I read recently that federal officials are creating a new management plan for Gateway National Recreation Area, a National Park Service area located mostly at scattered locations in New York City. With a series on America’s National Parks set to air on PBS, I thought I would make a suggestion, in the spirit of past Labor Day weekend recreation-oriented posts like this one. Although it is actually one of the five most visited national park areas in the U.S., most of the visitors are going to various scattered historical sites Gateway is responsible for, such as the Statue of Liberty. And most of the recent effort by parks officials has been directed at preserving the wetlands of Jamaica Bay, an important place for birds well known to birdwatchers. Park documents make it clear that preserving and making accessible historic sites and important natural resources are its most important goals.
But Gateway also includes large land areas taken off New York City’s hands in the 1970s, when the city was broke, in the hopes of bringing in federal money and reversing neglect. (Gateway was created as a “national recreation area” under coordinated management in 1972). These areas are really local parks, not “national” in any sense, one reason I doubt Gateway will even be mentioned in the PBS series. Included are Riis Park beach in Queens and nearby Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, huge and in some cases under-used areas with many buildings in disrepair. My suggestion is a new “national role” for those these areas: as a point of contract between rural and small town America and New York City. It is a suggestion consistent with two assumptions: unlike New York City’s local parks Gateway should have a national role; and we Americans are broke, individually and collectively.
To some, New York City is a nice place to visit but they wouldn’t want to live there; for others the reverse may be true. Although a recent hotel development boom and subsequent price declines may change this, the city has always had far fewer hotel rooms – and far higher hotel rates – than other places that attract a large number of travelers. At New York’s hotels, parking is either unavailable or stunningly expensive. That isn’t a problem for affluent people arriving by air, either from the rest of the United States or the rest of the world, and that is the sort of people who visit New York City, and are marketed to by its Convention and Visitors Bureau.
On the other hand, for a moderate or even middle-income rural or small town family, one for whom “vacation” generally means a drive and a week in a tent, RV or trailer, New York City is pretty much off limits, due to both cost and logistics. Traveling here is something they would pretty much never consider, and the City of New York lacks the contacts and experience to reach out to them. And the alienation between the country and the city goes both ways: the New York metropolitan area has 20 million people, and no country music station. The National Park Service, on the other hand, does have experience serving and communicating with rural and small town Americans vacationing by camping. It is, therefore, positioned to serve as that point of contact.
The high cost and logistical difficulties, for the non-affluent, of visiting New York City, is something that I have been thinking about for some time. Fifteen or so years ago, while working at the Department of City Planning, I noted that at the time the city didn’t have the sort of modest cost hotel chains that typically locate outside city centers to serve those arriving by automobile. Those visiting, say, Boston, could stay at (for example) a Courtyard by Marriot or Hampton Inn in the suburbs and then drive in each day for their visit to that city. Since driving to Manhattan is impractical, and not everyone would be comfortable with a subway ride right away, I suggested using the site of the current Staten Island Yankees stadium as a location for several of that type of hotels in a cluster. Travelers would drive there, leave their cars, and take the nearby Staten Island ferry to Manhattan for touring. But a deal was already in the works for minor league baseball on the site.
Meanwhile, on another island (Long Island), we have Riis Park and Floyd Bennett field. If New York City’s federal representatives thought transferring these large areas to the federal government would lead to an influx of federal money, they were mistaken, because National Parks spending as a share of GDP is far lower than it once was. Long time readers of my posts with an excess of curiosity may have downloaded the spreadsheet attached to this one, written in early 2008 as background for the Presidential election, which shows federal revenues and expenditures in different categories, per $100,000 of GDP, for one representative fiscal year (a relatively good economic one) in every administration since that of President Carter. Spending on the broad Natural Resources and Environment category fell from $473 per 100,000 in FY 1979, used as the representative good-economy year of the Carter Administration, to $295 in FY 1989, a similar year at the end of the Reagan Administration, before slipping to $250 in 2006, the representative year chosen for the George W. Bush administration. The amount of federal money spent specifically on “Recreational Resources” fell from $48 per $100,000 to $25 and then slipped to $23 – it is half what it was 30 years ago, relative to the size of the economy, and perhaps down even more from earlier years. With federal spending for senior citizens and debts continuing to soar, it is unlikely that more will be spent on anything else in the future, so any additional funding for National Parks is likely to come from fees, and even those might be seized to pay for other things.
