Adrian Benepe is stepping down as New York City's parks commissioner after a decade of service in which he led a major expansion of the city’s green space, says the New York Times.
Benepe, who has worked with Mayor Michael Bloomberg since 2002, will step into the role of Urban Parks Director for the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit conservation organization, says the article.
Veronica White, the founding executive director of the city's Center for Economic Opportunity—a think-tank for the mayor’s anti-poverty initiatives – will be replacing Benepe.
According to the Times, during his tenue, Benepe oversaw the addition of 730 acres of park space and played a major role in the creation of new outdoor areas and the High Line, as well as the construction of parks near the new Yankee Stadium, and Icahn Track and Field Stadium and Randalls Island Fields.
The paper reports that White helped to develop an alternative way to measure poverty, which was used by the national Census Bureau's new Supplemental Poverty Measure, though may be best known for helming the Center for Economic Opportunity's Opportunity NYC program, in which “low-income families are given cash in exchange for meeting certain behavioral standards.”
