🌳 Let's Build a Park

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello to the 90 advocates of the Better Block Project 👋 We are only 📣 1 week away from our Better Block Meet Up on Sunday, September 21st @ First Quincy Street Community Garden (3-5pm at Quincy & Tompkins 🪴 ). Many of you work at community organizations, in the public sector, on Community Boards, in block associations or are just neighbors trying to make New York City work better. I’m excited for everyone to connect, hopefully make some new friends and talk about next steps with our shared mission.

🌳 Let’s Build a Park

Through my daughter’s daycare, I had the opportunity to meet Omar, the President of the 200 Jefferson Block Association. Omar, like me, shares a passion for improving tree maintenance in New York City, in addition to years of community work he has done in Bed Stuy. A few Sundays ago, Omar and I did a walk through the neighborhood to talk about opportunities to make our blocks better, and admire some of the new lighting he helped advocate for on Jefferson and Marcy. It was there that I learned a startling fact about the state of Parks in Bed Stuy: less than 3% of land is open or recreational space, placing it in the bottom 10 citywide and second lowest in Brooklyn.

While much of the conversation in New York civil discourse today is build housing, housing, and more housing (for good reason), we discussed how it’s important that we take a more comprehensive view of the future of the neighborhood. Great cities like Paris and Rome aren’t just all buildings. They’re full of parks, trees, public squares and more that make them vibrant places to live. It was through this conversation that we came up with the idea to build a new park 🌳 

Where It’s Going to Be

Through Better Block’s work on improving vacant buildings, we’ve learned that there are a large number of vacant lots in Bed Stuy (learn more here in the Commercial District Needs assessment). Many of these lots are privately owned, but often they are owned by a city agency, like NYCHA, and have just been neglected or forgotten about. The closed basketball court on Greene between Nostrand and Marcy is a perfect example. Many of you have likely walked by this court on your way to Herbert Von King park or perhaps after a drink at Captain Dan’s. It’s owned by the New York City Housing Authority, and according to a neighbor who has lived there for 50 years, the court has been closed for more than 20 years (sadly, this is the case with many city owned properties).

We believe there is a huge opportunity to revitalize this court, and other vacant lots, to create new green space in Bed Stuy and another place to gather as a community. We’re currently evaluating a few different vacant lots for the potential park, with the goal to identify a lot with an amenable owner as soon as possible. The lots we’re looking at include:

• Abandoned Basketball Court on Greene between Marcy and Nostrand

• Closed Park on Gates between Marcy and Tompkins

• Private Lot on Lefferts between Classon and Fulton (h/t Jenny for this tip!)

It’s important that we evaluate a few lots to start as the first big milestone is going to be convincing the owner to let us turn it into a park and I fully expect we won’t hear back from many of them. If you know of any other lots that you think could be a good candidate for this (or where you want a park!), please send them my way. Ideally we can identify at least ten that we can target before we finalize our lot to build the actual park.

How We’re Going to Use the Space and Next Steps

We’re in the early stages of deciding what we want the actual park to be. It may become a community garden or a full fledged New York City park. Here is how we are thinking about it so far:

1. We want it to serve a need that compliments what is already there and adds to the neighborhood

2. We want it to be useable. Ideally we create something that people want to come back to often to truly keep the space vibrant and safe

3. We want to ensure neighbors who live on the block are onboard. They will use this park the most, so we’re excited to partner with them in whatever we build

Our next step is finding a strong candidate location for the new green space, so we’re actively contacting owners of vacant lots right now to see how we can work with them. We’re also brainstorming ideas on what we want to do with the space and how we want to manage and fund it. If you’d like to be involved in this project or know anyone who might be able to assist, just reply to this email!

📣 26 Jefferson has Restarted Construction

In an exciting update, 26 Jefferson has officially restarted construction 🥳 . Scaffolding has gone up outside the building. We’re closely monitoring the construction with neighbors, and cautiously optimistic that the new building will be finished over the next 6-12 months. It’s been a journey trying to get this building improved over the past year, but we’re hopeful that the construction goes well and we’re one step closer to a finished building for the block.

⏳ Where we are on the other problems we’re working on

• 🚌 Improving the Bus Stop on Franklin and Fulton: We heard this week from NYPD that new lighting at the bus stop and on Bedford Place was supposed to go up on Friday, but unfortunately, as of Saturday no lighting is in place. While the bus stop and Bedford place look slightly better, there were still encampments in both locations. We’ve followed up with NYPD about the status of the lighting, and are still working to get the meeting with MTA scheduled to remove the bus shelter

• 🌳 Simplifying Tree Maintenance in NYC: We heard back from the legislative office of CM Nantasha Williams, we’re going to schedule time with them next week to discuss next steps with the tree legislation. We still haven’t scheduled the meeting with Parks with CM Jennifer Gutierrez, and plan to follow up again this coming week

• 🏠️ Improving Vacant Buildings on Fulton, Jefferson and Macon: We finally connected with the public administrator’s office about 75 Macon, which has yet to go up for sale despite promises it would weeks ago. We’re going to continue to follow up. We learned that 73 Macon is in the midst of a deed theft case, so we’re going to pause on working on this property until this is finalized in the courts

• 🧹 Cleaning up Trash on Fulton Street: We followed up with City Council and DSNY about scheduling a meeting to discuss a budget request for funds to fully clean up Fulton Street. We’re going to continue to follow up over the next few weeks to get this scheduled so we can ensure DSNY and the Bed Stuy BID have the funds they need in order to keep the street clean

That’s all for this week’s update. If you like what we’re doing here, share betterblockproject.com with other community members you know who are looking to drive change in Brooklyn.

See you next week,

David