Dear Editor:
Open Letter to Governor Corzine:
The Jersey City Parks Coalition (JCPC) is concerned about two state park projects, especially one where the state has refused to consider overwhelming public sentiment: the Empty Sky Memorial of Liberty State Park (and the Connected Parks vision to create what would be the only real community park in Jersey City’s waterfront neighborhood).
The JCPC is a growing city-wide 501(c)(3) organization of community park and open space groups. We have fourteen member groups which have hundreds of resident members and which represent most of the ten major (1 acre) community parks that serve tens of thousands of residents. We have created and championed the community-empowerment approach to designing parks which has guided thousands of residents to design the only creative community park renovations in the past half century: Van Vorst Park, Ercel Webb Park, Pershing Field, Connected Parks and Hamilton Park. Our annual fundraising is now hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As asserted repeatedly by the Friends of Liberty State Park, there was never valid public input regarding the placement of the Empty Sky Memorial. The vast majority of people want this sculpture, which honors the fallen local residents of 9/11, to be placed in a different park location, not where it currently would block and dominate the view of the Manhattan skyline at the most critical waterfront part of LSP. To undemocratically shun the majority opinion of the public on the placement of this memorial is to diminish the democratic ideals that were the target of the 9/11 attacks. We agree with Sam Pesin and Charles Balcer on this matter.
The J. C. Waterfront Conservancy, with the world-class assistance of Laura Starr (from Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners, working with Architects, who also helped design Battery Park and parts of Central Park), has gathered and focused public input from many hundreds of residents to generate a vision of a very special “Connected Parks” which would be the only real community park on the Jersey City urban waterfront. Residents loved the “Infinity Bridge” which would connect the three bits of land around the mouth of the Morris Canal along with wonderful landscaping, other amenities, a re-located Korean War Memorial and a beautiful dog run. Recently, the State was willing to meet with community representatives and Laura Starr and significantly modified their fifteen million dollar walkway project so as to incorporate most of the community’s world class park vision that involves the area in and around the walkway project. We complement the flexibility of state officials (and J. C. Planning Director Bob Cotter) to make the needed changes according to the expressed wishes of the majority of residents. We ask that the infinity bridge, the re-located memorial, the dog run and all the other amenities be formally approved at this time, even if their funding and implementation need to await phase 2 of this grand effort.
Governor Corzine: you are a democrat. The people have democratically spoken. State officials have been responsible to listen to the people regarding their “Connected Parks” vision. Will you listen to them regarding the need to relocate the Empty Sky sculpture to another part of Liberty State Park? These two state projects involve what might be the two most important parks in New Jersey’s second largest, soon to be largest city!
Dr. Clifford Waldman
JCPC, Executive Director