Giving Rye is a feature series highlighting non-profits and community groups in and around the City of Rye. Today meet Chris Meier of the Friends of Rye Town Park.
Your Name: Chris Meier
Name of your organization: Friends of Rye Town Park
Your role: Treasurer, Beekeeper
MyRye.com: Tell us your organization’s mission
Meier: We work to improve Rye Town Park’s beautiful greenspaces, and advocate to improve the park and beach experience for park goers. This year, we expanded our reach to include raising funds to restore the exterior of the park’s historic tower building and rebuild the left tower wall.
How long have you operated in or around Rye?
Meier: 34 years, since 1991.
What programming or work is the organization best known for?
Meier: Our main focus is to beautify the green spaces in Rye Town Park to enhance the experience of every visitor. We are a small, all-volunteer board with no paid staff. We spend roughly $35,000 annually and employ a local landscaping firm to plant and maintain the existing gardens and plant environmentally beneficial trees and shrubs throughout the park, under the volunteer guidance of our chief gardening officer, local gardener Lucy Berkoff. We also perform critical park maintenance such as removing invasive plants. This work delights visitors and provides crucial support to the ecology. We advocate for the park so that it will someday be funded and staffed appropriately to meet its operating needs, but until that time, we work to fill the gap.
You may also know us from:
- Our delicious Rye Town Park honey, which Park Director Russ Gold and I harvest every year;
- The beautiful daffodil hillside we planted with Chris Duncan and the Little Garden Club of Rye; and
- Our more recent work to rehabilitate the tower building and surrounding garden landscaping, including adding the red Adirondack chairs everyone loves!
Looking forward to 2026, what will be your top initiatives?
Meier: In 2026, our main focus will be to complete our tower building and wall restoration project, for which we successfully fundraised earlier this year.
We will fully restore and re-stucco the tower building’s exterior, as well as the eight exquisite quatrefoil “rosette” windows and the upper column windows. We will also rebuild the tower left wall (from the tower building to Dearborn Avenue), replacing broken brick and damaged crown pieces and re-stuccoing the exterior – transforming it from its current neglected state to its original beauty.
to be completed before the restored windows can be installed. Contributed.)
In addition, we recently made a significant investment to fund new trash and recycling bins for the entire park and beach (say goodbye to the rusted, decaying oil drums that have been an eyesore throughout the park for at least the last decade). The new bins will be a transformational improvement, and should arrive by early spring 2026.
Tell us about the population you serve and how they can get involved with your programming and services.
Meier: We serve all who visit Rye Town Park and enjoy its astounding beauty – the people, as well as the flora and fauna.
Are you a 501(c)(3) non-profit with tax exempt status?
Meier: Yes, we are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with tax exempt status.
Looking back across 2025, what were your organization’s top achievements?
Meier: This year, led by board president Diana Page, we completed a highly successful fundraising effort for our tower building and wall restoration project, raising over $450,000 in eight weeks. We are deeply grateful to the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim Foundation for their $200,000 challenge grant and to the many fellow Rye Town Park enthusiasts in our community for their generous contributions. We have just completed a six-month-long approvals process involving the City of Rye, Town of Rye and New York State, and we expect to begin work on restoring the rosette windows before year-end. The exterior stucco and wall repair work will begin as soon as the weather conditions allow in spring of 2026.
Beyond the fundraising effort, we:
- Added several new gardens to the 20 we currently maintain, including a new pink-themed native garden with a centerpiece weeping redbud, near the Soul Ryeders labyrinth at Forest Avenue near Dearborn Avenue;
- Expanded our spring flowering tree selection at the north end of the park with several additional redbuds and two dogwoods, and also added two Ilex opaca (American Holly) to the same area;
- Installed a full hedge of our native Rosa virginiana at the Dearborn corner as well as two Carolina silverbell trees;
- Purchased two picnic tables for the park in May, which we will work with the park to see installed before next season;
- Purchased additional red Adirondack chairs which were immediately filled with park goers at all hours of the day and evening (we are delighted to see how much our visitors love and use these chairs);
- Added a new beach cleanup bucket station, hand-built by Rye Middle School student Jack DiBernardo and his father Ian as a mitzvah project in celebration of Jack’s bar mitzvah this year;
- Welcomed hundreds of visitors to enjoy the daffodil hillside in bloom in the spring;
- Hosted volunteer planting days with local garden enthusiasts and Rye High School senior interns;
- Reseeded the tower building plaza lawn after a high traffic summer;
- Gratefully accepted a leadership award from the Rye Sustainability Foundation for our many eco-beneficial efforts in the park; and
- Funded all new trash and recycle bins for the entire park and beach.
And finally, this year, Rye Town Park was voted one of the Top 25 beaches in New York State by Trip Advisor. Credit for this huge achievement is certainly due to Park Director Russ Gold and his team, but we like to think that the many improvements and investments we have made in the park certainly contribute to that success.
How can local residents support your organization?
Meier: Residents can visit our website to donate and sign-up to volunteer with us in the park. We host beach cleanups and occasionally need volunteers to help us plant our gardens. We want to hear from you – what you enjoy most about the park and ideas for continuing improvements.
What local Rye residents and area businesses have been the longest, steadiest supporters of your organization?
Meier: As ever, our community remains our biggest source of support – whether through donations or as a source of volunteers, such as our Rye High School senior interns, our group of local volunteer garden enthusiasts who help us plant in the spring and fall and our beach cleanup volunteers. We were especially grateful this year to receive the beach cleanup station built by Rye Middle School student Jack DiBernardo. We hope he inspires other young people to help our park and community in such a significant way!
This year, Sue and Ed Wachenheim’s $200,000 challenge grant for our tower building project was the wind in our sails, creating so much excitement and energy around our effort. Friends and neighbors rallied around us, amplifying our message and generously donating to ensure that we surpassed our goal. We are so thankful.
Tell us about you:
How long have you been in your current role?
Meier: I became Treasurer one year ago. I began assisting Russ Gold, Park Director, with the bees two years ago.
Is the role full time or part time? Paid or volunteer?
Meier: Part-time, volunteer
How would your friends and family describe you in one word?
Meier: Intense
Where did you grow up?
Meier: The Pacific Northwest
What principles guide you when you have to make a difficult decision?
Meier: Investigation. Examination. Action. Reflection.
Can you share a time when failure taught you more than success ever could?
Meier: Rejection of admission by my first-choice university. It taught me humility and future focus. It provided the opportunity to attend Willamette University and was the first step on my journey to New York and to my time in Rye.
What excites you most about the future—for yourself or for the world?
Meier: What excites me about the future is our growing realization around the need to put aside our devices and engage in face-to-face relationships. The possibility that we – that I – act upon this need is encouraging. Rye Town Park is a great space for this endeavor!
Where do you live and how many years have you lived there?
Meier: I live in Rye and have for over 2 decades – the last 13 years near Rye Town Park.
Thanks Chris!
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