Complete Interview Transcripts

Carl Haefner
Program Director, Parks for People--Newark
The Trust for Public Land

Carl Haefner joined The Trust for Public Land (TPL) in October 2004 as the Program Director of Parks for People - Newark. Carl brings a wide range of experience to TPL's Parks for People program including participatory design, community planning, landscape construction and land management. Prior to joining TPL, Carl supported urban greening initiatives in Philadelphia as part of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green Program.  He is a graduate of the Longwood Graduate Program in Public Horticulture Administration and holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Delaware and a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University. The Trust for Public Land's Parks for People - Newark program provides safe, clean, healthy, outdoor play spaces for children and families in Newark through a partnership with the Newark Public Schools, the City of Newark, and local community groups. Since 1995, TPL has created or enhanced seven community parks and playgrounds through an investment of roughly $4.4 million in design, construction, and stewardship to serve more than 8,000 Newark young people.

Q. How would you compare Newark’s park space to other cities like it?
Haefner: Well, Newark actually has a deficit of park land. Newark only has 2.9 acres of park land per thousand residents, which actually ranks it among the lowest of most major American cities. This compares to a national average of 7.5 acres per thousand. To compare Newark to a couple other cities: Philadelphia has 7 acres per thousand residents, and Baltimore has 8.8 acres per thousand. It just points to the fact that the residents of Newark are underserved in term of park land.

Q. Has Newark always been a city with so little park space?
Haefner: Newark has a rich history in parks. Back in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, the civic leaders in Newark were a part of the group creating the nation’s first county park system. Newark’s larger parks, such as Branch Brook Park to the north, and Weequahic Park to the south, account for the majority of the city’s park land. These parks were designed by the Olmsted firm, following in the tradition of Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park. There was this period of time, late eighteen-hundreds, early nineteen hundreds when there was a boom of park creation, which really laid out most of the acreage of the parks in Newark.

But following that time, once Newark got into the early 1900’s, there was a focus on industry and commerce that really took precedence over any park creation. Eventually investments were not made in the city parks and part of the dynamic here is that the majority of the park land created around the turn of the century never expanded during most of the 1900’s. I think the city itself never really created a viable park system. So while other cities were expanding their park systems, the city of Newark really didn’t, and was not expanding and addressing issues such as the deficit of park land in the neighborhoods.

There are very few parks within close walking distance of where most of the people live in Newark. What we have found when we’ve looked at urban communities, is that to have viable successful community parks and playgrounds, they need to be in places where people can use them on a regular basis. When we build a playground at a schoolyard that becomes a community playground, where it’s open after school hours, the people who live just a few blocks away are able to bring their baby stroller over, and bring their kids over, and enjoy the play space, enjoy the jungle gyms, or run on the track. They would not be able to have that type of benefit or that type of activity if it required getting on a bus or driving. Many people might not have access to transportation, or might have to utilize public transportation, and the use of these parks is often during people’s down times, when you really don’t want to be getting into a car, or taking a bus in order to take your kids to go enjoy an outdoor park.

At The Trust for Public Land, we believe parks aren’t a luxury, but that parks are a necessity. Now my experience working with people in Newark is that they agree. And a lot of this ties to the fact that there has not been an investment in communities, there has not been an investment in park facilities, and people understand the value of having a clean safe, healthy play space in their community, and they want that. In Newark there’s a tremendous demand for outdoor recreation. People in the community have expressed this to us, and there really is this tremendous demand for places for kids to play, for places for the community to use, places like ball fields, and tracks. Parks for People—Newark is committed to building these places one park at a time.

Q. The Trust for Public land is typically associated with the conservation of wild areas and large natural spaces. Why this interest in the city?
Haefner: The Trust for Public Land has a land-for-people mission. And so all of our work – whether it’s work in the wilderness, or work in the suburbs, or work in the cities -- has a connection of bringing people to the land. Our work in the cities is just as important to us as our work in preserving parcels of wilderness, and this has actually been part of our history since we began. The first offices in California and the first offices on the east coast both were developed and had approaches to doing conservation both in the suburbs and in the wilderness areas, as well as giving back to the area where people live. Parks for People--Newark began partly because of a history of The Trust for Public Land in the region, and our analysis of cities in New Jersey and recognizing that Newark was one of the cities of greatest need and greatest opportunity for creating more close-to-home community parks and playgrounds that were desperately needed by the people of Newark.

Parks for People—Newark, is part of The Trust for Public Land’s national initiative working in cities. The idea behind these programs is to provide a park, a garden, a playground within reach of every child, within reach of every American in these cities. And so in Newark specifically, we started out by actually doing an analysis of the city, finding out where the existing parks are, and looking at where there’s a great need for parks. We looked at higher density areas, areas of lower income, to locate places where people live that don’t have parks within walking distance of their home. Since 1995, we’ve developed seven community parks and playgrounds in the city, once again focusing on these areas of greatest need.

