-Chelsea Resident 1968
As shown in the entries on the 3 Minute Park, Chelsea does a really good job of giving residents a place to sit within 3 minutes of wherever they are in Chelsea. But when people get to those spots many people find nothing of interest to do in them except sit.
I was at Union Square park talking to a young fellow and he said to me that" there's a playground for the kids and seats for the old people but nothing for us".
I'm bored silly too. I have a park right down the block from where I live, but I rarely go there because it offers no reaction activities that are of interest to me. Instead I go to parks that are over 1/2 mile away from me that do offer activities that do interest me. But because of the distance I do not go as often as I would like.
Is everybody bored in our parks? No. Large numbers of people are perfectly satisfied. But the ones that aren't satisfied are the ones that don't use the parks. If a park doesn't meet your recreation needs, you may not use it or use it only infrequently. What's needed is to offer activities that meet the vast majority of everyone's recreation needs. Trouble is with the exception of Bryant park most of our parks in CB4/CB5 have chosen not to offer activities recreation.
Lack of Money for staff and lack of room, seem to be two of the reasons given for not having activvities recreation.
I mentioned the lack of activities to several larger BID/Parks Conservancies and was told things like "we have no room" This is not true. Lets look at several case where there is room, and see how this can be duplicated elsewheres.
Bryant Park has room for a games area and offers over 35 games. Plus a reading room, and ping pong. While visiting Bryant park I ran into a fellow who came down from the Bronx to play here, because it was the closest location that had a facility.
They are a very rich park, with a lot of staff. but its also possible to do something with sless wealthy parks with smaller staff.
This is an indoor games atrium at the Bank of Americas building that supplies chess tables but no chess sets or other games.
This is Herald Square park, there is room for an outdoor games cabinet here
In the park is a manned visitors information booth. I sat down nerar it and watched the number of people that stopped by and asked for information. It was an average of of 4 people per hour when I was there. What this means is that the person behind this booth hand out games, and/or keep an eye on an outdoor reading room cabinet.
Will there be losses of people stealing games and books? Possibly, but there are already people stealing chairs that cost $200-400, and what done is to consider this part of the cost of running these parks.
Here are 13 spaces in CB4 that either have staff or are locked where this could possibly work::
Outdoor Spaces
Herald Square Park
Greely Square park
Flatiron Plaza
Chelsea Triangle
Indoor Spaces
Bof A Atrium
Locked Spaces
Alices garden
Bob's Park
Threasas park
Juan Alonso park & Community Garden
Oaisis Community garden
Astros Dog Run
Clinton Community garden
Fulton senior Center garden
