Will PoolAid Man Ride Again? Parks Department Puts McCarren Pool Up For Sale

After all the time and energy PoolAid (founded by NAG board members Michael Freedman-Schnapp and Mikki Halpin) and other community groups spent getting McCarren Pool reopened, we were shocked to read in the New York Post (via Brooklyn Vegan) that the naming rights to McCarren Pool are up for sale. Yes, for only $3 million, a corporation can erase years of history and community use and put their name on our pool.

This is utterly wrong. We at NAG, along with everyone else, would like to know why this is happening--to our pool and not to any others. (Other places up for grabs include a track and field house in Staten Island and a sports facility in Chelsea.)

The renovation of McCarren has been fully funded. Our community is not for sale.


We've left messages for the Parks Department and the mayor's office, asking:

Is this true?

How were the facilities that are for sale selected?

Why was there no community input?

Why is McCarren for sale, since it was fully funded?

Why is the money going to the city general fund and not to our underfunded parks? It could be used to build the parks we were promised and didn't get!

Is the Parks department at all sensitive that companies like Exxon Mobil could seize this opportunity to further attempt to whitewash their image and try to make us forget the damage they have done to this community?

ADDENDUM: Just got off the phone with Phil Abramson from the Parks Department. He said that the Post got hold of a preliminary list and the program is still in the planning stages. I asked how the items on the list got on it, and he couldn't comment, except to stress that it is a preliminary list. He said that many facilities in the city are named for donors, citing Wollman Rink. I pointed out that the Wollman family had actually paid for all of Wollman Rink, and that selling off McCarren is totally different, that the name has a community history, it is a name we fought for when getting the pool reopened. He said that the park would still be named McCarren, just not the pool.

I asked if there would be any community input to this process and he said he wasn't sure--later he said that after the RFP is issued that there would be community input. I asked about the timeline for this and again he wasn't sure. I asked why the money would be going to the general fund and not to our community. He said the city needs the money to pay for firefighters and public services in this economy. He also said several times that this might not happen because possibly no one will come up with the money.

Abramson was very nice, but I have the feeling this is like when McCarren Pool was almost given over to Clear Channel as an exclusive vendor--it wasn't until we found out and protested that it was opened up to community groups and anyone who wanted to program a show. It is the people who live here, and local businesses like Jelly NYC who made McCarren Pool famous, and we would like for it to remain our pool. Not for sale.