Community gardens coming to Woodside

From Sunnyside Post:

Woodside could see two community gardens soon, as the city is preparing to license out small plots of land in the area to a non-profit and community gardening program.

The two triangular lots in question are on opposite sides of one another by 41-38 69th St., parallel to the Brooklyn Queens Expressway below them and close to Woodside Avenue.

The sites are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation, which owns the BQE bridge structure the lots are on.

The lots would be converted to community gardens run by both the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid organization, and GreenThumb, a NYC Parks program that supports community gardens around the city.

Proposal for community garden next to Cedar Grove

From the Queens Chronicle:

A Queensboro Hill family is pushing to make an unused city-owned lot at the intersection of 136th Street and 63rd Road a community garden.

And according to Alishia West, who is working with her husband, Zack Turck, and her daughter, Alyssa, to make the project a reality for the unused lot, the idea is popular.

“The people we talk to and the people we interact with, it’s easy to get them on board,” West told the Chronicle.

The lot belongs to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Former Elmhurst Community Garden turned into huge eyesore

Above: before photo from Queens Courier

Below: current site

The owner was in a hurry to kick the kids off the lot and put up a construction fence, but 3 years later, it looks like this? Permit problems?

And how do lots situated right next to each other have different block numbers? And notice the easement passing through them all...

Community gardens sit in path of destruction

From Capital New York:

The de Blasio administration is ending 2015 by addressing a long-standing controversy over the fate of 43 community gardens on city-owned land with a decision that has prompted mixed reactions among New Yorkers close to the divisive issue.

The administration is preparing to build more than 800 below-market-rate apartments on nine gardens — including two unused ones —while preserving another 34 gardens, according to several sources briefed on the plans.

City officials gathered representatives of the gardens at a meeting in City Hall on Wednesday afternoon to reveal the plans and distribute a list of which spaces will be preserved and which would be turned into development sites.

The city promised that when it builds on current gardens, it will create a new gardening space within a quarter of a mile of the original, but it is unclear whether the new spots would be the same size.

The two sites already being prepared for low- to moderate-income housing are Sparrow's Nest Community Garden in Queens and A Small Green Patch in Brooklyn. The other seven include one on East 111th Street, another in Coney Island, the Pleasant Village Community Garden II, Jackie Robinson Tenant Association, Mandela Community Garden, New Harvest Garden and space at Van Siclen Warwick, according to a list distributed at the City Hall meeting and obtained by POLITICO New York.

The city is promising that all apartments built on these sites will be entirely below-market rents.

Ridgewood community garden getting kicked out

From DNA Info:

A group of Ridgewood residents was so frustrated with a trash-strewn abandoned lot beneath the elevated M tracks that they decided to clean it up, replacing weeds with tomatoes, sunflowers and watermelons and turning the space into the area's first community garden.

But the MTA's New York City Transit Authority, which oversees the space, is now in the process of kicking the group out because its members were never given permission to use the land in the first place, the agency said.

The group said it decided to take care of the space, located between Woodward Avenue and Woodbine Street, not only because it had become been an eyesore and a vermin-attracting dumping ground, but also because the neighborhood lacks and desperately needs green spaces.

But in late June, after someone illegally dumped debris at the site, the New York City Transit Authority changed the locks on the garden's gate without warning and posted a sign that trespassing is a violation, Fitzgerald said.

Can plants grow under an elevated train? And how filthy is it with a train passing overhead sending debris down below?

Astoria community garden proposed

From Brownstoner Queens:

A group of Astoria residents are hoping to transform some unused land right next to the Elmjack Little League Field — which is located near the Riker’s Island Bridge — into a community growing space. According to the land use organization 596 Acres, the Elmjack Little League has had a license to use this city-owned space since the 1960s. The group of residents plan to send a letter proposing the community space to the League’s board.

Because every piece of available land must be developed

From the Queens Tribune:

Several years ago, a handful of Elmhurst neighbors and volunteers transformed a vacant lot into a community garden. In the coming months, it is slated to transform again, but this time into new apartments.

