Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact
Previous story: News of the Weird
Next story: Introduction

Keeping It Green

Click to watch
Johnathan Holifield, new CEO of the Olmsted Parks Conservancy

When one considers the role that historical tourism should play in Buffalo’s future, it’s encouraging to note recent projects, like the reclamation of the Erie Canal terminus, the ongoing restoration of neglected—along with construction of never realized—works by Frank Lloyd Wright, and the preservation and improvement of Frederick Law Olmsted’s innovative jewel of landscape architecture, the Buffalo Parks System. Referring to his own parks design, placed gracefully over the radial street pattern employed by Joseph Ellicott in 1804, Olmsted himself famously described 1876 Buffalo as “the best designed city in the country, if not the world”—big words from the man who designed New York’s Central Park.

Now, as summer winds down, the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, the not-for-profit, membership-based community organization charged with the day-to-day upkeep and long-term improvement of the system, is gearing up for the fourth annual Party for the Parks, one of the group’s main fundraising events of the year. Less formal than the Frederick Law Olmsted Gala, the Conservancy’s black-tie fundraiser, the Party for the Parks tends to draw a wider range of park supporters including younger professionals and middle-class urbanites. This year’s event includes music by the Ifs and Lance Diamond, performing on the grounds of the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society. It’s an opportunity to enjoy an upscale night out in a picturesque setting, while meeting people who are committed to raising funds for one of the area’s most unique and important non-profit groups.

To understand the organization’s importance, one needs to consider the role it has come to play in the maintenance of Buffalo’s Olmsted Parks system. Begun in 1978 as the Friends of the Olmsted Parks by concerned citizens including Gretchen Toles, wife of then Buffalo News political cartoonist Tom Toles, the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy was hired by the county in 2004 to care for the 1,200-acre system. This landmark agreement, which completed a shift of responsibility for park maintenance away from a municipality locked in a cash flow crisis, is now set to enter its second full year. The ongoing success of this great experiment will depend largely on increased Conservancy membership, fundraising and volunteer recruitment.

To lead the Conservancy on this mission, the board of directors recently named Michigan native Johnathan Holifield as the new CEO. At 41, Holifield brings his experience as a lawyer, distinguished entrepreneurial leader and ex-NFL running back to the task. Speaking with Holifield, one gets the sense that he has learned well from inspirational speeches on the gridiron, and has honed his own motivational oratory skill.

“Conversion,” he says. “I think my principle challenge is converting all of this passion, all of the love, all of the commitment that I see and hear daily…how to convert it into greater investment on this end.”

To achieve this, Holifield has a pretty simple game plan: “Three things. The first would be people. The second would be people. And then the third would be people. The thing that would distinguish thriving from failing communities would be people, period.

“And that message, when I talk to young people who attend university here, or return to Buffalo and stay—that’s the key. We live in an innovation/knowledge-based age. It’s the transition from muscle to mind. People who populate our colleges and universities, they’re your innovators, your researchers who not only research but also commercialize new ideas and create new enterprises—along with your people in politics who create and innovate in the policy realm. Your entrepreneurs, your small business owners—all of that energy and vitality, as elementary as that sounds, I’m not sure we pay enough attention to it. It’s people.”

He illustrates the importance of the Conservancy’s overall mission in the following way: “In 2002, the National Association of Realtors did a survey of what was important to home buyers. One of the top three attributes was proximity to parks. This new creative class, as it’s been called, these knowledge creators—the 20-somethings, 30-somethings who are really the answer for competing in the knowledge economy—what do they enjoy? Being in close-in neighborhoods in close proximity to parks. Retirees, with disposable income, enjoy being in close proximity to parks. Home values rise in proximity to parks, which increases municipal revenues. These parks transcend all of these important attributes for a community’s vitality.

“I’ve been in the nonprofit sector for a while, and in the community and economic development sector, and the challenge many times is that it’s hard to quantify the value that these nonprofits bring. But it is an indispensable value. In our case, open your door. Drive through the city and you see your investment at work. We’re able to quantify, and even emotionally qualify, the case for greater investment just by the product we produce.”

Click to watch
Tim Fulton, Olmsted Parks Conservancy Park Operations

To properly maintain Buffalo’s Olmsted system requires attention to detail atypical to that required by most municipal parks. In order to accomplish this, the Conservancy has adopted the revolutionary Zone Management System, based on the Central Park Conservancy’s highly successful model—where individuals are put in charge of 10- to 50-acre sections of parkland and become responsible for everything from trash pickup to bench repair. The ensuing accountability promotes pride in ownership, and is dependent on public feedback and participation. “Here,” explains Holifield, “it’s the same labor-intensive work that you do to keep your yard well manicured. These are historic, cultural assets. It’s an entirely different intensity of labor to keep them up. It really represents the front yard of Buffalo.”

Director of Park Management and Operations Tim Fulton goes further: “The Conservancy desperately needs volunteers. Volunteers help the zone gardeners accomplish more work but they also connect the community. I think anybody who volunteers in the park takes a lot of pride—whether it’s helping to plant bulbs and flowers and trees, picking up litter, volunteering for events. It’s crucial.

“Another way to help out is to become a member of the Conservancy,” Fulton explains. “Your membership fees go directly into maintaining the parks. With this very unique partnership with the city and the county, one of the challenges is that the cost of maintaining parks goes up. We all are aware that gas is around three dollars a gallon, and we’re not immune to that.”

“At the same time, we’re able to maintain large spaces,” Holifield adds. “Ballparks and soccer fields still need chalk, and our team does it all.”

This observation speaks to the fact that the parks have historically adapted beyond Olmsted’s original vision to better serve the desires of the community. Turf Maintenance Manager Bob Stotes points out that Delaware Park’s golf course appeared in the 1920s in response to public interest in the sport. And no one can deny the popularity of that park’s basketball courts and baseball diamonds. This is an ongoing process. “The soccer people want more soccer fields, baseball wants more baseball diamonds, and we try to be fair to everybody,” Stotes says. “Right now, I think we’ve got a pretty unique situation where we have baseball, soccer, golf…there’s Frisbee football now. We’ve got the bocce court, there’s a croquet tournament. Just about anything you can think of we’re open to giving it a try, and I’ll try to make a field.”

Board member John Giardino says, “There a number of competing ideas about what an Olmsted Park should be—and what an Olmsted Park in Buffalo should be. Should there be golf? Some people say absolutely not, some people say absolutely so. Should there be basketball courts? Some people say absolutely not, some people say absolutely so. Or baseball diamonds. There’s hockey rinks, senior citizens centers, the Science Museum…there are a lot of things that exist in these parks that were not part of the original plan. I think the challenge for us is to think about how Olmsted would approach these parks if he were planning them today. The thing about parks is they don’t remain the same. They change.”

Olmsted, as Giardino puts it, “designed these urban parks where members of the community could go and get away from what he regarded as the harsher aspects of urban life. And they were connected parks so that people from very different communities—and he recognized the difference between Black Rock as a community and North Buffalo as a community and South Buffalo as a community—but his hope was that people would encounter each other in the parks and get to know each other and recognize the diversity of the community. And hopefully that diversity would become its strength.”

Looking out from the Conservancy’s offices in Parkside Lodge toward the lush expanse of Delaware Park, Holifield takes a moment to reflect on his new role. “Our biggest challenge is converting all of the passion, commitment that I hear—and appreciation for the job that our team has done—we have to convert that into greater investment,” he says. “Again, I’m a lawyer by trade. A lawyer is at his most confident when the facts are on his or her side. Well, I’m at my most confident in this position because the facts are on my side. Just look out your window.”