Tags: FKP Talks

Tuesday night’s talk at the Arsenal by Marty Bellew was a terrific history of landfills in New York City, culminating with the story of Fresh Kills.  The context of other landfills really brought home the outsize scope of operations at Fresh Kills–no other site in the city even came close to the same acreage and garbage volume. 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues tomorrow evening, at the Arsenal in Central Park, with Martin Bellew, the man responsible for ensuring environmental compliance during the closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill. Mr. Bellew began working for the New York City Department of Sanitation in 1983 and worked his way up to oversee the closure of several of the city’s incinerators and landfills.

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues next Tuesday with a presentation by elementary school science teacher Howard Warren.  Out of sheer interest and commitment, Howard has become one of the City’s leading experts on the history and present condition of Barren Island and Dead Horse Bay, at the southeastern corner of Brooklyn. 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues as we celebrate the launch of the Oral History Projects in honor of Freshkills Park and the New York City Department of Sanitation, Monday, May 9th, at New York University.

For the past five months, a team of historians focusing on the New York City Department of Sanitation and on Freshkills Park have interviewed citizens, engineers, government officials and Sanitation workers about the labors of waste and about New York City’s most ambitious park project in 150 years.

Our thanks to Michael Marrella and the crowd who attended his lecture last week at the Metropolitan Exchange as part of our  Freshkills Park Talks series.  After starting with a brief history of the New York City’s harbors and waterways, Michael walked the audience through the process of preparing Vision 2020, the update to New York City’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues in Downtown Brooklyn tomorrow, Tuesday, February 15th, with Michael Marrella, Project Director of the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan for the New York City Department of City Planning.

Michael will be discussing Vision 2020, an update to the New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan that sets the new long-range vision for the City’s waterfront and waterways. 

Our thanks to this month’s speaker in our Freshkills Park Talks series, Dana Gumb, as well as to everyone who came out to see his talk at the Arsenal last week.  Dana explained a host of innovative approaches, implemented by the NYC Department of Environmental Protection within the Staten Island Bluebelt and other outer borough watersheds, to capture and treat stormwater as a way of restoring native habitats, beautifying neighborhoods, preventing floods and mitigating the environmental impacts of sewage overflow.

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues at the Arsenal on Tuesday, January 25th, with a talk by Dana Gumb, Director of the Staten Island Bluebelt at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.  Dana will be talking about sustainable and ecologically sound approaches urban stormwater management, through the lens of the Bluebelt, one of the most ambitious stormwater management efforts in the northeastern United States.

Thanks to the huge crowd that came out to Robin Nagle’s talk in our lecture series two weeks back.  Standing in front of a fascinating slideshow featuring many of the men and women who keep New York City clean (or–more than that–keep New York City alive, as artist Mierle Ukeles famously phrased it), Robin discussed her academic approach to Sanitation, the stigma we attach to the work San Men and Women do and some hypotheses as to how those stigmas develop and why they stick. 

We’re playing catch-up recapping some of our recent events.  Last month’s talk by Dr. Steven Handel, Director of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology (CURE) at Rutgers University, was an informative and engaging overview of Dr. Handel’s work, including a discussion of ‘ecological services’ and why urban ecology is so important. 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues on Wednesday, December 8th, with a talk by Dr. Robin Nagle.  Titled “The Twist-Tie that Binds: Garbage, New York City and You,” the lecture will recount how the City’s garbage connects New Yorkers to one another as well as to history, politics, infrastructure, and technology.

After a late summer hiatus, our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series resumes next Monday with a talk by Dr. Steven Handel, Director of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology (CURE) at Rutgers University.  CURE’s research and practice focuses on ‘ecological services’ provided by patches of native habitat in urban and other degraded areas, and how to ensure the sustainability of those services with relatively low maintenance costs.

Such a huge crowd came out to hear Peter Harnik speak in our Freshkills Park Talks/Uncommon Ground joint lecture last week!  We’re grateful to the many attendees, and to Peter, who made the trek up from Washington, D.C. and gave an interesting overview of projects happening nationwide to turn existing spaces within our cities into public parks. 

Next Tuesday evening in the Arsenal Gallery, our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues with a talk by Peter Harnik, Director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land.  He will be speaking to topics from his latest book, “Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities,” about the reclamation of a variety of urban sites—landfills, railways, rooftops, cemeteries, schoolyards, highway decks—as parkland. 

Thanks to Connie Fishman and all who attended her talk in our Freshkills Park Talks series two weeks back.  It was an entertaining and educational look at the history and development of Hudson River Park, including a look at the never-realized Westway project and its legacy in the civic discourse about the park. 

Our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues this coming Tuesday with a presentation by Connie Fishman, President of the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT).  Since 1999, HRPT has overseen the planning, construction, management and operation of Hudson River Park, which spans 550 acres—including portions of the River—along the west side of Manhattan, from Battery Park to 59th St. 

Tatiana Choulika—Project Design Manager at James Corner Field Operations for our upcoming project in the southern portion of the Freshkills Park site—gave a great presentation on that design two weeks back at the Arsenal.  Our thanks go to her and to the large crowd that came out to learn about South Park. 

Quick on the heels of our terrific if rainy lecture this past Tuesday, we’re thrilled to host another lecture in our Freshkills Park Talks series this upcoming Wednesday evening, May 26th—this time at the Arsenal, on Central Park.  We’ll be joined by Tatiana Choulika, Senior Associate at landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations, who will be presenting and discussing the design for the first phase of the Southern quadrant of Freshkills Park. 

This coming Tuesday, we’re happy to have photographer Nathan Kensinger joining us for a Staten-Island-centered follow-up to his March talk and slideshow on New York’s post-industrial waterfront.   Nathan will be presenting photos from around Staten Island, including an abandoned chewing gum factory, a partially demolished color works, rotting train stations, empty hospitals and boat graveyards.

Gothamist discovers the Witte Marine Salvage Yard, one of the largest marine scrapyards on the East Coast, along the shore of the Arthur Kill just south of the Freshkills Park site’s West Mound.  It’s a pretty spectacular and much photographed sight to see these rusted heaps—mostly tugboats and cargo ships—half sunken in the Arthur Kill, and the various plant and marine life that has made its home there.