Winnie Mok, a secretary at Tan Architect P.C., which is designing the planned development, said five two-family buildings are slated for the lot. Owners expect to file construction permits within weeks, Mok said; preliminary work installing a temporary perimeter fence has already begun.

The lot in question sits at the end of Manilla Street at Kneeland Avenue, up against the LIRR tracks. The youth volunteering program Young Governors spearheaded the reclamation of the lot, starting in 2011, with the help of the New Life Development Corporation and other community members.

According to lead garden organizer Jennifer Chu, the group received a “verbal OK” from the lot’s then-owner, a retired attorney now located in Florida, to use the site.

“We figured, he’s not using it, we can just work on it make to it look nice.” Chu said. “He said he intended to sell it and so we said, ‘sure, whenever you need to sell it, we’ll vacate.”

Nevertheless, the lot was sold in early February, according to the City Department of Finance. Chu said she received no notification of the sale.

“I’m just surprised that he didn’t give us any notice,” she said, adding that the Young Governors had made an effort to keep the owner up-to-date on activity at the garden, sending pictures and sometimes harvested produce.

The site’s previous owner could not immediately be reached for comment.

DeBlasio wants to build on community garden spaces

From DNA Info:

At least 15 community gardens on city-owned property could be bulldozed to make way for new buildings under the de Blasio administration's affordable housing plan, community advocates said.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development published a list this week of city-owned sites that housing developers can apply to build on, shocking those who tend to and enjoy the green spaces.

Developers were asked to submit proposals for nearly 180 sites — which could include rentals for families earning nearly $140,000 a year and paying $3,000 in rent — by Feb. 19.

John McBride, one of the residents who helped Morningside Heights' Electric Ladybug Garden get off the ground, was surprised Thursday when he found the city had already padlocked his block's space.

"We were just getting ready to start planting for the spring and now it's padlocked," said McBride, 46, who was part of a two-year labor-intensive effort to clear rubble from the vacant lot on his West 111th Street block and replace it with clean topsoil from the Parks Department's Green Thumb this summer.

McBride said he understood the de Blasio administration's "huge commitment to housing," but he didn't understand why the city was targeting lots with flourishing gardens when it owned other parcels of land that were sitting truly fallow.

Of more than 1,000 HPD-owned vacant lots, approximately 74 have community gardens, according to research from 596 Acres, the nonprofit that helped provide technical support to transform Electric Ladybug.

Don't eat these veggies!

From the NY Post:

Herbs and vegetables grown in New York City community gardens are loaded with lead and other toxic metals, a startling state study shows.

Tainted vegetables — some sold in city markets — were found in five of seven plots tested, according to data obtained from the study by The Post through the Freedom of Information Law.

In the study, scientists used safety levels set by the European Union for lead and cadmium, since the United States doesn’t set a threshold for veggies.

Once in the body, lead can remain for 30 years, causing permanent learning disabilities, behavioral issues, hearing problems, heart disease, kidney disease, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and death.

Children, pregnant women and sick people are most vulnerable to lead poisoning, experts said.

Shoppers at a farmers market outside East New York Farms in Brooklyn — where a carrot was tested with nearly three times the safe amount of lead — were stunned by the study.

The Parks Department said gardens involved with the study have all received clean soil and compost.

Bloomberg, Markowitz screw over Coney Island one last time

From A Walk in the Park:

Under cover of darkness a beloved community garden in Coney Island was bulldozed beginning at 5am Saturday morning to make way for Marty Markowitz's $ 53 million dollar amphitheater. The developer – iStar – destroyed 16 years of a community gardening effort.

A developer bulldozed a beloved community garden in Coney Island on Saturday to make way for an amphitheater — uprooting 20 chickens on a decades-old plot that survived Hurricane Sandy.

Construction workers entered the Boardwalk Garden under the cover of darkness and chucked tools and wheelbarrows, along with farm fowl and a colony of feral cats, activists say.

