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Where's My Park?!?

Working with our friends GWAPP, Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park Barge Park Pals, Friends of Transmitter Park, Park Moms, the People's Firehouse, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra and our friends at Assemblymember Joe Lentol and a Representative from Council Member David Yassky's office, we asked the City "Where's My Park?!?" yesterday.

Because of the public attention that was brought to the promises from the 2005 rezoning going unfulfilled, the City has made a new round of committments to speed up access to waterfront parks. These commitments were made to the community by the Parks Department in an email from North Brooklyn Parks Administrator Stephanie Thayer:

- Manhattan Avenue Street end greening is open to the public as of today.
- Northside Piers (at North 5th St/Kent Ave.) will be open 7 days per week within the next two weeks.
- Transmitter Park will be opened for use this summer, with interior fencing that provides as much safe site access as possible.
- We are working to improve Newton Barge Terminal Park to provide waterfront views this summer.
- Mayor's office will proceed with an independent study to further the relocation of the MTA.
- Parks Dept. will hold regular public listening sessions about the parks commitments of the rezoning.
- We will break ground on the first phase of Bushwick Inlet Park, a soccer field, between North 9th and North 10th, in June.

More images of the event:

Phantom children playing in the phantom Bushwick Inlet Park



Phantom children in the phantom Transmitter Park @ Greenpoint Ave.


Christine Holowacz & Emily Gallagher at 65 Commercial Street A/K/A the MTA Site




Assembly Member Joe Lentol and Phil Depaolo



The Rude Mechanical Orchestra





Michelle & Jim Rodecker bearing the NAG Banner

Photos by Rachelle House and JD Fox

Yassky Rally For MTA Site

As a complement to "Where's My Park?!? Day," Councilmember David Yassky is calling attention to the City's failure to make the MTA site into a park. From his office:

Councilmember Yassky is holding a "Rally for a Waterfront Park in Greenpoint!" on Thursday, May 14th (that's this Thursday) to remind Mayor Bloomberg about his promise to create a park on the MTA site located at 65 Commercial St.
Four years later: "Where's Our Park!"

Rally for a Waterfront Park in Greenpoint!
Thursday, May 14th
Steps of City Hall
1:30 pm Sharp
(take the 4, 5, or 6 subway to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall )

Join Councilmember Yassky, your neighbors and friends and tell Mayor Bloomberg,
"We want a waterfront park not a parking lot!"

May 16th: Where's My Park?!? Day

Remember the 2005 Greenpoint-Williamsburg Rezoning? In it, we were told that in exchange for enormous buildings along the water front we would recieve a number of parks and open spaces to relax in, to get up by the water, to play soccer, to do whatever we please!

Not one park has been completed, not one has been opened.

So while the rest of New York City is celebrating "It's My Park Day!" on May 16th, NAG and GWAPP will be instead asking, "Where's My Park?!?" in an act of community awareness and civic action.

Bring your kids and your grandmas to the NAG Office (N 8th and Kent) at 12:30p to make some pro-park crafts and picket signs, and then join us at 2:00p at Bushwick Inlet (N 14th and Kent) as we march down past several of the promised parks' locked gates. The day will end with a block party full of music, games, refreshments, and community... in a parking lot.

Come help us make a scene! It's the only way we'll unplug the City's deaf ears across the river.

Keep the Waterfront Promises

The 2005 Waterfront Rezoning plan has completely altered our community's environment with more than a dozen residential towers either built or in construction along the waterfront. The city promised that our neighborhood, having long suffered one of the lowest ratios of open space per capita and as well as a housing crisis, would receive -- in tandem with the onslaught of development -- new parks and affordable housing. Now, four years later, those needs are now more pressing than ever and the excuses for inaction by the city and the MTA have become completely unacceptable.

Please sign and mail this letter asking the City to create the park at 65 Commercial Street. The timing for this action is critical.