After a decade of working on behalf of Washington Square Park, the Conservancy has made a mark, but it might not be as obvious as you’d think. A lot of what WSPC does for the Park is behind the scenes and hard to spot if you don’t know what to look for. Flashy capital projects might make headlines, but the real meat and potatoes of a community organization like WSPC is the day-to-day support that keeps the Park running at a higher standard than what the city can achieve on its own. With more than 1,700 parks, playgrounds and recreation facilities, NYC Parks has more than enough work maintaining an adequate standard of service across the board, especially with repeated budget cuts over the years. 

But as we all know, Washington Square Park is anything but standard. As one of the most-frequented parks in the city, it’s often called on to do triple or quadruple duty for the community as it serves as everything from bully pulpit to common room. So it deserves, and needs, more than adequate support. And that’s where the Conservancy comes in. During the last renovation, WSPC founders noticed Phase 1 improvements beginning to deteriorate as Phase 2 work was still ongoing. Beautiful new fixtures, like the iconic streetlights, weren’t being cleaned or serviced. Improved restroom facilities were installed without increased staffing to maintain and monitor them. Washington Square was more appealing than ever and attracted ever greater crowds, but the city resources to maintain the space didn’t increase accordingly. Where NYC Parks must allocate its resources across the city, as a nonprofit partner, the Conservancy has the flexibility to fill in gaps and raise the bar at Washington Square Park.

It was overflowing trash cans that started it all, and a decade later it’s still about lots of trash…and cleaning bathrooms, and maintaining the landscapes, and the myriad of ways we support the Park. It’s about being on the ground day-to-day trying to identify the practical solutions to making improvements. Where a city agency has to make decisions on a broad scale, WSPC focuses solely on what’s best for this unique space. In partnership with NYC Parks, the Conservancy identifies areas where community contributions can make the greatest impact in our mission areas of landscapes, maintenance, and community. 

The formula to setting a higher standard is surprisingly simple: locate an under-resourced facet of the Park and work with NYC Parks to identify places where Conservancy funds and city know-how can work hand in hand. A lot of the time the solution is more help, and that’s why the Conservancy prioritizes increasing the number of workers on the ground in WSP. It isn’t just about having additional hands at work, although that is a significant benefit. It’s also about being able to capture and maintain institutional knowledge from season to season by bringing back the same people. NYC Parks often fills necessary positions through a program called the Parks Opportunity Program (POP), which uses federal dollars to provide jobs and employment training. Much of the staff at Washington Square Park is hired through this program, which results in an ever-rotating group of employees. As a counterbalance, the Conservancy has focused on supporting both full-time and seasonal jobs with returning staff, people who know the Park better than your average worker. 

When the Conservancy was founded a decade ago, the maintenance shift at the Park ended at 2pm. That left trash piling up in the Park well into the evening hours, particularly in the summer. This lack of staffing resulted in objectionable evening conditions (and brought more rats!), but it also meant the morning maintenance crew started behind the ball before even clocking in. Now the Conservancy funds a seasonal maintenance crew that’s on the ground until 10pm in the warmer months when the days are longer and the crowds linger later.

When the situation at the restrooms began to deteriorate due to lack of regular maintenance, NYC Parks and WSPC came together to find a creative solution. WSPC funded two additional maintenance positions to not only service and monitor the facilities, but to keep them open more hours a day than Parks averages across the city. While the system isn’t perfect we’ll keep exploring tweaks to the positions to make them more effective. 

In addition to staffing, the Conservancy can make quick funding decisions that has allowed Washington Square Park to capitalize on opportunities to make infrastructure improvements. From little things like the ability to quickly purchase necessary supplies such as tractor parts and bleach, to finding funding for larger projects. In 2019 WSPC was awarded a state grant to replace all the trash cans in the Park and increase their number from 48 to 58. Recently, WSPC has funded the testing and then full application of a new anti-graffiti coating on the Arch and Garibaldi monuments. When maintenance work in the winter was stalled because the available pressure washer couldn’t function with the water turned off, we purchased a machine with a fillable tank. 

These things might not be as obvious as capital improvements, but they make an enormous difference in the daily grind of putting more resources to work for the Park. At the end of the day, the Conservancy has a mobility and flexibility that a bureaucratic agency simply cannot have. Working together, it’s a partnership that allows for the best of both worlds, and the most possible resources for Washington Square Park.