The chickens were placed in pet carriers on the sidewalk and the felines were left fending for themselves.

“They destroyed life!” fumed tearful volunteer Elena Voitsenko, 60, a Russian immigrant who told The Post she’ll take in the birds until they find a new home.

“‎I came to America to escape from the communist regime,” she added. “This is more than the communist regime! They came at 4 in the morning.”

Workers razed the sprawling, 70,000-square-foot garden on West 22nd Street about a week after the City Council approved plans to convert the empty Childs Restaurant and its adjacent land into a 5,000-seat venue.

The $53 million project was trumpeted by outgoing Borough President Marty Markowitz, who tried previously to build a controversial amphitheater in Asser Levy Park in 2009.

Under the new plan, the city will buy the Childs building from iStar Financial and turn it into a restaurant and concert venue. The adjacent garden is slated to become a seating area.

The community board voted against the project in September, and locals have railed against turning the historic property into a noisy venue.

Kids' community garden being sold out from under them

From the Queens Courier:

Residents and volunteers are asking the city not to squash their community garden.

Until last year, the vacant lot at Kneeland Avenue and Manilla Street in Elmhurst was growing weeds as tall as the average resident, attracting illegal dumping and unwanted vermin. After taking a look at the site, Young Governors, a teen community organizing program, got together and turned the lot into a community garden that is verdant with fruits and vegetables today.

But the garden the teens created side-by-side with residents is at risk of becoming a multi-family house since the property’s owner put it up for sale.

“What we need here in Elmhurst is a garden, not another high rise development,” said Senator Toby Ann Stavisky. “We need a place for children to play. We need gardens where people can till and nourish and eventually eat the produce.”

The community hopes to get the opportunity to save the garden — or relocate it another area — with the help of the city.

“These volunteers literally have turned what has been an eyesore in Elmhurst into a project that is productive, into an area that is not only beautiful and prevents it from being a blight on our society, but has literally turned into a productive project that feeds people,” said Councilmember Grace Meng.

Volunteers go week after week to care for the crops. They have donated fruits and vegetables from the garden to the New Life Community Development Corporation, a local organization that helps people in need in the community.

Well then I'm sure Grace Meng and Toby Stavisky will find a way for the city to purchase the lot so that the kids can keep on farming and feeding people. It's not like there's any place left in Elmhurst that's undeveloped that it can be relocated to. The current lot has been empty and abandoned for DECADES, so it's interesting that the owner, Queens Blvd attorney John Blaha, suddenly resurfaced and is taking an interest in selling it now. Here's what's next door and what they have to look forward to:


Except it will be worse, since it's a corner lot that allows for more density.

Reclaiming public green space

From New York World:

An abandoned parking lot in Harlem and a former airport in Flushing may not appear to have much in common besides weeds, but for the volunteers of 596 Acres, these are the next frontiers of a civic movement to reclaim public space in the city.

The group’s name was inspired by the total area of vacant, city-owned land in Brooklyn, where the project’s founding members live. Over the past year, they have worked with local residents in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Greenpoint and Gowanus to reclaim four vacant lots owned by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) as community gardens and gathering spaces. Now the group is expanding its horizons into Queens and Manhattan, starting with a “visioning session” this Saturday afternoon in the East Village.

Co-founder Paula Z. Segal, who works as a law clerk by day, calculates that 75 city-owned lots in Manhattan and more 100 in Queens are ripe to put back into public use. She started out two years ago simply trying to find out what she could do to revive a single vacant lot. Her persistence took her to the city’s department of Citywide Administrative Services, where she found she could get information on the ownership not only about her lot but also hundreds of others around the city.

“I couldn’t keep that information to myself once I had it,” said Segal.

Working with computer programmer Eric Brelsford and other volunteers, she compiled detailed information on the location and government agency ownership of every vacant city-owned in her borough — and then turned it into an interactive map.

