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Greenpoint Community Kitchen Garden: 1st Meeting!

Great news! NAG is teaming up with GIFT (Greenpoint Interfaith Food Team) to bring fresh veggies to the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen this summer. This project will not only be an opportunity to bring healthy foods into the everyday lives of our neighbors, but also a great chance to get dirty and learn about gardening (or share your expertise!)

We're looking to get 21 regular volunteers to be the main Garden Team for the summer, but there is room for many different levels of commitment. If you are interested, please come to our first meeting:

Saturday, April 24 2010
from 4-5 pm
at 136 Milton Street (Greenpoint Reformed Church)

If you have any questions, contact ryan@nag-brooklyn.org

Worth the Wait!

The results of our Franklin Street tree-bed project, done in collaboration with Brooklyn Tree Project with a little help from the NYers for Parks and OSA.

Photo courtesy of Tommy Cole from ALTER

Three Terrific Open Space Updates

1. Bushwick Inlet (or at least, what we're allowed to claim of it thus far) got a facelift thanks to a really wonderful new program. From Friend's of Bushwick Inlet Park's Laura T... "the folks from NYC Community Cleanup showed up today and collected 15 bags of garbage and leaves after cleaning up our lovely stretch of public sidewalk alongside the inlet this morning... here's a snapshot of them in action."
Now you can walk or run without getting papers stuck on your shoe or tripping over a bottle of pee. Thanks to NYC Community Cleanup! (And to Laura for making the call!)

2. This sunday, March 21, there will be a Beers in the Office meeting regarding Greenpoint Community Gardening. Curious? Good. Come to the meeting at the NAG Office, 110 Kent Avenue, at 7:30.

3. On April 8th, the comprehensive Waterfront Plan Update public meeting is on April 8th from 6:00-8:30 pm at Murry Bergtraum High School at 411 Pearl Street, Manhattan. This will be a great opportunity to share our opinions and ideas regarding new open spaces in North Brooklyn. We'd love to bring some impassioned parkies to speak out for Transmitter Park, Commercial Street, Bushwick Inlet and the Williamsburg Bridge DOT site. Here's the Waterfront Plan's official link. If you'd like to get involved in this but want some assistance or further information, let us know.


HAPPY SPRING!!!

Saturday Nov 7: Help Improve Tree Beds on Franklin Street

Saturday Nov 7, 3-6pm

Meet @ Franklin & Greenpoint for a day of fun, friends and hands-on gardening for the good of our neighborhood! We will be digging up tree beds, planting daffodil bulbs for spring, adding fresh mulch and fences to protect our little slices of wildlife in the concrete jungle!

Bring your friends, your gloves, and your spades to help us renovate as many tree beds as you feel up to! We will be working along 3 blocks of Franklin Street in Greenpoint. If you're sorely missing your small backyard plot that you had back in the day, digging up dirt with us is a great way to fulfill that urge!

This is the first step in our neighborhood improvement pilot program sponsored by Neighbors Allied for Good Growth and Open Space Alliance as well as local businesses along Franklin Street.

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

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.

Seedballing Makes NPR!

We were just on NPR for our Guerilla Gardening project. We had a fun Sunday walking around with Margot Adler and dropping seedballs in some underloved spaces.

Neighborhood organizations across the U.S. that want to improve the environment are using a surprising weapon: seed balls. It's a technique for planting in abandoned places and often inhospitable land that was developed in Japan by Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer in "natural farming."

The technique has worked its way to Brooklyn, N.Y. In the Greenpoint neighborhood on a recent Sunday afternoon, a small group of activists walked the streets carrying paper bags filed with little balls made from clay, compost and seeds. They are members of a local group called NAG, or Neighbors Allied for Good Growth. They drop the balls on dirt piles and throw them into abandoned lots...

Gallagher says that seed balls allow people to take control of their small piece of the planet. She says walking around on a Sunday morning throwing seed balls is fun and easy.

"I think it is really important to break down these larger tasks — of taking back our neighborhoods and cleaning up our open spaces — into tasks that are completely doable," she says.

Check out the story, audio available online at 7pm

Creating More Open Space for North Brooklyn

The guerilla gardening activities have gotten off to a great start with our placing wildflower seeds in abandoned lots throughout the community. We are continuing these efforts and planning a "Where's My Park?" Day on May 16th to ask the city where the new waterfront parks we were promised during the 2005 rezonings are.

