If you looked at John Herrold’s career trajectory you might call him the accidental parks administrator.
 
After all, his career began in the petroleum industry and then he became a freelance photographer, doing weddings, portraiture and architectural work.
 
But Herrold’s love of parks is no accident. The new adminstrator of Van Cortlandt Park always had a love of the outdoors that was nurtured by wilderness property his parents owned in Pennsylvania.
 
And as a high school student in New Jersey, he participated in efforts to transform old family estates and unused municipal properties into parkland.
 
Herrold’s extracurricular passion became his career gradually. When he was 30, in the middle of his photography freelancing, Herrold began volunteering in his Upper West Side neighborhood at Riverside Park. That led to a part-time job working with the Riverside Park administrator.
 
And then, in the spring of 2001, he became the full-time on-site manager of Madison Square Park, which had just reopened.
 
Herrold, 45, is the first administrator to be hired solely for Van Cortlandt Park, the city’s third largest at 1,100 acres. Previously, that job also included overseeing Pelham Bay Park, the largest city park. Herrold says the job was particularly appealing to him because the Parks Department was going “to make a dedicated administrator for this park and Pelham Bay, so I knew that I could really focus on what was going on” in Van Cortlandt. 
 
Herrold takes charge of the park at a controversial time. Community residents are suing the city in an effort to stop the construction of a water filtration plant at the Mosholu Golf Course in Norwood.
 
But Herrold hopes residents can focus on the eventual benefits the plant will bring.

“My feeling is that it’s a good thing that we’re going to get this money from it,” Herrold said, referring to the $43 million earmarked for Van Cortlandt as part of the filtration plant deal. “It’s going to let us do some things that the park needs, hopefully in the shorter term. This kind of money would not come all at once normally. This way it’s really a windfall. I’m eager to really leverage this opportunity to fix up the park.”
 
Still, he recognizes that it will be a challenge to recruit community members to the cause at this time.
 
“If there’s a silver lining, it’s [that] people are paying more attention to the park. It might be the opportunity to say, ‘Yes, I understand, [but] would you work with me and look down the road and help me? Let’s take this corner here that so eventually it’s better.’” 
 
Herrold says he knows that the southeast corner of the park in Norwood, where Jerome Avenue and Gun Hill Road meet, has special needs.
 
“That is a key entrance of the park, or it should be,” he said. “That’s a vital location, and I want to make sure that area is manicured and is welcoming and inviting.” 
 
Herrold sees parks as something of an antidote to our daily urban lives. He enjoys seeing hawks, owls, raccoons and other wildlife in the park.
 
“Parks are where we go to depressurize from the city and that’s how many of us use them,” he said.