Filming Shuts Out Tots, Stirring Debate

By Carl Glassman
POSTED DEC. 29, 2006

Last month, Rachel Moskowitz, pushing her 3-year-old son Dylan in a stroller, tried to enter the playground in Washington Market Park, only to be blocked by a young man in a headset.

“So annoying,” Moskowitz muttered as she turned the stroller around and headed to a play area for older children. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” she told her child.

Nearby, Arlene and Martin Baum, from Long Island, were watching their twin 28-month-old grandsons, who they  take to the park once a week. Today they weren’t in their usual toddler area because it was off limits, now crowded with film crew and equipment.

“How could they close the park? It’s the last warm day of the fall,” said Martin.

“It’s not a super hardship,” added Arlene. “But it is hard because the children don’t understand.”

Tribeca residents do understand that filming has become a way of life on their streets. But when “Law and Order” took over much of the playground for four hours last month, it was a first. In its 23-year history, no part of the park, at Greenwich and Duane Streets, was allowed to be closed off for a shoot.

“I doubt very much that we would have approved it,” said Sheila Kavanagh, a former long-time board member. “It’s a public place and it should be open to the public. All parts of it.”

In what was described as a heated discussion at their meeting last month, the park’s board, volunteers who advise the Parks Department on policy for the park and run events there, voted 6–3 to approve the request. In return, “Law and Order” made a $1,500 donation to the park, which the board said will pay for an additional concert next summer.

“It was temporary, it was for a reputable, homegrown enterprise and the park is receiving funds,” said Charles Komanoff, a board member of Friends of Washington Market Park, who voted for   the filming.

Pam Frederick, another board member who favored the filming, said that making movies in the park is no different than requesting donations for use of the gazebo for birthday parties, a long-standing board policy. “They’re connected in principle and you can’t support one and not the other,” she said.

But another board member, Christine Sciulli, disagreed. “People have tried so hard to protect the park from things that disturb its use,” she said. “I feel like this is a can of worms and once you say yes to a film crew it’s impossible to say no to the next film crew.”

“It’s an experiment,” said Nelle Fortenberry, president of the board, who observed the production. “They’re confined to one section of the park and we expect them to be good visitors.”

Fortenberry had advocated for the filming but said she would not favor it during busy, warmer months or if the park was needed all day. She also would not want sequences that were scary to children. As a television producer herself who had worked on “Law and Order” for four seasons, she said she knew the crews to be sensitive to the neighborhoods where they film.

The board president acknowledged, however, that there had been problems: inadequate signage that warned park users of a possible inconvenience; a bottleneck of crew and equipment that made it hard to enter the park; and “discourteous” crew members smoking in the playground. But “Law and Order” was responsive to her complaints, she said, and she thought that, overall, the board would call it a success.

 “Will we do it again? I don’t think the Board wants to actively solicit these types of location opportunities,” she said in an e-mail, “this is not the beginning of constant film shoots in our park.”

Warner Johnston, a spokesman for the Parks Department, which issues permits for filming in city parks, said his agency would continue to “weigh in” with the park’s board before allowing more filming. “But the ultimate decision is always ours,” he said.