Tags: Staten Island

This Wednesday evening, the Staten Island Greenbelt Nature Center hosts its annual meeting, coupled with a book launch for the recently released High Rock and the Greenbelt: The Making of New York City’s Largest Park.  The book chronicles the history of the Greenbelt’s formation.

Over the course of the various stages of its history, a wide range of professionals have spent time working on or thinking about the Freshkills Park site: sanitation workers, engineers, equipment manufacturers, scientists, policymakers, architects, designers, artists, philanthropists. There are countless layers of expertise to mine in understanding the site. 

There will be plenty of activities and fun and gorgeous scenery at Sneak Peak this Sunday, but it’s important to remember that the Freshkills Park site is a landfill because of us–all of us, and our constant production of garbage.  And it’s important to take this site as an example to act more responsibly. 

In June,  the NYC Department of City Planning and the NYC Economic Development Corporation released Working West Shore 2030, a land use and transportation planning report that provides recommendations for decision-making along the west shore of Staten Island to developers, property owners, civic stakeholders and elected officials.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXABlDk4cYU&w=507&h=370]

A clip from 2008 History Channel program “The Works” features Staten Island’s Pratt Industries, where more than half of New York City’s paper is recycled.  This is a terrific clip that explains the infrastructure required for paper collection and processing as well as spelling out the steps of paper recycling. 

On our trips through the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Lower Manhattan over the past two weeks, we’ve been happy to pass through the recently completed Peter Minuit Plaza.  The 1.3-acre plaza fronts the ferry terminal and serves as a nexus of transportation modes and public space at the tip of the island: ferry, subways, buses, bikeways, benches and outdoor tables and chairs are all present here. 

The Freshkills Park development team at the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation is in the process of designing a 3.2-mile off-road bicycle and pedestrian path running north-south along the eastern edge of the future Freshkills Park site.  We are hosting an open house tomorrow, Saturday May 14th, to talk about the project and to answer questions about it. 

Dwell profiles Freshkills Park in its March 2011 “We Love New York” issue.  Land Use and Outreach Manager Carrie Grassi features as the story’s heroine, speaking candidly about the site’s transformation.  The writing and narrative of this piece, in particular, really resonate with our experience of the site and its shifting identity: it has a storied and contentious past, yes, and it makes for a complex sell, but it is also enormously beautiful, always evolving and full of such promise that it pushes us on in support of an ambitious vision.

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 February 11th deadline is approaching for the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI)’s annual grant round for Excellence in the Arts Awards, given to individual artists and cultural organizations.

There will be eight $1,000 awards; four for music and four for public art/performance art.

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. 

We meet people all the time who have stories about Fresh Kills.  Folks who live nearby, who used to live where the landfill now is, who worked on-site, who were part of the 9/11 recovery effort, who are part of the team working on landfill closure right now. 

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/17476706]

The PBS Thirteen series The City Concealed recently featured a segment on the Staten Island Greenbelt. This 2,800-acre continuous corridor of green space provides a host of natural recreational opportunities–including some of the best and most serene hiking in New York City–and acts as a refuge for native wildlife. 

We’ve recently added a series of  high-resolution aerial photographs of the Fresh Kills region to the Freshkills Park flickr stream, displaying the incredible transformation that the West Shore of Staten Island has undergone since 1943 (landfill operations began officially in 1948). 

The Staten Island Advance profiles the Staten Island Transfer Station (SITS), where 750 tons of the island’s garbage is trucked every day, compacted, containerized and sent out on a seven day journey by rail to Lee County Landfill in Bishopville, South Carolina.

The Greenbelt Conservancy is hosting a guided night hike in High Rock Park, this Sunday evening, August 22nd.  The 2,800-acre Staten Island Greenbelt is some of the most densely forested and wild-feeling public space in New York City, and 90-acre High Rock is one of the gems in its crown. 

Artist Tattfoo Tan will lead bike tour of Staten Island community gardens this Saturday, July 24th, hitting Castleton Hill Moravian Church community garden and the Joe Holzka Community Garden. Attendees are encouraged to wear a helmet and bring plenty of water. 

Thanks to all who joined our field trip last Friday, and especially to Tim and Heather at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center for so graciously guiding us through all that the Center does.  They gave us a history of the site (which was formerly the Mohlenoff family farm, itself a storied place) and its operations, explained their Foundation Seed production, soil preparation, seed cleaning, storage and banking, as well as greenhouse operations. 

The New York City Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy (WAVES) is a citywide initiative, begun in January, to update the 1992 comprehensive plan for the development and preservation of the City’s 578 miles of shoreline.  There are two components of the initiative: the physical plan (Vision 2020: The NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan) the generation of which is being shepherded by the Department of City Planning (DCP), will focus on creating long-term guidelines for land-use along the waterfront; the Waterfront Action Agenda, a set of high-priority initiatives unfolding over the next three years, will be generated by a group of stakeholders and agencies led by the City’s Economic Development Corporation.

The third annual ART by the Ferry Festival runs this weekend and next in Staten Island.   Offerings will include visual arts, music, performance art, street performers, circus acts, crafts, literary readings, workshops and local food.  Everything takes place within a few blocks of the St.