The first time Doug Blonsky, AG ’81, set foot in New York’s Central Park, he was a UD undergraduate on a field trip with a plant science class. He remembers what he saw: “Trash. Graffiti. Broken benches.” And, he remembers how he felt: “Depressed. I never wanted to go there again.”

In fact, he recalls, he and some classmates left the park much earlier than the professor had scheduled and went elsewhere in the city until it was time to return to the University. At the time, Blonsky already had become interested in landscape architecture as a career, but he says the litter-strewn and crime-ridden Central Park of the late 1970s seemed beyond rehabilitation.

The next 25 years, however, would see an astonishing turnaround in the park, which is known today as an oasis of natural beauty amid the concrete and crowds of Manhattan, a pleasant and well-maintained “back yard” for New Yorkers to share and a destination for tourists. Altogether, Central Park hosts an estimated 25 million visitors a year.

The person who has overseen much of this transformation? Park Administrator Doug Blonsky.

“In the early ’80s, Central Park was probably at its worst,” Blonsky says. “It wasn’t anything like the masterpiece of landscape architecture that it was intended to be when [Frederick Law] Olmsted and [Calvert] Vaux designed it 150 years ago. But, it’s clearly back up on top now—one of the most beautiful and most visited parks in the world.”

From the picturesque Pond near the busy southeast corner of the park at East 59th Street to the largely unexplored woods, boulders and ravines of the north end near 110th Street, Blonsky says the 843-acre park is “a living, breathing thing” that’s always changing. His job, he says, is to make sure it’s changing for the better.

“It’s important for us to improve a little each year, because the park is so big that things can get out of hand,” he says. “My goal is to take care of the park so it can be enjoyed now and by future generations of visitors.”

When Blonsky enrolled as a freshman at UD, he says, he was vaguely interested in an agriculture-related career and was considering veterinary school after graduation. Instead, he found himself taking classes that nurtured his previous interest in gardening and decided to pursue a degree in plant science. He went on to earn a second bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in landscape architecture and attained certification in that field.

In 1985, Blonsky checked out a job opening in Central Park that would enable him to help implement a new master plan, designed to be a road map for reversing the park’s decline and restoring its beauty. He accepted the job, which he calls “an amazing opportunity,” of overseeing capital projects. The first task he completed was the restoration of a neighborhood playground, and the work hasn’t stopped since.

“We had a system for completing the projects,” he says. “One important goal was to restore the park evenly—not just concentrating on one part of it at the expense of another—so that all users of the park would benefit. New York is a city of neighborhoods, and people tend to use playgrounds and other parts of the park that are near where they live, so we didn’t want to shortchange any of those neighborhoods.

“At the same time, New Yorkers are very vocal about Central Park. They love it, and they have a strong sense that it is their park, their back yard.”

When the restoration began, the park’s staff, most of whom are gardeners, were assigned each day to whatever areas were considered to need their attention. As a result, Blonsky says, the various parts of the park had no continuity of care, and the staff members didn’t feel a sense of accountability as they moved from one area to another each day.

He implemented a system in which the park is divided into 49 zones, each with a uniformed gardener who is assigned specifically to that zone and is clearly responsible for its upkeep. Broken benches, burned-out street lights and other problems are reported and fixed promptly, he says, and smarter policing—the park has its own precinct—has led to a steep decline in crime. Blonsky says the zone system also has improved community relations, since each gardener is a visible presence to whom visitors can report such problems as litter or unleashed dogs.

Blonsky’s landscape architecture credentials have been put to good use. While overseeing the park’s restoration, he successfully managed more than $250 million in capital projects, many of which won prestigious design awards.

The single largest restoration was of the Great Lawn, a 55-acre oval located roughly in the middle of the park. It had been nicknamed “the great dust bowl” because of years of poor maintenance that had left the soil packed down and the grass sparse. Between 1995 and 1997, Blonsky says, workers used the best management techniques and horticultural practices to re-create the lawn as a lush green space.

“It’s just spectacular now,” he says. “On a summer day, there are thousands of people out on the lawn enjoying it. I feel as if the transformation of the Great Lawn from the condition it was in before is kind of symbolic of how the whole park has been transformed.”

In 1998, Blonsky was named park administrator and chief operating officer, overseeing a staff of about 250 in the maintenance, horticulture, operations, capital projects, volunteer and visitor services, government and community relations and education departments. The park staff does all its own landscape design and historic preservation work, as well as daily operations.

In 2004, while keeping the title of park administrator, Blonsky also was named president by the board of trustees of the Central Park Conservancy, a private, nonprofit organization that was formed in 1980 to raise funds for the park’s renaissance. Today, more than 85 percent of Central Park’s annual $25 million operating budget comes, not from taxes, but from the conservancy, which has also managed the park since 1998 under a contract with the city and its Department of Parks and Recreation.
In announcing Blonsky’s selection as president of the conservancy board, Board Chairman A.J.C. Smith called him “a consummate park professional.”

City parks department Commissioner Adrian Benepe said Blonsky “has overseen the physical restoration of the park and made it a model for public space management. No one knows more about the park and its millions of users.”

People use the park in many different ways, and Blonsky says that diversity is one of the features he likes best. Parents bring their children to the park’s 21 playgrounds or to the Central Park Wildlife Center (still known to most New Yorkers, as well as viewers of the movie Madagascar, as “the zoo”). John Lennon fans stop by the Strawberry Fields memorial, with its plaque that reads simply “IMAGINE,” making it the most-visited of the park’s 50-plus monuments. A much smaller number of park users explore the forested northern reaches near the Harlem Meer, where Blonsky says, “You’d never know you were in the city. It feels like the Adirondacks.”

Protecting the park from the damage that can easily be caused by the trampling of millions of feet, while at the same time keeping it as open and accessible to the public as possible, is a constant balancing act that occasionally requires the installation of some protective fencing, Blonsky says. Crews work through the night so that the park is clean in the morning, they mow 300 acres of lawn twice a week, trim 26,000 trees and keep 9,000 benches in good repair.

Blonsky, who met his wife, landscape architect Mai Allan, at Central Park and often picnics there with her in his free time, says he loves the park and what it means to the city.
“Central Park is a classroom for students in kindergarten or college, and it’s New York’s largest gym,” he says. “But, most of all, the park is the best people-watching place in New York City, a place where people come together.”