Every few years another developer tries to build some sort of project within the park grounds. Amusement park. Amphitheater. Golf course. Marina. Lately, citizens have had to fight like mad to stop a commercial waterpark.

    Where do these crazy ideas keep coming from? And why can't we make them stop? In dozens of public meetings, the overwhelming opinion of New Jersey residents has been, keep it a park. Not an attraction; not an amusement; not a for-profit venture. A park.

    The culprit, shadowy in origin and difficult to pin down, is a group called the Liberty State Park Development Corporation. Just the name is an oxymoron. Why would a state park need a development corporation? No other state park in New Jersey has one.

    Why would you want development in a state park?

    Created at a time when then Governor Kean was interested in public and corporate partnerships, the Liberty State Park Development Corporation was a bad idea from the start. There were never any public hearings on the creation of the Development Corporation. In 1986 the Department of Environmental Protection signed a contract with the LSP Development Corporation. And the Development Corporation has been proposing destructive and ludicrous ideas for the Park ever since.

    Time and time again, citizens have voiced their opposition to development in the Park. Most recently, 600 people showed up at a public meeting to oppose former Mayor Schundler and the Development Corporation's lunatic waterpark idea. It's hard to think of another topic on which the citizens of New Jersey are more united. For 25 years there has been a history of public opposition to commercial development in the Park. No one wants development in the Park, except the developers who stand to make a buck.

    The only true solution is to disband the Liberty State Park Development Corporation once and for all.

       It's beautiful just the way it is.

Carol Van Houten
editor - The Constant Reader
www.constantreader.org