Q. How do you begin a park project?
Haefner: There’s a number of factors that we take into consideration when we’re selecting a project. One is that it’s in an area of need. But the proposed park also must be at a location where there’s an existing opportunity for creating a park or playground space, where there’s an existing infrastructure or an existing capacity for stewardship. And that could depend on a public agency, whether it’s Newark public schools, or the city of Newark, or it could be based on a community organization that’s active and running after-school programs, or related to local community groups that have been advocating for new park or recreation space in their neighborhood.

And then what we do is work with these communities, with these local partners, through a participatory design process to come up with a vision, an actual plan for the park, based on their own priorities. And it’s not only the priorities of the adults in the community, but it’s the priorities of the students too. We work with teams of students who go out and interview their classmates, come up with what they think should be in the park, and then they rank these in terms of finding out what the priorities are, and then they actually work to create models of what they would like to see the park look like. We take that and come up with a final master plan for the site, based on the vision and feedback of each person who participates, whether it’s a community member or a student at the school.

And then we help bring in the resources. We help manage the construction and continue to work with the group around stewardship, helping to establish a good program, not only for maintenance but to make sure that there are ongoing programs that include activities and events in the park, and that they remain safe, clean, healthy viable spaces for the community.

Q. What’s the best recipe for making that restored park work?
Haefner: What we’ve found is that in order to make a project work you really have to have a self-motivated community. There has to be community leadership that’s interested and vested not only to have something happen in the short run, but interested and vested to have something happen in the long run. This is particularly important when you’re starting to talk about the urban revitalization of neighborhood parks. We certainly don’t go out and choose any site and put a park there just because it’s needed. In the work that we do we make sure that there is an invested and committed leadership within the community that’s not only going to start out on the project but take it to fruition and be long-term stewards. Because it’s going to be the community members who are going to be out there. They are not only bringing life to the park, they’re not only bringing activity to the park, they’re not only out there having a presence and engaging the police and making sure it’s a safe place for their children, but they’re also going to be the connection to the public agencies to keep them accountable so that services for that park are continued, such as baseline maintenance and mowing the grass and mulching the trees.

Q. How are parks helping to change the city?
Haefner: There’s a need in Newark to have a much broader citywide initiative around neighborhood parks. Any initiative like that has to be founded in the grassroots efforts. It’s really going to depend on the commitment of individuals who are connected to individual parks. It will also require a much broader network of community groups who are involved in individual projects in their neighborhoods coming together and creating a constituency to really advocate for parks in Newark. This is going to have a certain strength that over time, and over administrations, that you’re going to be able to grow an ethic for parks in Newark that’s really going to help sustain something long-term, in terms of having an expanded parks system.

Q. Young people are a focus here. How are the parks helping to change their quality of life?
Haefner: When there are no open public parks in a neighborhood, there’s no place for children to go, or no place safe for them to go, unless they’re linked up with a traditional after-school program or some type of youth program. Parks extend that and provide another space for kids, especially when they are parks that are stewarded properly. The benefits that you end up receiving: all of a sudden you have facilities that promote athletics, that promote activity, and so the park’s not just providing a space for constructive activity, spaces for learning, but also spaces for physical activity that help address issues such as obesity, and other health issues related to lack of exercise.

Q. In “A Greener Greater Newark,” we feature one project … Mildred Helms Park. How did the project start?
Haefner: Prior to TPL’s renovation of Mildred Helms Park, the park there had actually gone under a number of renovations, and the oral history in the community could recount many times when something was done, and in the end it all fell back into disrepair. When we first saw the park, it was a site with abandoned cars, scattered needles, activities that are not appropriate for that community, and not appropriate for a place near a school. We found an infrastructure that was falling apart, with retaining walls that were not sound, a design that at one point might have been in fashion but created additional safety problems because it created places to hide. In addressing the re-design, the renovation of the park, we really had to look at a number of factors that would help make it a much more secure and a much easier place for the community, the school, and the city to patrol.

Q. Describe how the Mildred Helms Park project evolved.
Haefner: The group behind Mildred Helms Park is now called the Mildred Helms Park Resurrection Committee. It began back in 1998 with a group of concerned pastors and local citizens in the upper Clinton Hill neighborhood of Newark who were really concerned about the quality of the play space that was originally there.

The park itself is actually right behind an elementary school, and there was a concern that this park had really fallen into disrepair, was really not being monitored, was unsafe and falling apart, and the group wanted to make a change. They met with the principal, and they started meeting with the school district, and with the city, and by 2001 there was a call to The Trust for Public Land. We met with the group, and we learned about their years of trying to bring about a renovation of the park. We knew, given the track record of several years of sticking with this, that this was going to be a group that would work on this and keep going for the long term.

