With 3.8 million visits last year, Chelsea Piers was exceeded only by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Madison Square Garden as a paid Manhattan attraction, said Tom Bernstein, one of the partners. He's planning similar ventures in San Francisco and Philadelphia, and thinks the concept is adaptable to the suburbs, too, though on a smaller scale. A prominent Canadian developer, Abraham Reichmann, has already proposed building a sports and entertainment complex in the Rockaways called the Technodome, and some Long Island planners think that the land surrounding the Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in Brentwood is suitable for a similar complex. People lead very active lives and they want to go out and do things. To raise the capital you need to build and operate this kind of facility, you have to do it on a commercial basis.
Critics say it's a troubling trend.
Environmental considerations will pose yet another set of problems for planners as they try to respond to the demand for active recreation in the 21st Century. Worried about traffic and crowds, some neighborhoods will surely resist the drive to build more golf courses, water slides and inline skating parks. And they will find allies among environmentalists who argue that turning meadows into soccer fields and shoreline into boat slips threatens native plants and animals and damages the fragile underground water supply that serves southeast Queens and Long Island. The region's aquifers can only be replenished by rain, and raindrops that fall onto turf or asphalt, instead of undeveloped land, are more likely to carry chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other contaminants into underground reservoirs. The clash of interests between conservationists and sports enthusiasts has already sparked political battles over separate proposals to build a golf course and soccer fields in the Suffolk County pine barrens.