That map has been a powerful organizing tool for the group, which also holds neighborhood planning sessions advising residents how to approach city agencies to seek permission for temporary use of the property. To spark the interest of passersby, the group tags empty lots with signs encouraging neighbors to seek to reclaim them.

Making lemonade out of lemons?

From Huffington Post:

A remnant of the Great Recession is hiding behind a paint-splattered wall in Chinatown, in an empty lot where a building was supposed to rise into the sky.

The plywood barely conceals the mess behind it: a pile of cement blocks and tangled metal and empty bottles of beer. It is, in short, exactly the sort of place that draws the ire of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

"There's a lot of bad things that happen in stalled construction sites," says Stringer, whose office issued a report earlier this year cataloguing the more than 600 stalled sites that are scattered throughout New York City. "Especially if everybody sort of ignores the site and lets it grow in a very unpleasing way."

Instead of allowing these lots to become eyesores, some developers are coming up with creative ways to use them temporarily until construction can begin. Grow vegetables in milk crates? Sure. Sell doughnuts out of a shipping container? In New York City, where open space is a precious commodity, just about anything goes.

Community gardens at risk

From the Gotham Gazette:

While New York City adopts increasingly progressive measures to promote sustainability, at least one "green" group remains unsatisfied. Some community gardeners, charging that the most recent city regulations leave them largely unprotected, fear their plots of land could be snatched away at any time.

The rules, though framed as a gift to gardeners when enacted in September 2010, do not permanently protect existing gardens as an earlier agreement did. While 282 gardens remain protected, the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development reserved the right to swap the protected gardens for other similar space. That and other caveats outweigh any theoretical increase in protection, advocates say.

"We all hoped that the rules would say active gardens would be preserved, but they didn't," said Hannah Riseley-White, a community organizer for the nonprofit organization Green Guerillas. "When you read the text, it really says the gardens are protected, unless we want to sell them."

Close to 200 gardens out of around 450 -- a number that doesn’t include Department of Education gardens -- are vulnerable to sale and development under these rules, advocates say. But, more importantly, they believe, all city gardens ultimately remain in jeopardy because none of the legislation they sought made it into the 2010 agreement. Without laws to protect gardens, those who work on them say, nothing is guaranteed.

"Rules and regulations are only as good at the current administration," said Karen Washington, the president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition. "That's not permanency."

Repurposing stalled sites

From GlobeSt.com:

Just before the entrance of the Holland Tunnel, a half-acre site slated for construction on Canal Street between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street has become LentSpace, a temporary public art park. On the Lower East Side, a stalled construction site on 145 Ludlow St. has morphed into a rentable ‘backyard’ with grills, sprinklers, wading pools and live bands. In Downtown Brooklyn, a stalled mixed-use development has been transformed into Dekalb Market, home to six urban farms, independent retailers, eateries and work-sell spaces.

These are just some of the many examples cited by “Arrested Development: Breathing New Life Into Stalled Construction Sites” released by the Office of the Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer on Monday, available for download here. The report calls for creative land use solutions and new policies to help transform stalled places into vibrant public spaces that generate revenue and create real estate opportunities.

Developer rezonings reach insanity level

From the Times Ledger:

Community Board 13 voted against an application to build a one-story commercial building in Cambria Heights during its monthly meeting Monday night.

The public hearing at St. Clare’s School, at 137-25 Brookville Blvd. in Rosedale, was an extension of one held Feb. 15 at the Alpha Phi Alpha Senior Center in Cambria Heights, where residents expressed concerns over traffic, congestion and parking, according to Richard Hellenbrecht, chairman of CB 13’s Land Use Committee.

Jamaica Associates Inc., the applicant, wants to change the zoning from an R3-2 residential district to a C1-3 commercial zone so it can build a one-story commercial building at 226-01 Linden Blvd. in Cambria Heights.

Hellenbrecht said the property used to be occupied by a farmhouse but is now vacant and adjacent to the Cambria Heights Community Garden, which is maintained by the Cambria Heights Civic Association’s Beautification Committee.