The result of this de-funding has been gradually deteriorating conditions in some U.S. National Parks facilities, and a lack of new investment. In states where the nearby national park is thought more important to the economy, it has taken volunteers and donations to restore historic buildings, something I learned from another PBS series on “Great Lodges” of the National Parks. In New York City many of the historic buildings at Gateway, such as the bathhouses at Riis Park beach in the Rockaways and some of the hangers at Floyd Bennett Field, remain un-restored.
Far from sucking in federal money, Gateway was initially a cash cow, with the parking fees at Riis Park beach shipped out to support national parks elsewhere. But the whole beach thing is less popular than it was 40 years ago, and the massive parking lots at Riis are half empty, with grass breaking through the asphalt, even on Labor Day Weekend, as I have observed personally and as was described by this New York Times article nearly 20 years ago, when conditions were even worse. Which is ironic because the water is much cleaner, and sunscreen far more effective, than it was in the 1960s or 1970s. (Although I will say that on this Saturday of Labor Day weekend, the beach seemed more heavily used than I can remember). Google brought up this overview of the Riis Park situation from a book, for those who want some independent backup for my assertions in this paragraph.
In the early 1990s, the administration of Ronald Reagan proposed a private amusement park at Floyd Bennett field in an effort to bring in revenues and use the vast empty area, mostly occupied by old runways, at its center. That idea was shot down by New York City. More recently, park managers have leased an area of Floyd Bennett Field to a local concessionaire for a for-profit sports and recreation facility – Aviator. More special events are taking place at Gateway – the traffic to and from Floyd Bennett Field on Labor Day weekend a year ago was so great that I was able to beat the rest of my family, in our car, home while riding a bicycle. In general, however, these facilities remain under-used and under-maintained. Check out the handball courts at Riis Park as an example.
So I have identified both an unmet need and an under-used space. And thus my suggestion: a very large camping facility at Floyd Bennett field, with platforms for all tents (because the local fauna is more likely to include rats than raccoons) and hookups for RVs and trailers. It would be designed to allow a family to drive to that location, leave the car, and spend a week dividing time between the ocean beach at Riis Park, salt water fishing and, via subway, Manhattan and the rest of the New York City – all at an affordable cost. The facility, which could be called “Redneck New York,” would be marketed primarily to the sort of people who would not consider visiting New York City otherwise – people whom the National Park Service has a history of serving.
A shuttle bus would run between the beach, the camping facility, the fishing fleet at Sheepshead Bay (via the Belt Parkway if the stretch between Flatbush Avenue and Knapp Street could support a bus), and Stillwell Avenue Coney Island, were subways could take campers to and from Manhattan and other parts of Brooklyn. If the MTA wasn’t going broke, it could operate the bus, with weekly Metrocards included in the cost of the a stay at the campgrounds. Otherwise the National Park Service would have to operate the bus itself, as it does in other major national parks where it is trying to limit auto traffic. Rental bicycles could also be made available, for a ride between Floyd Bennett and Riis Park, over the Marine Parkway (Gil Hodges) bridge.
In order to be cost effective and attract customers, the facility would have to have scale. I would suggest an initial buildout of 1,000 sites. Full buildout? At Yellowstone National Park, there are 2,100 campsites and RV hookups in the park, maintained and operated by a private vendor, and 3,400 outside, for a total of 5,500. Now Gateway National Park isn’t Yellowstone. But then again, Yellowstone doesn’t have New York City next to it.
