Area Group Reports on Parks

A group of private philanthropists and public officials yesterday released a set of recommendations for improving Boston's public parks.

"The Greening of Boston: An Action Agenda," is the fruit of an 18-month study conducted by the Boston Foundation and the Carol R. Goldberg Seminar Group on the future of Boston's public open spaces.

The report gives suggestions for improving the quality of Boston's open spaces through cooperation among government, business and community groups.

The city may adopt the recommendations as part of a $920 million five-year plan to revamp Boston's municipal facilities and services. The city has allocated $90 million of this money to improving city parks and recreation facilities.

In addition, private groups may try to achieve the report's goals using grants from an $10 million antipoverty fund recently created by the Boston Foundation, a public service coalition of area businesses.

The report's authors said they were concerned with more than just grass and trees.

Carol R. Goldberg, chief executive of the Stop and Shop supermarket chain and the seminar's patron, said yesterday that the city could use parks to improve citizens' lives by giving them more green space.

"A walk in the park is the best cure for the blues," said seminar member Mark Primack, quoting a 19th-century preacher. "While parks are amenities in and of themselves, they are also a place for recreation and relaxation for the slum-dwellers," he added.

Goldberg said seminar members hoped the city would "develop strategies for using green space to intervene in the poverty cycle."

Open space "lift the human spirit and provide a feeling of social wellbeing," said seminar participant Hubie Jones, Dean of the School of Social Work at Boston University. "This report might be the most important gift ever given to the city," he added.

Parks "eliminate poverty of the spirit and the poverty of the mind, even if we cannot eliminate...economic poverty," said Jones.

While the Goldberg report focused on parks, committee members said they were concerned with all public open spaces.

Mary Nee, Director of the Mayor's Office of Capital Planning, said open spaces included everything from schoolyards to highway median strips, and that the city should include all of these areas in its open space plan.

Nee said that the Boston City Council is now considering $6.6 million in additional appropriations for parks. Still, Nee said both public and private organizations should carry out the "stewardship of parks."

Members of the Kennedy School's Program on Public Space Partnerships contributed to the report released today. In addition to this work, the program has sponsored several projects of its own, said Acting Executive Director Bonnie Schershow.

Schershow said that the K-School program was designed to try to find private donors to promote public spaces when city funds were not available.

The program's successes include the recently completed Winthrop Park, at the corner of Mt. Auburn and JFK Streets. The program also dedicated the Evan's Way Sculpture Park on Huntington Avenue this morning, said Schershow.

"[The park] is the kind of open space that should be included in a city. It's a nice place for people to sit and eat lunch," Schershow said.

Businesses often forget the importance of open space, a quality "crucial to making a city livable," she said, adding that open space complements office space, and makes land more valuable for businesses.

Schershow said the Goldberg seminar's report could help the Boston community.