Jerry Caliendo, architect for the project, said the developer reached out to City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans), the community garden and the Cambria Heights Civic Association and agreed to provide water, light and winter cleanup for the garden if the developer gets approval to build the structure.

Well I can certainly see how a cheap strip of stores would enhance the aesthetics of the neighborhood...

The fact that this was certified by City Planning shows that so long as there is a chance a developer might turn a profit off it, the City will approve just about anything, no matter how detrimental it might be.

More (but not total) protection for gardens

From the Daily News:

City officials eager to quash a green rebellion are planning to announce a compromise this week on the fate of community gardens.

A source familiar with the city's latest proposal says new guidelines would give gardens more protections from development - but would stop short of guaranteeing their existence.

"Legally, nothing is permanent, but we need to make protections stronger," said a city source who saw a draft of proposed new rules.

The rules would require the city to give the community additional notice if a garden might be threatened and would give extra protections to gardens that are in good condition and where gardeners follow city rules.

Group hopes to create garden with blackout money

From the Daily News:

A DEVASTATING blackout that hit western Queens could be the spark to energize a green oasis under a proposal to build a unique community garden.

Astoria-based Cidadao Global wants to build a garden on property that also would double as a community center for recent immigrants. It would be funded by a chunk of a $7.9 million initiative that came out of a settlement with Con Edison after the 2006 power outage.

"There's nothing like it in Queens," said Ramona Ortega, founder of the nonprofit group - one of many submitting proposals to get a piece of the settlement for "greening" projects.

"It would be a garden space where many organizations can share the immigrant experience," she said of the project, which she estimates would cost $500,000 during the next three to four years.

Cidadao Global, which serves mostly Brazilian immigrants, will submit its proposal to the Greening Western Queens Fund next month. That fund will be used for projects to benefit Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside and Astoria, which were affected by the 2006 blackout.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance," said Ortega, 35, who wants to create a garden run with the cooperation of different immigrant groups in the neighborhood.

Ortega said she hopes the garden will connect diverse groups in the neighborhood.

The need for this kind of center is very real, immigrant advocates said, pointing to blighted properties and a general lack of open areas.

Community gardens endangered

From the Daily News:

Gardeners are upset the proposed rules leave the door open for development of the plots.

The rules were drafted to replace a 2002 agreement with then-state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer which preserved hundreds of gardens, settling a battle between gardeners and the Giuliani administration.

The agreement, which expires next month, promised "permanent protection to hundreds of community gardens...a fair process for reviewing future proposals to develop other garden properties," Bloomberg said in announcing the 2002 agreement.

The new rules allow any garden property to be sold if the City Council approves, though officials say they have no current plans to get rid of any of them.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said Bloomberg was not guaranteeing gardens would be preserved forever.

"Permanent protection to hundreds of community gardens, not permanent gardens," he said.

"The intention is to help community gardens continue to succeed," Benepe added. "It is unfortunate there is such strong misperception of this."

What? Can someone translate that, please?

Community gardens threatened with development

From the NY Times:

New rules being drafted by the city may omit some protections and assurances accorded nearly a decade ago to hundreds of community gardens scattered across the five boroughs.

The proposed rules, which are not finalized but are being written by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, are meant to replace a 2002 agreement between the city and the New York State attorney general’s office that helped bring an end to years of contentious court battles and public protests revolving around the future of the gardens.

That agreement, which is set to expire in September, ended a lawsuit in which the attorney general’s office sought to stop the Giuliani administration from selling city-owned gardens to developers and led to the preservation of hundreds of gardens.

Several drafts of the new rules describe a process to develop gardens that is similar to the process in the existing agreement. But the drafts and the current agreement also differ significantly. The drafts, for example, do not contain language guaranteeing the continuation of gardens preserved by the existing agreement. And while the existing agreement states that “the city represents that it has no present intention of selling or developing” other gardens, such assurances do not appear in the drafts.

Consequently, some gardeners said, the draft rules would appear to make all gardens equally eligible for development, regardless of current status.