Open Space Group meeting: April 6th, place TBA.

Contact Emily openspace@nag-brooklyn.org

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.

Seedballs!

On Saturday, March 21st members of NAG's Open Space organizing group gathered in East River State Park, across from the NAG office, to learn about the urban gardening strategy of "seed balls."  The group, together with some enthusiastic passersby, made hundreds of clay pellets filled with wildflower seeds and organic compost material provided by Crest Hardware.  We're going to distribute the seedballs to neighbors in Williamsburg and Greenpoint to plant in vacant plots of land on March 28th.

To participate in the distribution, contact us at openspace@nag-brooklyn.org

Pictures by Jeremy Levine and Marina Fernandez Ferri

Reclaim Open Spaces With NAG Monday, February 9th

The NAG Open Space Community Committee Meeting has been rescheduled for Monday, February 9th at 7pm. The meeting will be at 179 Green Street between McGuinness and Manhattan in Greenpoint


Meeting agenda to include location and planning for future open spaces in South and East Williamsburg, seeding and gardening initiatives throughout North Brooklyn, further development of the open space website uniting park, park groups, programs, amenity lists and more!

Photo by mercurialn via flickr (creative commons license)

Join us February 3rd to build the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center

On Thanksgiving Day 1975, the City told the firefighters of Engine 212 in Williamsburg it was going to close because of the city's dire fiscal crisis. Within hours, a crowd of 300 local residents gathered in front of the firehouse to prevent the city from removing the equipment from the firehouse to close it down. People stayed there around the clock for the next 16 months until the City agreed to keep it open. The firehouse was ultimately closed in 2003, but NAG and the People's Firehouse have been awarded the building to develop it into a community center.

We need your help to raise the funds to renovate the building and make the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center a reality. When completed, the facilty will provide affordable office and meeting space for community organizations, create a street-level exhibition space for local cultural and arts organizations, and commemorate FDNY Company #212 and other local history.

Join us Tuesday February 3rd at 6pm to get started fundraising from the community on this project. We need to harness the full creativity and civic spirit of the neighborhood to make this a reality.
We will meet at Union Pool-- 484 Union Ave at Meeker Ave

Other Upcoming Events

Our Open Space working group is dedicated to fighting for more parks and access to the waterfront in Greenpoint and Williamsburg.
Join us February 9th at 7pm at Green Oaks Club, 179 Green Street between McGuinness and Manhattan in Greenpoint.

Our Transportation working group is starting a road safety campaign for bikers and drivers and fighting the proposed cuts in local subway and bus services.
Join us February 12th at 7pm at the NAG Office, 101 Kent Avenue at North 8th Street across from the State Park.

Getting to the waterfront at Northside Piers

At a friend's BBQ last Saturday night, I watched families move into the affordable units at the Northside Piers development (between North 4th and North 5th streets on the waterfront). And folks are moving into the first tower which is reaching completion.

As a result of these recent developments, some are correctly wondering when we'll be able to get to the public esplanade. As I recall DCP saying during the rezoning, the following have to be true before any market-rate building gets its final certificate of occupancy:

• The required on and off-site affordable housing must be built and occupied.
• The full esplanade must be built with two entrance/exits (based on the mistake at Schaefer Landing of only allowing one)
• The "upland connections" (the privately-owned driveway on North 4th Street) must be publicly accessible.

It would be a shame if it took much longer before the public space is open. It would be an even bigger shame if One Northside Piers got its final C of O before these requirements were fulfilled.

The experience with this building is a lesson we must take to heart as the Domino Sugar development goes through the review process. If there are problems with allowing public access as the site is being constructed, even though it is legally allowed, there must be some way to make it up to the community.

h/t: I'm Not Saying

Photo: ZackVS (flickr)

Proposed Concert Space in Bushwick Inlet Park

As you all know, and as Michael posted earlier, McCarren Pool will close as a performance venue at the end of the summer—so it can reopen as a pool in a few years!

This is thrilling but it does raise the question of whether our neighborhood can find a new place for outdoor performances and events. Local community groups, artists, activists, and others could use such a space for rallies, concerts, etc. I personally would love to see an amateur astronomy night like they have in Central Park, and to let local high schools put their drama club shows on. Or some classical music!

Jelly NYC, the group who puts on the free Sunday Pool Party shows, has started a petition to get a performance space in the new Bushwick Inlet Park. You can read more and sign it (if you want to) by clicking here.

—Mikki