The goal of the camping aspect of the facility would be to allow a large segment of the U.S. population, now excluded, to access New York City. But a point of contact goes both ways. I suggest that if one of the hangers is underused but has a watertight roof, it could be turned into a Country and Western music venue. It need not be anything fancy. A stage, a section of a concrete floor set aside for dancing, and folding chairs would do for a start; bleachers could be added later if the venue were successful. Around the rear, away from the stage, concessionaires could set up barbeque pits and picnic tables. They could be brought in from North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and other hotbeds of that particular cuisine.
People from places that have country music stations who were staying at the new camping facility would provide one source of customers for the country music venue: fans of particular country music acts would then provide one source of campers for the camping facilities. “A big fan of Bobbie Joe and his band? Bring your trailer to New York City for the week of July 23rd, when he will be in concert there, instead of taking your vacation on the infield of a NASCAR even this year!” (Perhaps a Go-Cart concession would also fit the theme). In addition, if among the 20 million or so residents of the New York Metropolitan area there is a scattered minority that likes country music and barbeque, Gateway could provide a place for them to go. With residents and visitors from the whole planet, New York City bills itself as a place for everyone. In reality, at this point it is a place for everyone except Rednecks. The National Park Service is well placed to expand the city’s range.
In order to expand the local usefulness and reputation of Gateway, park management is wisely reaching out to local residents. In the case of a national facility such as the proposed “Redneck New York,” however, those outside the New York area would be best able to plan and manage the project, if the goal is to appeal to them. Perhaps some prominent members of the country music industry, for example, would be interested in financing and managing the music venue, in order to get a foothold for their kind of music in New York City.
Camping at Floyd Bennett Field, however, might also appeal to families within the New York metro area, among those who cannot afford that trip to Florida or the Caribbean. There is one New York State campground that features camping by the ocean: Hither Hills State Park on the East End of Long Island. If you want to stay there, you have to phone in or use the internet to make a reservation in the first few minutes of the first day on which reservations are taken for the following year, and get then get lucky. After that, it is sold out. If that isn’t an indication of unmet demand, I don’t know what is.
Money is likely to be the main obstacle to building a major new national park camping facility at Floyd Bennett field. The National Park Service is unlikely to get more federal tax dollars to build additional facilities, now or in the future, given the current and future fiscal situation. Private, fee-based funding? If the fees were too high, as high as might be required by a campground that had to cover both its operating and capital costs, the goal of making New York City accessible to moderate and middle-income rural and small town families would be frustrated.
On the other hand, for the moment the cost of construction materials is down, federal interest rates are low, and an arrangement could be made to in effect transfer low federal interest rates to a private concessionaire investing in the facility, through a public-private partnership. The cost of hookups and restrooms is likely to be cheaper at Floyd Bennett Field than in a wilderness park, given the ability to access the New York City water and sewer system. And it is possible many of the facilities at the proposed camping facility could be built by national service volunteers, just as many existing national and state park facilities were built by the CCC in the 1930s. For now the expanded national service idea has survived the fiscal catastrophe, as described here, and with many young Americans likely to be unemployed otherwise, that may be the case for half a decade or so.
America’s diminished circumstances, moreover, cuts both ways. One reason hiking, camping, and days at the beach are less popular than 40 years ago is that Americans have been able to afford other things, such as airplane trips and cruises. For the most part with borrowed money that must now be repaid or defaulted. Once our currency collapses, and perhaps loses its reserve status, foreign travel my be unaffordable, and energy costs and an end to investors willing to lose money on the glamor of repeatedly bankrupt airlines might also increase the cost of domestic air travel. Once a painful period of mental adjustment ends, more Americans might find the simpler vacation promoted by this beer commercial good enough for them. Who knows, perhaps a trip to New York City might change some views. A large camping facility at Gateway could put New York City on the itinerary for some, and keep it there for others.