central park wooden benches Central Park in New York City - 843 acres of grass, trees and 9,000 wooden benches

Summer means warmer weather but also more wear and tear on outdoor facilities. If you want to see an excellent example of just how busy this season can be, check out New York's Central Park and how it handles millions of annual visitors, an endless number of plants and thousands of wooden benches.

Surrounded by 8.5 million residents in a place that also attracts a swarm of tourists every year, this lush patch of 843 acres in the middle of concrete and steel certainly sees its share of visitors.

In fact, today about 40 million people enter the park every year.

New York City is in the Northeast, with definitive seasons. That means there are days when the park is desolate and days when the park is packed.

Park survey tracks visitors during the seasons

Back in 2008 the Central Park Conservancy, which funds 75% of the park, began a study of park use. This was a full-scale research project which took a year to conduct.

The research included 4,600 entrance counts, 3,300 exit interviews and nearly 10,000 observational surveys of visitors in the park. In essence, the researchers received a comprehensive, bird-eye's view of all the coming and goings involved with this famous patch of urban greenery.

Take the seasons for example. New York City can experience some frigidly cold days with lots of snow or torrential downpours. But for the most part, the weather is generally mild. There are certainly plenty of days year-round where people can frequent the park.

But look at the seasonal number of visits the researchers found six years ago:

  • Summer - 13 million
  • Spring - 10.1 million
  • Fall - 8.8 million
  • Winter - 4.6 million

Obviously, this means once the snow and cold go away, the park really needs to pull out the wheelbarrows to gear up for the warmer months.

The largest number of people visit in August, followed by July, June, May and April. This makes sense because many park events such as concerts take place May-July.

What do all those people like to do in Central Park? Basically, not much.

According to surveyors, 90% of visitors just participate in "passive recreation." This is the activities they prefer:

  • Walk, wander or sight-see - 64%
  • Relax or socialize on a park bench - 36%
  • Study nature or just appreciate it - 15%
  • Walk the dog - 11%
  • Take photos or paint - 5%
  • Commute to the other side - 4.8%
  • Attend attractions, programs or events - 4.8%
  • Visit the Metropolitan Museum nearby - 2%
  • Boat and fish - .3% (how does a person boat and fish in the middle of a major city?).

For the 21% who say they are active, this is what they prefer to do:

  • Exercise or some physical activity - 13%
  • Use the playground - 8.5%
  • Play team sports such as softball - 2.6%
  • Spectate - .8% (sounds passive)
  • Race - .6%

memorial bench central park Wooden benches in Central Park. The park has an "Adopt-A-Bench Program" resulting in contributions for 4,100 park benches

Surprisingly, most individuals just like to visit the park by themselves to hang out with Mother Nature. Further proof that plants have an incredibly soothing effect on humans.

What's the social breakdown of visits?

  • Visit alone - 63%
  • Family group - 18%
  • Friend or co-worker - 13%
  • Spouse or partner - 12%

Frequency of visits show very active use:

  • Daily visits - 31%
  • 2-6 days a week - 27%
  • Once a week - 7%
  • 1-3 times a month - 7%
  • Less than once a month - 9%
  • First time - 14%

What's interesting is that for the group of people who visited the park every day, many of them actually spent more time in the park in the winter, followed by spring and then fall. There were fewer daily visitors in the summer, due to a large number of visitors overall.

Researchers found that about half of the visits lasted an hour or less. The average visit was 1.4 hours.

As most park and facility managers know, there are quite a few unique events that people schedule in the park. Central Park is no exception.

In 2016, the permitted events were:

  • Weddings - 949
  • Television shoots - 273
  • Concerts - 192
  • Photography shoots - 187
  • Film shoots - 176
  • Races - 79
  • Parades - 15

Unlike other parks, Central Park is also famous as a Hollywood setting for many famous movies.

Some of the more popular movies filmed there include Marathon Man, Ghostbusters, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Stuart Little, Maid in Manhattan, Elf, Limitless and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

As for television, several episodes of Sex and the City, Gossip Girl and Law & Order were filmed there. Even if crews aren't filming in Central Park, artists are drawing animated movies about the place. In the movie Madagascar, the characters live in the Central Park Zoo and in A Troll in Central Park, the main character is banished to the park.

Crew has to maintain thousands of plants and thousands of wooden benches

One thing is for sure, all of those millions of visitors certainly keep the park maintenance crew busy.

For example, there are 9,000 benches to maintain, and most of them are wooden benches. Then there are the playgrounds, picnic tables, trails, grass, bushes, trees, fences and everything else.

According to their park conservancy's 2016 annual report, here are some of the items the crew worked on in just one year.

  • Park benches painted or repaired (wooden benches) - 3,153
  • Park benches totally replaced - 22
  • Drain pipes cleared - 2,400 feet
  • Sand added to playgrounds - 48 tons
  • Swing seats replaced - 217
  • Trees pruned - 4,785
  • Trees planted- 2,267
  • Perennials planted - 144,447
  • Bulbs planted - 189,176
  • Mulch distributed - 2,980 cubic yards

That's one busy park. A continual mission to repair thousands of wooden benches, cut miles of lawns, shovel tons of snow, empty a constant flow of garbage in trash receptacles and keep a gazillion plants alive.

But Central Park is not the greatest park or outdoor facility in the world. The greatest park or outdoor facility in the world is the one in your town. That's the destination local residents will visit the most this summer and where they will seek refuge or a place to play.

As a park or facility manager, are you ready for them?

Note: The Park and Facilities Catalog is a national supplier of outdoor site furnishings such as park benches (including wooden benches and memorial benches), picnic tables, trash receptacles, bicycle parking racks, commercial planters and hundreds of other items. If you need to get your facility ready for the summer, we offer a ParkExpress program where we can ship many park furnishings in just 1-3 days. If you need it fast, call us.