Lady Liberty, raising her torch above New York Harbor, welcomes the world’s poor. Below that flame, New Jersey may make a near-priceless swath of taxpayer-owned parkland into a playground for the rich.
On the harbor’s west shore, 5 million annual visitors flock to Liberty State Park, where the Manhattan skyline, tour boats and an historic rail terminal are a more popular draw than Yosemite’s ancient sequoias. Though its 1,212 acres (490 hectares) are set aside for public use, that hasn’t kept private interests from pitching visions of luxury-suite crowds toasting elite auto-racing teams amid the relics of America’s immigration story.
Such is the temptation for New Jersey, the blessed and financially burdened titleholder of the waterfront real estate in one of the nation’s most densely populated areas. Facing unmet pension obligations and other budget pressures, the state in 2015 declared the park ripe for “revenue-producing activity” from long-term leases, enraging locals. Sam Pesin of Jersey City, whose late father spearheaded the park’s creation, is leading a push for a law to make the green space off limits forever.
“The working title is the Leave Liberty State Park The F--- Alone Act,” said the normally soft-spoken Pesin, 68, a retired pre-school teacher, adding an apology for the potty mouth. “This is sacred public land.”
‘Star Wars’
Even when their national monuments aren’t at stake, Americans get touchy about government’s putting their green space into private hands.
When billionaire Philip Anschutz won approval to expand his Broadmoor resort onto Colorado Springs parkland, a non-profit group called Save Cheyenne appealed to Colorado’s supreme court, where the matter is under review. Last year, protests led then-U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, to withdraw a bill that proposed selling or privatizing 3.3 million acres of public land. In 2016, after a Chicago parks group sued to block a $1 billion “Star Wars” museum on the Lake Michigan waterfront, film franchise creator George Lucas dropped the plans and chose Los Angeles instead.
Jersey’s Gift
In the case of Liberty State Park, the land was rescued once before, after lawyer and clothing-store owner Morris Pesin started campaigning in the late 1950s to clean up the onetime Hudson River dockyards and railroad hub that turned to wasteland as industry waned. Federal grants and state funds secured the property, and when Liberty State Park opened on June 14, 1976 -- Flag Day -- it was called New Jersey’s bicentennial gift to the nation.
In the 42 years since, developers have tried to turn some or all of it into theme parks, a strip mall, luxury housing, an amphitheater, a conference center, a hotel and a sportsplex. One tried to commercialize the rail terminal where ferries delivered two-thirds of Ellis Island immigrants to trains bound for their new cities.