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A proposal by the City Real Estate Commissioner to build public housing in Central Park was denounced yesterday as “patently absurd” by the City Planning Commissioner and called “an outrage” by the Park Association of New York.
Real Estate Commissioner Frank L. Lazarus suggested tc the Mayor's Housing Policy Board that the problems of relocating tenants on slum sites scheduled for demolition would be eliminated if they could be moved directly into new housing in Central Park and other parks.
To compensate, he would create new, small parks on land formerly nccunied by slums.
Planning Commissioner William F. R. Ballard, to whom the plan was referred, issued a denouncement of it yesterday.
Obviously nettled by a comment made this week by Mr. Lazarus that the Planning Commission's report on the proposal might be ready “in two or three years,” Mr. Ballard said: “We are pleased to announced that we have given this proposal the consideration it merits and can report immediately.”
His report stated that “the suggestion that a section of Central Park be cleared for residential use is an outrageous violation of the purpose of this great park.”
Continue reading the main storyMr. Ballard continued: “Since the day it was completed more than a century ago, well‐meaning babblers in planning have been unable to resist the temptation to propose ‘worthwhile’ new uses in this park — all of which would have added up to its total elimination as a park by the turn of the century.” However, Mr. Ballard conceded that the Planning Commission was reviewing “the question of obsolescence of some other parks in various boroughs to determine whether some of these might be put to other use in exchange for new parks in better locations.” Mr. Lazarus had proposed that the southern half of Mount Morris Park, the eastern edge of Morningside Park, and perhaps other park lands in other ready threatened by a proposed cafe.
The group praised Mr. Lazarus's “recognition of the need for more small parks in the heart of central Harlen.” However, it went on, the new parks are not needed' as replacements for park land diverted to other uses, but “rather because existing park lands in New York City are wholly inadequate to serve our citizens.” boroughs be used as housing sites in exchange for new and smaller parks.
The executive committee of the Park Association of New York City adopted a resolution criticizing the proposal at a meeting at the National Arts Club yesterday.
The Commissioner's suggestion “should shock all thinking citizens into a realization of the threat to the entire city park system posed by current attitudes of expediency,” the resolution asserted.
The Park Association, a citizens' group of 800 members founded 35 years ago, declared that “every citizen who cares for the city should rise up in protest against this outrage,” which it described as “a giant park grab, which would eliminate a great many acres of beautiful terrain in the north end of Central Park” whose “idyllic southeast corner” is al
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