Liberty State Park has been an important public resource since the moment of the heartbreaking and angering attack on our country. The entire park staff - the administrators, Rangers, maintenance, Interpretive Center, Terminal and the office, deserves our gratitude. With their skills and compassion, they played an invaluable role on 9/11, and worked long hours for days afterwards.

On the 11th, the park became an evacuation and medical emergency triage site as well as a communications and transportation headquarters. NJ’s  “Reflection and Remembrance Observance” at the park on Sunday, 9/23, brought people together for a moving evening, and was shown statewide on cable TV. The “Family Assistance Center” is still set-up in the Terminal to help victims’ families with emotional, legal and benefits advice.

Governor DiFrancesco is working with former Governors to plan a victims’ memorial on the lawn between the canal and the Terminal parking lot. At our 10/13 Fall Meeting, it was decided to present a plaque to the park staff, for display in the Visitors Center, and to plant trees next Spring in memory of the victims - both will be done in co-operation with the LSP Conservancy. 

Our strengthened resolve to work
and advocate for this sacred park

As the neighbor of Lady Liberty and Ellis Island, the park is sacred and meaningful American ground, even more so now, because of its role in this new period in our nation’s history. The park must remain a sanctuary providing spiritual inspiration and free unstructured recreation space. We, as people who love the park, will continue to work and fight to guide its direction. Our dedication to a free, green, accessible park for the people and our resolve to advocate for the abolition of the park’s Development Corporation is stronger.  

Great News
NJDEP Commissioner Robert Shinn
Approves Interior Park Plan

The Commissioner’s approval of this wonderful conceptual plan for the 185-acre Interior natural area with trails and the 50 acre open space perimeter is a significant milestone and a victory for all of us who spent years fighting against the golf course and waterpark.

He has written a powerful and amazing letter to the Interior Planning Committee. This conceptual “General Management  Plan” was supported by the vast majority – in person at the January and August DEP public meetings, by mail with postcards, and by letters subscribed by a statewide Coalition of environmental and public interest organizations.

The plan is a wise and an official foundation for a preserved and restored urban wildlife habitat and a green perimeter for unstructured recreation. Nature is making a dramatic recovery and the plan protects wetlands, rare plant communities, and the emerging forest. 250 species of birds (and other animals) will benefit and so will the people on trails and boardwalks enjoying and learning about nature’s beauty.

The next steps are restoration feasibility studies, an international design competition and the exploration and acquiring of public funding and corporate grants. The park’s interior eventually will become a model of urban nature restoration and an uplifting part of one of the world’s most special parks - truly a gift to the future.   

Development Corporation’s New Proposal  

The Development Corporation has made a new proposal to the NJDEP for a series of 20 major commercial concerts in the park next Summer, including Saturdays. The Friends has written a strong letter of opposition to the DEP and the Governor - stating that traffic jams on concert days will inevitably block access to the whole park; that the people don’t want the park to be turned into a “PNC Arts Center”; and that a summer- long stage structure would be the same as an amphitheater (probably their plan for 2003). We do support free cultural events.

The excellent Park Superintendent Steve Ellis (liberty@superlink.net) is opposed to this concert series - not wanting to be dictated to by the Development Corporation and wealthy promoters about what “special events” will take place. We hope his Trenton superiors reject the plan and that Governor DiFrancesco doesn’t over-rule a rejection. It is expected, of course, that the Development Corporation will push these park-confiscating concerts with the new Governor.

We will need to persevere in convincing the new Governor to veto this commercial concert series and to get rid of the Development Corporation, the source of otherwise unnecessary battles against park commercialization/privatization.