Best Green, Then Spurned

The dirty secret of parks is that while they’re great for real estate values (and therefore a boost to city property tax revenue), the people who live next door treat them like the ornamental gardens they are:

[Arlene Harrison] has added to a list of regulations (no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people, no Frisbees or soccer balls or “hard balls” of any kind) that, in turn, have served to dictate how [Gramercy Park] is — and is not — used. Most recently, she helped pave the way for Zeckendorf Realty to redevelop a 17-story Salvation Army boarding house on the south side of the park, and for the company’s plan to convert the 300 rooms into 14 floor-through apartments plus a penthouse duplex. The company would not confirm the transaction.

. . .

She added: “It will change the neighborhood for the better. It will be less use on the park.”

Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger.

Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence.

Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace.

About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday morning three days later, about two dozen people could be spotted in the park over the course of four hours, and never more than six or eight at a time.

“Honestly, we don’t use it that much,” said Gale Rundquist, a real estate broker who has lived on the park for five years. Still, she said, access “adds a lot to a listing; it’s panache.”

“Because we work during the day, and we leave town on the weekends,” she explained of her own nonusage. “But it’s beautiful to look at.”

Actual use of the park is not Ms. Harrison’s measure. “It was always an ornamental park,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even go in to enjoy it. They’re so thrilled just to see it. It’s like a hotel room with a view of the ocean.”

. . .

[Harrison] knows the rhythms of the park intimately. “Between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning, there are two people here,” she said. “One walks, the other breaks into a jog and stretches occasionally. Two women walk here at 7, and then a third joins them at 7:15. The nannies come in with the small kids around 11, and then again around 4.

“Saturday, it’s empty,” she added. “People are doing their errands.”

There is, to be frank, not much to do in the park. Music is forbidden. So are alcoholic beverages, bicycles and furniture. A gravel path around the perimeter provides the only opportunity for low-impact play, or, for that matter, running or walking. Ms. Harrison said parents constantly offer to donate playground components for the park, but she won’t have it.

“Too much wear and tear,” she said. “But do you know what? The children who grow up here learn to use their imagination.”