And so we worked with them. We went through a participatory design process with the community and the students, and we worked very closely. We also worked very closely with individuals of the committee. For example, there is the president, Deacon James Crawford, who is actually a leader in the South Ward and has been a leader for many years. He has tremendous concerns for making sure that things are done right for future generations in his community, even beyond seeing a park renovated. There’s Fannie Mae Harris, who’s been part of the project since day one. She was a very close friend of the late Mildred Helms, who was a community leader in that neighborhood, the Clinton Hill neighborhood. Mildred Helms was a leader who helped bring housing and recreational opportunities to the children in that community, and so Miss Harris continues to follow in the footsteps of her mentor, Mildred Helms, and bring about some really positive changes for the neighborhood youth.

And then you have individuals like Joanne Miller who came into it in the middle of the process, but being a neighbor who lives right across the street from the park. Joanne Miller has been a mover and shaker for many years in Newark. She’s a district leader in her community and she’s been an activist around public education for many years. Joanne Miller is someone who since “day one” of the park opening last fall, has been out there almost every afternoon and every weekend, patrolling the kids, making sure things are in order. She’s recognized that now that this park has been built, it’s a tremendous asset for the community. She wants it to be used, and so she’s worked closely with the school district and got a summer camp program run for over fifty kids, which culminated in a celebration with kids from across the city. Over a thousand students came out to the park.

Q. What does a park do for a neighborhood once it’s revitalized?
Haefner: For people in the community, the park is in many ways a tool for much broader improvement of the quality of life in their neighborhood. Park projects have been an opportunity for people like Fannie Mae Harris, Deacon Crawford, and Joanne Miller; they become involved, and actually see something very tangible happen in their community. Possibly the only real tangible thing in their neighborhood over the past four or five years that’s been extremely positive. It’s helped these people come together around that, and ultimately they are looking beyond the park. Joanne Miller, for example, is a district leader, and her park involvement has led her to bring together groups of people around the block to form block watches. Yes, there’s a concern for safety in the park, but there’s also a concern about safety in the streets, there’s also a concern about safety in the neighborhood, so it’s been spreading, this type of organizing. The committee, they’re focused on the park, focused on stewardship in the park, but they’re also very concerned about the overall quality of life in their community and the quality of life of kids in the community and wanting to create new opportunities.

By compiling funding from public sources as well as significant private support from local foundations like the Victoria Foundation and the Prudential Foundation, we continue to work with members of this Mildred Helms Park Resurrection Committee to address some of the stewardship issues, to address issues that may arise according to safety and partnership that are needed with the police.

The work of the Mildred Helms Park Resurrection Committee has focused on renovating Mildred Helms Park, however their mission extends far beyond renovation and stewardship of the park. They’re looking at some quality of life issues in their community. This translates into some very simple things, such as addressing some of the crime and safety issues, forming block watches and getting training sessions with the police department. This starts to address not only issues in the park but starts to address issues of safety and crime on the streets and in their neighborhoods. The real idea is, as they become organized, the committee members really want to do more than just take care of the park, but really provide a much broader benefit to their community and their neighborhood.

Q. What are some of the challenges that the park will face?
Haefner: There are always going to be challenges of having enough money, and there are always going to be challenges associated with competing interests within the city and politics within the city. Possibly the greatest challenge around an effort like this for a community group is being able to establish some good working partnerships, because this work not only takes community involvement but partnerships. Partnerships between the public agencies, and between the private sector and groups, like the community group or park associations. Being able to forge those kinds of partnerships where the community and public sector can work well together is probably one of the greatest challenges. The reason The Trust for Public Land is working in these situations is because there’s a need and no one else is filling that need.

There has been a long history of disinvestment in parks and recreation in Newark, and one result of that has been the fact that many groups and organizations who have some link to parks and recreation or youth programs have not been networking. What we’ve been finding, particularly recently given a new administration, is that people are starting to talk and communicate. Given a renewed spirit, around the idea that ‘things can be possible’ … people are starting to talk, and we are starting to connect with a lot more groups who are coming out and saying, ‘Can you help us?’

I would say with the exception of some of the county parks, which have had early efforts to restore them, a majority of the city parks in Newark have fallen into disrepair. They were without adequate facilities, without adequate maintenance, and became sites that the community is rightfully afraid of because they’re locations of crime, they’re not places where parents feel it’s safe for their children to play. Part of the restoration is the physical transformation; the bigger part, sometimes the more difficult part, is transforming the way that park gets used, and that’s where the community’s involvement, and the partnerships with the police, and the partnerships with the parks department all come into play. That’s critical, in order to keep that all from just reverting back to the way it was before. And The Trust for Public Land has learned that as a support organization, we can’t just come in and help build, but we have to be there afterwards to help grow capacity, to help build better systems, so that there is a good stewardship system, so it doesn’t just go back to the way it was before.