Critics' circus vent
For-profit ‘taking over’ public park
The Big Apple Circus is about to make its grand return — but not everyone is happy to see the newly for-profit show taking up space in a public park near Lincoln Center.
Following a yearlong hiatus, the revamped 40-year-old circus is returning to Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center under new ownership for shows beginning Oct. 27.
Critics say the arrangement to have a former nonprofit that routinely provided free shows return as a commercial enterprise violates the spirit of a 2014 settlement that booted Fashion Week from the same public plaza, which is controlled by Lincoln Center.
“This is nothing more than a cash cow for the circus and Lincoln Center, which refuses to release financial details of their deal,” said Geoffrey Croft of NYC Park Advocates.
Under a sublicensing agreement ironed out in March, the circus will control the entire 2.4acre park four months per year, from Oct. 8 through Feb. 1, over the next 10 years for its operations.
Croft’s group had joined other green-space do-gooders in a 2013 lawsuit against Lincoln Center and the city Parks Department over alleged overuse of Damrosch Park for special events like Fashion Week, which they claimed limited public access.
Mary Caraccioli, a Lincoln Center spokesperson, said the circus doesn’t compare with Fashion Week because the latter is a “closed” event to which average New Yorkers can’t buy tickets, while the circus is open to all.
Big Top Works, an affiliate of a Florida investment firm, purchased the circus in February after the previous owner filed for bankruptcy in 2016. Prior to last year, the circus had played in Damrosch Park for months at a time annually since 1981.
The Parks Department and Lincoln Center officials say revenue collected through the 10year deal would go specifically toward some of the costs of maintaining the complex’s public areas, which include Damrosch Park, rather than taxpayers picking up the costs.
Critics say, however, that the deal lacked transparency and that no community input was sought — a violation of the 2014 settlement.
“A for-profit entity, financed by private equity money (as this one is), must be making profits somehow,” Manhattan Community Board 7 Chairwoman Roberta Semer said in a Sept. 12 letter to Parks Department Commissioner Mitchell Silver.
“And as of now, this new operator’s commitment to public service performances is limited. So . . . this [deal] deserved . . . particular scrutiny.”
Semer added that while other for-profit entities — such as food concessions — have set up shop at other parks, “such operations do not take up the entire space . . . or anything like it.”
But Parks Department spokeswoman Crystal Howard said city parks have “hosted circuses for decades, and as a park-appropriate event, the new Big Apple Circus is no different from its predecessors.”