Newtown Creek Meeting to Discuss What To Do with $7 Million!

Friend and neighbor Gaby just sent me this email. I highly recommend anyone with any vested interest in what our neighborhood parks will look like, feel like, and smell like attend this meeting NEXT WEDNESDAY. Read on:

The following info is about an important meeting about how to spend the $7 MILLION! that has been allocated to our area’s parks. Your input will be heard and you will have the opportunity to suggest ways of making our ‘hood a nicer, better, cleaner, healthier place. Anyone with children might want to think long and hard about where to put in new playgrounds with better access and safer equipment or kids programs perhaps. There is a lot of “dead” park space near the waterfront and these areas WILL ALL be reassessed immediately! I am continually making my plea to implement community composting bins throughout ALL the parks. , the more people who are working on the same ideas, the louder you will be heard. So! Send this around to our community members who care. We can not make big change alone! All for Greenpoint, Greenpoint for all!

Wednesday, July 28th

6:30pm

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Visitor Center

328 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn

(Entrance through the main gate at the intersection of Greenpoint Avenue and Humboldt Street)

Please RSVP to either 212.360.1310 or NewtownCreek@CityParksFoundation.org as soon as you can.

The primary purpose of the meeting is to develop a list of possible projects that can be funded by the $7 million that has been allocated to City Parks Foundation, together with an initial sense of the important criteria to be used when judging projects.

After this meeting on July 28th, City Parks Foundation staff will develop cost estimates for the projects that have been suggested and will identify any relevant feasibility issues or barriers to completion. We will then reconvene in the Fall, so that everyone can express specific preferences from among the list of projects; this information will be vital to the Department of Environmental Conservation as they make a final decision on which projects should be funded.

At the meeting on July 28th, you will hear about four specific projects that have already been suggested to the Department of Environmental Conservation by the groups that successfully advocated for this $7 million of funding. You will also hear about a recent brainstorming session held among Brooklyn groups about community preferences for open space projects. In addition, you will hear about the results of the surveying that City Parks Foundation is now conducting in Brooklyn and in Queens.

Most of the meeting will be spent in small groups, with facilitators from City Parks Foundation, allowing everyone to suggest projects and express opinions on project ideas. Each group will report its findings to the entire group. We expect the entire meeting may take 2 – 3 hours. We will have food and beverages available.