, less than 1 percent of trees uprooted were planted within the last four years through MillionTreesNYC, which is a testament to the success of our revised planting methods” Parks spokeswoman Tara Kernan told City Limits. The true culprit of poor planting decisions is Robert Moses, who strongly encouraged the planting of London Planes back in the 1930s.

So what does the future look like for MillionTreesNYC? Despite facing a compromised budget, limited supplies, and a hiring freeze, the Parks Department does not seem shaken. The key to all of this is to be more resourceful, or as Ms. Kernan puts it, “to do more with less.”

The city is encouraging a communal effort for the movement’s success, which means: get off your stump, and take care of your trees—and quick, or else New York could share the same fate as smoggy LA.

realestate@observer.com

Open 'er up. (Spencer Tucker)

One of the cornerstones of the Bloomberg administration's PlaNYC 2030 was ensuring every New Yorker lived within 10 minutes of a park. That is tricky, real estate being the valuable commodity that it is, so building new parks is not always easy—we had to construct one on a derelict railway, for godsakes!

So the administration came up with the clever idea of opening up city schoolyards to the community after school. Today in Jackson Heights, Mayor Bloomberg and the Parks Department celebrated the 200th playground opening."In a time of tight budgets, our schoolyards represent a great opportunity for transforming existing, underused resources into something we can all enjoy,” Mayor Bloomberg said.

Currently 71 percent of privileged New Yorkers live within the desired 10 minute walking distance. The whole park-in-every-neighborhood plan is great, but this has The Observer pondering what happens when New Yorkers start demanding 9-minute parks.

Looks like fun. (Spencer Tucker)

The goal is to convert another 58 schoolyards into full-time playgrounds by 2013, via a collaboration between the Parks Department, the Department of Education and the non-profit Trust for Public Land, who are working on the renovation of these new play spaces.

The total investment by PlaNYC is $87.6 million, and the design process of each park has involved the children, parents and teachers from each school.

However, some of the spaces bring into question the very definition of what constitutes a 'playground'. Is it a new lick of paint and some blacktop? Or do you need a basketball net and the token tree? Either way, more safe space for the children of the city can't be a bad thing.

sduffy@observer.com

Protest art!

Robert Lederman, a crusading artist and a bit of crank who was a frequent antagonist of Mayor Giuliani, thinks the Bloomberg administration is being two-faced in expelling the Occupy Wall Street protestors tents from Zuccotti Park. He points to tents set up for holiday markets as the unjust, commercial expropriation of public space.

The holiday vendors have permits, of course, and a portion of their proceeds goes to the parks they occupy, so there appears to be a public good here, whatever your opinion of overpriced tchokes. Mr. Lederman has his own agenda, as he has run afoul of the city for trying to sell art in parks without permits. Still, his thoughts, which he just emailed around, are intriguing in light of last night's events.

Mayor Bloomberg claims that tents are not allowed in NYC parks. Ask him to explain the giant tents being set up right now in Union Sq Park and in Central Park at Columbus Circle for the corporate run Holiday vending Markets. These tents are set up for more than a month straight, 24 hours a day. They completely displace pedestrians, residents and park visitors for a fee of millions of dollars.

Mayor Bloomberg says generators are not allowed in NYC parks, yet the Holiday Markets operate huge generators as do most of the Greenmarket vending stands in Union Sq Park. There is even a weekly Greenmarket set up right outside the Mayor’s office with huge tents and generators.

Mayor Bloomberg says protestors cannot sleep in parks, yet he allows more than 100 homeless people to sleep in Union Sq Park every night. Instead of pretending that the Mayor is a defender of free speech, perhaps the media can ask him to explain these totally inconsistent policies.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

NIMP! Not in my playground. (NYC Parks Advocates)

As The Observer recently chronicled, the East Side of Manhattan is so starved for parkland, locals will do just about anything to hold onto every blade of grass and monkey bar. At Ruppert Playground, neighbors have been fighting the powerful Related Companies, which is preparing to replace the open space with a new apartment tower possibly reaching 40 stories.

The developer has every right to do so, as it built the playground three decades ago and only had to keep it open through 2008. This has not kept those on the block and their elected officials from fighting the plan, but now Related seems to have found its secret weapon: photon rays!

No, the developer will not be wielding lasers in its NIMBY battle. Instead, it plans to build a state-of-the-art cancer in the base of the building, according to The Journal, an addition that appears to have won over some reluctant pols:

The group seeking to build the proton facility, New York Proton Center, is a nonprofit corporation backed by a consortium of local hospitals including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the NYU Langone Medical Center, as well as 21st Century Oncology Inc., a private firm. The group has been searching for a location in Manhattan for well over a year, and last year won preliminary approval from the state Department of Health to build on a site on West 57th Street. Those plans appear to have been shelved, as the group began looking for a new site months ago.

The therapy, which targets cancerous tumors more directly than other forms of radiation therapy, has been growing around the country in recent years. While a treatment center has yet to be built in New York City, a facility is planned for Jersey City, N.J., while another is being built in Somerset, N.J.

Ruffling Ruppert's feathers. (NYC Parks Advocates)

Related is also considering a way to incorporate at least some open space into its plan, which may assuage the neighbor's concerns. There is the possibility, though, that adding medical facilities could add to the tower's size, since it might qualify for a community benefits bonus under the zoning code, making this a double deal for Related: a tenant that pleases some opponents while making for a taller, and therefore more valuable, tower.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC