Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at former government officials who are getting new jobs. One is a former parks commissioner who will take charge of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The other two are being appointed to the top jobs at the city’s small but powerful Economic Development Corporation.
Apparently it takes someone who used to run all 1,700 parks in New York City to run the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Adrian Benepe, who held the city’s top parks job from 2002 to 2012, was the botanic garden’s top official for five years, until last fall.
Now the botanic garden is hiring Sue Donoghue, who was the parks commissioner from 2022 until last spring.
The garden said it had conducted a national search and had chosen Donoghue, who lives about 10 blocks from where she will now work. And to the extent that the garden functions as a park, it won’t be the first park that she has overseen up close: For seven and a half years, until Mayor Eric Adams named her the parks commissioner, she was the president and park administrator of the Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit group that oversees the daily operation of Brooklyn’s most visited park.
She also has some personal history with the botanic garden, which is just across Flatbush Avenue from the park.
“I’m a Brooklynite,” she said, at least by marriage to a native New Yorker — she grew up in Massachusetts and got her undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont before moving to New York. Living in Park Slope after her third child was born, “I thought, Can you raise three kids in Brooklyn?”
She took them to the botanic garden. “There were bunny rabbits hopping around, and I thought, This is manageable,” she said. Her children, now in their 20s, “remember this green oasis that we walked into that had wildlife as a wonderful place where they could run around” and learn, she recalled.
The garden’s educational programs for children “are a part of its history,” she added. They date to 1914 and the opening of the children’s garden — a one-acre vegetable farm where kids as young as age 2 can plant and harvest.
Now, as the botanic garden’s top official, she is “looking at expanding that joy and the free programming there.” She said she also wanted to put an emphasis on sustainability, which she has experience with: She joined the Department of Parks and Recreation in 2007 to oversee PlaNYC, the sustainability blueprint developed when Michael Bloomberg was mayor.
Addressing resiliency, a concern as climate change brings flooding from storms that are stronger and more frequent, is also on her agenda. “The 52 acres of the botanic garden are critical to storm-water capture, recirculating water on-site and keeping water out of the water system,” she said. “That has been part of the botanic garden’s DNA, and that will absolutely continue.”
So will the annual Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest, she said. That competition was started by the garden in the 1990s to spur urban gardening and has established a connection between neighborhoods and the botanic garden that is more personal and more community-oriented than, say, Central Park in Manhattan.
Meera Joshi, who was a deputy mayor when Donoghue was the parks commissioner, said that Donoghue had juggled the responsibilities. “She’ll spend as much dedication, brainpower, smarts and empathy on a large capital project as she’ll spend on why it is important to jump in the pool on the first day of summer,” Joshi said. “Both need to happen at the same time.”
As a chat I had with Donoghue about her new job was winding down, she returned to the idea that the garden was a place where people could learn, as it was for her kids when they went to the children’s garden.
“I was floored when I was doing my research for this position — 150,000 people experience the garden’s environmental education programs every year,” she said. “There are very few entities that are doing it to that scale.”
Weather
A sunny day is ahead as temperatures rise near 81. The sky will be mostly clear tonight as temperatures fall near 66.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended (Tisha B’Av).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s about ‘The Satanic Verses.’ He was extremely upset over the position Rushdie was taking.” — Nathaniel Barone, a lawyer for Hadi Matar, who was convicted in state court of stabbing the author Salman Rushdie more than a dozen times in 2022. Now Matar is on trial on federal terrorism charges.
The latest New York news
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Mamdani’s video about Netanyahu: With the anticipated arrival of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the United Nations General Assembly drawing closer, Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who called him a war criminal — acknowledged that he lacked the authority to arrest him.
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Trial date set: A federal judge said that the trial of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader who was captured in a U.S. military operation several months ago, would begin next June. He has pleaded not guilty.
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A soldier’s death: Sgt. Angel Rampersad, who lived in Queens before enlisting, is believed to be one of three soldiers killed last week in an Iranian attack in Jordan.
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A plea agreement: Julian Wachner, the former music director at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan, faces up to 10 years in prison after agreeing to plead guilty to possession of child sex abuse material and cocaine.
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Last call: Only a few places are left for our free, in-person “Search for the Past” exploration event. R.S.V.P. here, then join Times colleagues on Saturday to discover how New York City’s past shapes the present. You can immerse yourself in New York Times reporting while solving clues and collecting custom postcards and stamps at locations across Lower Manhattan.
Mamdani moves to blend economic growth and economic justice
On Wednesday Mayor Zohran Mamdani named Anthony Shorris, a veteran of city government, and Lina Khan, a former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, to lead the city’s small but powerful Economic Development Corporation.
My colleague Jeffery C. Mays writes that the two appointees’ vision for the agency might seem at odds. Shorris, who will be president, is a former deputy mayor who more recently has been a partner of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Kahn, an advocate for strong government regulation, will serve as board chair.
The corporation, known as E.D.C., is a municipally run nonprofit designed to drive economic growth by encouraging projects that create jobs. Mamdani has said he wants the organization to also focus on economic justice.
The business community has expressed concerns — concerns that increased after The New York Times disclosed a memo circulated by Julie Su, the deputy mayor for economic justice. It said that E.D.C. programs and contracts should advance “not just economic growth or economic strength, but justice.”
Mamdani told a news conference on Wednesday that “economic development and economic justice must go hand in hand. This is no radical concept.”
Shorris’s appointment was applauded by the city’s business, union and political leaders. But Steven Fulop, the current head of the influential Partnership for New York City, said that Khan’s appointment sent a “mixed message” that raised concerns about the E.D.C.’s direction.
METROPOLITAN diary
Coney Island in mind
Dear Diary:
My daughter returned home to New York from college in Michigan for summer break. Her three roommates came along for a weeklong stay.
Sitting around the kitchen table one morning, they were eagerly planning things to do in the city. They mentioned a nightclub.
“There’s a really good diner around the corner for afterward,” I said.
Marisa, born and raised in Michigan, looked confused.
“Diner?” she said. “What do you mean ‘diner’?”
“Huh?” I replied. “What do you mean?”
“What’s a diner?”
“What?”
Marisa’s eyes darted around to the other Michigan girls. They also looked confused.
I was confused too.
“It’s a casual restaurant, open 24 hours,” I said. “You can get breakfast any time, burgers, fries. You sit in a booth.”
“Oh,” Marisa said. “You mean a Coney Island.”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah,” Marisa said. “In Michigan, we call those Coney Islands.”
“Why?!”
“I don’t know. That’s just what they’re called.”
This annoyed me. You can’t just name stuff in other states after our New York City icons without our New York City permission, right? I mean, who approved this?
I needed to get to the bottom of this ridiculousness, and I learned that, yes, diners in Michigan are called Coney Islands.
Apparently, Greek immigrants who came through Ellis Island on their way to Michigan sampled Coney Island hot dogs and liked them so much they named the restaurants they eventually opened after them: Lafayette Coney Island, Jackson Coney Island, American Coney Island and on and on, all over Michigan.
These hard-working immigrants were paying homage to our famous hot dogs. There’s no boardwalk, no ocean, no roller coasters — just a lot of love for a Brooklyn icon.
— Darlene Rodriguez
Ms. Rodriguez is a co-anchor of “Today in New York” on WNBC.
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. I’ll be on vacation until early next month. My colleagues from the Metro desk will be here while I’m away. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post She Knows Parks, and Now She’ll Run a Famous Garden appeared first on New York Times.
