PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia is showing off its green spaces as the host of this week’s City Parks Alliance Greater & Greener Conference.
The four-day conference has brought 900 urban park officials and advocates to the city, featuring a keynote address by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. In addition to workshops at a Center City Hilton, mobile sessions take participants on a Segway tour of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, illustrating the redesign of the space that is already underway.
The city generally gets rave reviews from visiting parks officials, but one local group is unhappy with the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department — and it is letting other attendees know.
Neighbors of Cobbs Creek Park stationed themselves near the hotel entrance, handing out flyers to protest the recent removal of hundreds of trees to make way for a golf course.
“A tree was there for 100 years that shaded us,” said one protester. “Now, all the animals are running around. They don’t know where to go, and we can’t have our bird-watching, we can’t have our hikes, and it’s hot, so I am very upset.”
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The protesters did not want to use their names.
The Parks and Rec Department has said in a statement that the park was in poor shape due to years of neglect and heavy flooding.
Officials said the tree removal was part of a multi-million dollar plan to not only restore the golf course but repair the eroded creek, create a wetland and plant new trees that “would develop into a mature forested buffer with substantially higher quality vegetation than the site currently supports.”
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