Minute markers:
Very beginning of meeting Harckham introduces Rye Mayor Joe Sack who was in attendance and mentions that the Legislators are in receipt of the letter from Rye’s atty to Westchester County dated March 20th regarding Rye’s legal interests in the issue.
45:00 – Harckham essentially starts the discussion about capacity, desired capacity, expected capacity and the need for the lot to to be able to handle the business brought in by Central Amusements in order to generate enough revenue to cover the expenses of the capital improvements that need to be made to restore the park. Morque gives his first statement of the meeting explaining SPI’s overall “vision” for the park.
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46:00 - With the understanding that they have already established at the previous meeting that ALL of the money for capital improvements to the park (ie: falling down columns, colonnades, all restoration etc.) is going to come from the revenue generated by the AMUSEMENT PARK while run successfully under Central Amusements and NOT from any revenue generated by the Field Zone operators – which means that the onus is now indeed on that Amsuement Park (as usual) to make a ton of money to cover those costs, Morque then goes on to say that the amusement park is just one component while then stating that the overall vison was a “park restoration plan”. So, the park has to drum up the money to pay for restorations because SPI doesn’t have any money to do it with, but the Amusement Park shouldn’t be allowed too get to busy because that’s not part of their “vision/plan”. Yah, that’s what he’s saying here.
52:00 – Legislator Mike Kaplowitz makes first mention of the “million” mark while they are talking about attendance goals in relation to how much parking they should expect to potentially need when things are again being run properly. It’s essentially thrown out there as a ‘what if’ rather than a goal to aim for, with the understanding that it’s happened in the past and could happen again and we need to be prepared for that with enough parking.
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55:00 Legislator Ben Boykin makes good points about the idiocy of a satellite parking arrangement.
Keep watching through this for pertinent discussion.
1:04 Legislator MaryJane Shimsky again brings up the “million” attendance marker as a potential and the need to be prepared with enough parking for that “what if/just in case” scenario
1:10 –Morque informs the Committee that his Traffic & Parking Study guy/team has a very important meeting to get to somewhere else and will need to leave soon. This does not go over well with Committee Chairman Pete Harckham. Ummmmm….hellooooo SPI ? THIS is your “important meeting”. Get with the program.
1:11 – The moment that sucked the air out of the room if you were following along and there in person. Clearly an “AH-HA” moment for the Legislators as it got down to brass tacks in revealing that SPI doesn’t really WANT to see a successful Amusement Park on that location by saying, “HAVING ONE MILLION AMUSEMENT PARK VISITORS TO PLAYLAND AMUSEMENT PARK IS NOT THE SPI PLAN QUITE FRANKLY, IT NEVER WAS”….”ONE MILLION VISITORS FOR THE AMUSEMENT PARK WOULD NOT WORK FOR THE PLAN WE HAVE ON THE TABLE.”
So, SPI wants Playland Amusement Park itself to generate all the revenue to cover the costs of all its repairs/restorations and retire the debt service, but they want the Park to do it with limitations on how much capacity they are willing to allow them for attendance. Great. Solid business plan.
Watch Legislator MaryJane Shimsky’s body language and facial expressions as the camera stays on her during this moment. She is NOT happy.
Continue to watch for details if you can, but if you don’t have time fast forward to the very end around minute marker 1 hour 48 minutes (1:48) to hear Kaplowtiz’ comments such as “there are holes all over your numbers ” and how he points out that their plan isn’t taking care of the debt service and he tells them:“…Time is getting short” “ If you want a… majority vote on this board - cause you’re not there right now -…you’re not gonna get nine votes if you don’t put a parking plan either on site or off site, whatever it takes”…”it’s going to be a mess”.
Here’s the link to the video:http://westchestercountyny.iqm2.com/Citizens/SplitView.aspx?Mode=Video&MeetingID=3010&AgendaID=2838&FileFormat=pdf&Format=Agenda&MediaFileFormat=wmv
If this isn’t sitting well with you, contact the Legislators:
www.westchesterlegislators.com
Visit this web site for updates, info on how to obtain “No Field Zone” lawn signs and to sign the petition:
