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Sponsored Events

User fees aren't the only way to make money off parks. There is a growing recognition by corporations, associations and others in the private sector that parkland and recreation programs have positive public values worth associating with. And there is a growing boldness on the part of park agencies to ask for financial payments in return for those associations. This is leading to a wide array of sponsored programs ranging from one-time large group activities such as runs or concerts, to advertising promotions that utilize a park as a backdrop, to the use of logos or brand names in return for donations of money, goods or services.

Under the old way of doing business, park managers generally allowed their facilities to be used by private entities for free. Later, fees were instituted to cover costs associated with the event--traffic enforcement, crowd control, trash removal, etc. Recently park departments have moved to use certain private- sector park events as income generators--and many companies are happy to comply as long as they get positive name and logo recognition.

Thus, in Portland, Oregon, the Portland Trailblazers sponsor a citywide three-on-three basketball competition called "Hoop It Up" that in 1997 generated $10,000 for Portland Parks and Recreation's Drug Free League. A similar tournament in New York City is sponsored by Nike and the National Basketball Association. In Austin, the $300,000 cost of the Parks and Recreation Department's annual Yule Fest lighted-trail extravaganza was recently picked up by Dell Computer in return for publicity and recognition. In New York Reebok sponsors a tennis academy, and Rollerblade has a three-year deal whereby it provides equipment and money for clinics and events featuring in-line skating.

While all that money makes some park advocates heady, the commercialism leaves others a bit woozy.

"What would Frederick Law Olmsted have felt about these highly conspicuous partnerships, complete with logos, company names and other commercial trappings?" asks Phyllis Myers, long-time park watcher and reflective editor of GreenSense, a newsletter on park funding. "On the one hand, he designed his parks to be refuges from the commerce of the city; on the other hand, he wrote passionately about his goal of providing activities so that people of all classes and cultures could meet, mix and interact. His parks were emphatically not designed to be wilderness areas, but he did want them to be green, naturalistic havens. To the extent that these public-private enterprises eliminate the differentiation between the commercial city and the naturalistic park, many people feel that something gets irretrievably lost."

Marcia Reiss, deputy director of New York's watchdog Parks Council, agrees that there's reason for caution.

"I'm not as concerned about the one-day events as I am about lasting things like 20-year concession leases, but all of it's a slippery slope. When you're getting something back from the corporations, particularly in poor communities that would otherwise get nothing, and if guidelines can be established, I think it's manageable. One critical element is making sure that it's always the event and not the sponsor that is advertised. In New York, most of the sponsored activities are in Central Park and that can probably be controlled--no one is going to erect a billboard in Central Park. It's in the outer boroughs that we're more concerned--a lot can happen out of the glare of publicity."