Brooklyn’s backyard has a new person in charge of its front office.
The parks department and the Prospect Park Alliance have appointed a new head to the Alliance, the private group which manages the park. The new head honcho, Park Sloper Sue Donoghue, is coming to the position from a city job managing green spaces and said she is excited to work closer to home.
“It gives me an opportunity to give back to a place my family and I love and couldn’t live without,” said new prez Sue Donoghue in a statement.
Donoghue worked for the Department of Parks and Recreation for the past six years, overseeing the implementation of PlaNYC, a sustainability-oriented program that planted more than 900,000 trees and built eight parks across the five boroughs, according to the parks department. In her new role, Donoghue will direct the fund-raising and operations that keep the park lean, clean, and green.
Donoghue, a long-time Brooklyn resident, replaces Emily Lloyd, who left greener pastures behind in January to become Mayor DeBlasio’s commissioner to the Department of Environmental Protection. Lloyd had been the park’s green queen for just three years, taking the helm in December of 2010. Before Lloyd, Tupper Thomas had run Prospect Park since 1980, first as a city administrator, then as president of the Prospect Park Alliance, which she oversaw the creation of.
As word of the hire spread, praise for Donoghue rolled in from officials across New York.
“Sue is a great problem-solver and a natural coalition-builder, and a champion for the sustainability and diversity of our parks,” said Councilman Brad Lander (D–Park Slope) in a statement.
The Prospect Park Alliance was created in 1987 to channel philanthropist money into sprucing up the then-bedraggled park. Funding from the Alliance pays for a bulk of the park’s budget, and the group maintains the greensward with help from the city.
