With an inability to come to a consensus and concerns over potential conflicts of interest, it seems the plan to seek out new management for Rye Town Park and Oakland Beach is going to fall by the wayside.
The Rye Town Park Commission is still deliberating on the request for qualifications, RFQ, applications that were submitted almost two months ago, but the process likely won’t carry on much longer with some members of the park’s governing commission disagreeing on how to move forward.
The Rye Town Park Commission is a six-member committee of representatives from the town of Rye, the villages of Port Chester and Rye Brook, the city of Rye, and the Rye Neck section of the village of Mamaroneck, which establishes policies and regulations for Rye Town Park, a 62-acre park located at 95 Dearborn Ave. in the city. The park is a shared asset between the city and town of Rye.
In regard to the official status of the RFQ selection process, Rye Town Supervisor Gary Zuckerman, a Democrat, said it is still ongoing.
“We are going to set up a work session or discussion to review the various submissions, and determine if any of them are worth pursuing,” Zuckerman said. “Several members [of the commission] felt it would be unfair to dismiss some of the submissions without going over them and reviewing them first.”
Port Chester Mayor Dennis Pilla, a Democrat, told the Review that the RFQ process has been “very broad and open-ended.”
“We didn’t get input [on the management of the park] from constituents first,” Pilla said, referring to the RFQ sent out in January. “We put the cart before the horse.”
Pilla suggested doing a request for proposals for the restaurant, which overlooks Oakland Beach, instead, since Seaside Johnnie’s lease, the current tenant, is up at the end of the year. Following that, Pilla mentioned then completing a master plan of the park with input from residents of the town and city of Rye before sending out another solicitation for new management of the park.
Rye City Mayor Joe Sack, a Republican, also said that the committee should begin by putting out an RFP strictly for the restaurant, and then take more time to figure out management for the overall park.
“It doesn’t seem like the responses we got are responses that we can work [with], except for the city of Rye’s response and perhaps Seaside Johnnie’s because they are already there,” Sack said.
However, the responses to the RFQ have led Sack and Zuckerman to clash on more than one occasion over potential conflicts. Sack is the mayor of the city of Rye, which submitted its own proposal for the park, while Zuckerman works as a legislative aid for the Westchester County Board of Legislators, which just approved an agreement with Standard Amusements for the right to manage Playland; United Parks, the managing company for Standard, also submitted a proposal to manage Rye Town Park.
In total, there were six responses to the RFQ for the park submitted by a March 18 deadline, including one from Seaside Johnnies, who is exclusively interested in continuing to run the restaurant and snack bar/concession stands that they already operate, in addition to potentially managing the parking lot.
The other applicants are all private developers. They include Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, which is known for redeveloping Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan; Caspi Development, which owns several properties in Westchester and New York City; and Southwest Capital, whose founder Salvatore Gizzo owned and managed the Surf Club, a catering hall in New Rochelle, between 1992 and 2013.
-with reporting by Christian Falcone
