The Jersey Journal
Date: 2001/06/13
By
Jason Fink, Journal staff writer
In the
shadows of the nation's most enduring monuments to political freedom, surrounded
by some of the most densely populated and ethnically diverse cities in America, Liberty
State
Park
stands as a green oasis of emerging forests and preserved wetlands, a quiet
reminder of the human affinity for the natural landscape.
Twenty-five
years ago tomorrow, the Jersey City state
park,
just a stone's throw from both the Statue of Liberty
and Ellis Island, was dedicated as New Jersey's gift to America on the eve of
its Bicentennial.
What began
decades ago as the vision of a few dedicated crusaders, who saw a muddy landfill
dotted with storage sheds and railroad tracks and envisioned the potential for
something great, is now the most visited state
park
in New Jersey.
As elected
officials and thousands of area residents prepare to gather this weekend for the
anniversary celebrations, longtime supporters of the park
are pausing to recall 21/2 decades of a near-constant - often contentious -
fight to secure what is today more than 1,200 acres of protected open space
along the west bank of the Hudson River.
"I'm
very happy that this sacred parkland has reached its 25th birthday with its
destiny as a completed, free, green open space within view," said Sam Pesin,
president of the Friends of Liberty
State
Park.
His father, Morris Pesin, was a driving force behind the creation of the park.
In the
beginning
While Liberty
State
Park
is not entirely finished, with plans still in the works to add to the roughly
300 acres currently accessible to the public, there is no denying that it has
come a long way since Morris Pesin took his famous canoe ride to the Statue of Liberty
in 1957.
Frustrated
that New Jerseyans had to travel all the way to New York to visit a statue that
is only 2,000 feet from their state,
Morris Pesin - a businessman and lawyer from Jersey City - canoed out to Liberty
Island in a public demonstration that launched the decades-long effort to create
a public park
along Jersey City's waterfront.
Seven
years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared Ellis Island - which, at 1,200
feet from the park,
sits even closer than the statue - a national monument and promised $6 million
for its restoration and to beautify the area of Jersey City behind it.
The next
year, the city gave 156 acres to the state,
beginning a process that would eventually transform this tract of waterfront
land into one of the nation's most popular state
parks.
"It
was among the first of the big urban parks,"
said Michael Timpanarao, a historic preservation specialist who works at the park.
"The land itself is actually landfill, filled in by the railroad companies
to make freight and passenger terminals."
When
Morris Pesin, who died in 1992, first articulated his desire to see Liberty
State
Park
created as the backdrop for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty,
the land had been suffering from years of neglect.
With Ellis
Island long since closed and the railroads in decline during the years after
World War II, an area that had once seen 50,000 commuters board trains and
ferries every day was, by the 1950s and 1960s, a fading industrial graveyard.
Morris
Pesin, along with other noted activists such as Audrey Zapp, spent years
drumming up support for a state
park,
finally seeing their effort bear fruit on June 14, 1976, when Gov. Brendan Byrne
dedicated Liberty
State
Park.
On that
day, the first 35 acres opened to the public, and Boy and Girl Scouts raised all
50 state
flags along a street inside the park
that now bears Morris Pesin's name.
Pieces of
the park
were donated and bought by the state
over the next few decades, growing the original 156 acres reserved by the city
in 1976 to 1,212 today.
In 1985,
the Interpretive Center, which offers environmental educational programs, opened
on Freedom Way. Eight years later, the Liberty
Science Center was opened.
But most
of the intervening years have seen campaigns waged to preserve large swaths of
land for open space without buildings or any other construction.
Fighting
development
The road
to transforming this land into an area that now boasts more than 200 species of
birds and other wildlife has been an incremental journey, marked by public
battles between conservationists and developers and various - often competing
-visions of what the park
should look like.
In 1979,
three years after the park's
Flag Day opening, Byrne established the Liberty
State
Park
Advisory Commission to participate in steering the park's
future development.
Although
the public space has increased tenfold in the past 25 years, clashes have arisen
along the way over what types of recreational facilities, if any, are
appropriate.
In the
mid-1990s, developers proposed building an 18-hole golf course, a plan that met
with fierce opposition from conservationists as well as much of the public.
The
project was eventually killed, prompting former Gov. Christie Whitman, who now
heads the federal Environmental Protection Agency, to preserve approximately 185
acres as off limits to developers.
But that
still left portions of the park's
edges open for discussion, a fact that erupted onto the public stage this past
winter when plans were floated to build a commercial waterpark on 40 acres along
the perimeter.
In
January, the public once again spoke out against the sort of active recreation
that many say would add intolerable traffic snarls and restrict public access.
An
interdisciplinary committee was formed to study the fate of about 250 remaining
acres, a process that will result in another public hearing this fall, said Sam
Pesin, who sits on the committee.
"It's
impossible to underestimate the importance of public participation in creating Liberty
State
Park,"
said Greg Remaud, president of the Liberty
State
Park
Conservancy.
"If
it wasn't for Morris, there wouldn't have been a vision. If it weren't for
Audrey and Sam and thousands of other citizens, you wouldn't have Liberty
State
Park
the way it is today."
The
premier battles these days are generally between Pesin's group and Remaud's
group and the Liberty
State
Park
Development Corp., which oversees the private developments.
"They
should be abolished," Pesin said of the development corporation. "It
was a wrong idea to begin with, to have commercialization in the park."
The
Friends group has taken exception to places such as the Liberty
Landing Marina LLC, which leases space from the development corporation to
operate the private 500-slip boat marina on the northern end.
In the
future, Liberty
Landing will move into its new headquarters, an 18,000-square-foot building just
west of its current facilities, an old boat in the marina. Their lease approves
a dry rack storage facility for 300 boats.
But for
all of the sparring back and forth, most agree that Liberty
State
Park
has charted a remarkable course from a freight and transportation hub in the
beginning of the last century, through the lean years of neglect and disrepair,
finally blossoming into a world-renown public park
that last year drew more than 4 million visitors.
Plans to
continue expanding the park's
public spaces will likely continue over the next several years, with
improvements coming in stages much as they have over the previous 25 years.
"Anyone
would say that there has been an amazing transformation from a waterfront
wasteland of rotting piers and abandoned rail yards into the beautiful park
we have today," said Sam Pesin.
"There
have been steady improvements throughout the years and I'm very hopeful that the
park
will be completed in a very special way."