FOLSP Newsletter - Summer 2001

    The 25th birthday of Liberty State Park is a time to celebrate the park's progress from a desolate waterfront wasteland to an inspiring public open space.  It's a time to thank and honor all of you who have worked to establish, fight for and guide the park with persistence, passion and understanding of the park's meaning for the people of today and the future.

    It is also time for us to confront an Urgent Issue - yet another attempt by the park's private Development Corporation (the DC) to turn over the public land to private profiteers, this time for a huge, private amphitheater in which 20 private concerts per season would be held.

    This is the last straw. We must not only stop this outrageous land grab but we must end, once and for all, the DC's ability to keep coming up with these greedy, destructive privatization schemes (golf course, waterpark, 10 week circus, amphitheater).

    On June 14th, 2001 the Newark Star Ledger reported that the DC, together with this country's largest concert promoter, SFX, asked the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (the park's oversight agency) for approval to construct a permanent private amphitheater and permission to hold 20 paid-admission concerts during the summer of 2001. This obscene new threat by the DC is a revival of a defeated 1986 plan.

    Although the DEP deserves credit for saying no for now, its spokesperson noted that "the proposal could be modified or simply resubmitted in the future".

    This most surely will happen. The Star Ledger article quotes a  music industry analyst saying, "SFX or any promoter isn't going to quit just because they couldn't get the deal going this year. "

    Although separate reports and statements by the DC claim that "only" a 5,000 seat venue is wanted, it's worth noting that a 1992 report by the NJDEP determined that a minimum of 10,000 seats would be required to make any venue profitable. Further, the most recent attempt to revive the defeated amphitheater plan requested a 20,000 seat facility. 

DEP should not let discussion of a commercial amphitheater "on the table" again because:

1. The DEP knows, after 25 years, that people want the park to be a park - not a "PNC" entertainment center, and not a cash cow for the DC and greedy exploiters.
   
   
2. The DEP should just tell the vultures find some private land and leave the park alone!
   
   
3. The massive public turnout against the water park and the golf course demonstrated that people are firmly opposed any private facility that interferes with access to and enjoyment of the whole park. 

• A new exercise "par" course will be installed along Freedom Way.
  
  
• The new Green Park playground area will get picnic tables (no grilling) and more much-needed parking spaces in the free lot which serves the northern side of the Green Park.