Opinion: Parker + Morque = SPI 2.0?

Written by Deirdre Curran

Well. Talk about Night Of The Walking Dead – and right after Halloween, no less. Just when you thought it was safe, watch out! Looks like Sustainable Playland’s President Kim Morque would like another crack at getting his Commercial Real Estate Developer talons into Playland. Check out what they tried to slip on by last week when they thought no one was really paying attention!

On Monday November 3, 2014, Westchester County Legislator Catherine Parker held the second of three Playland-related meetings at the Rye Library. Poorly advertised so far, they have garnered low turnout (20-30 people) - which may just have been according to plan - because what came up at this meeting on Monday would go over in Rye like a lead balloon at this point.

On Monday October 20, 2014 Parker had Central Amusements Inc. (CAI) come to make a presentation of their plan for Playland. Currently with SPI’s July 15, 2014 withdrawal letter and the on-going “evaluation” by Dan Biederman commissioned by County Executive Astorino, the other two finalists – Central Amusements and Standard Amusements – are still ostensibly on the table for consideration. (Standard Amusements will be presenting on Monday, November 17, 2014.)

The meeting on Monday November 3rd was supposed to be a review with the Community given by Parker of Playland’s 2014 season numbers –which were up significantly over the 2013 season. Then apparently the goal was to get public feedback about what direction the park should take in the future. Most of the discussion that night focused on the question of why the County is even moving ahead with privatizing management of this glorious park rather than actually doing its job to run Playland correctly on behalf of the people who own it –Westchester County Taxpayers.

Then, interestingly enough, Parker managed to segue the conversation into talking about how flawed the whole RFP (Request For Proposals) process has been since its inception. And then the hand off came to none other than Kim Morque, President of Sustainable Playland, who just so happened to be sitting in the back of the room that particular night. How incredibly ironic, no?

Here’s a link to the video from Monday night’s Playland related meeting. Watch the whole thing at your leisure, but if you want to get to the good part to see SPI’s Kim Morque try to position himself with a foot in the door jamb to get back in, fast forward to minute marker 1 hour 2 minutes (1:02) to see the lead-in and keep watching for the softball pitch from Parker, then wait for Morque to say his piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stg0u9wbwOo&feature=youtu.be

At 1:05:14 he loops back to that theme SPI had going of “do we want an Amusement Park or a park with amusements?” So, even after the enormous public outcry in the first half of 2013 when the SPI plan called for essentially eliminating the Amusement Park, he’s trying to bring that back into the discussion.

It’s nothing short of astounding that Morque would attempt this. Perhaps the biggest irony that seems lost on him is that when he thought he had the contract in the bag for himself, he wasn’t calling for a new RFP process based on the premise that the one that awarded him the contract had been flawed. He only seems to have decided the RFP process was flawed when it became clear SPI was not going to get the contract after all. Now that he’s out and the other two finalists are still potentially in the running, he thinks the County should bag the whole thing and start all over back at square one- which would give him the opportunity to submit a re-tooled bid for management of the Park. Talk about Sour Grapes and being a Sore Loser.

The current RFP process has been going on for almost five years. And in that time, Playland has seen not an ounce of investment or improvements because everything has been put on hold while it played out. Westchester County residents should tell the County Executive and the Board of Legislators loudly and clearly that they do not support going back to the RFP drawing board, thus keeping Playland in limbo that much longer and allowing Morque and his SPI cronies another shot at demolishing our beloved Amusement Park.

Kim Morque and “Sustainable Playland” were only ever able to answer one fundamental question throughout the review process, and they did it through their lack of ability to answer the specific questions about their plan, funding, community and environmental concerns etc. The question they WERE able to answer was: “Is SPI the right group to hand Playland over to?”

The answer from the Westchester County public has been a resounding “NO!”