March 2010 Updates

We mentioned last time that Speaker Silver suggested a gathering of our elected representatives to discuss the park and its renovation. He has come through on that promise and has scheduled a meeting with us in the very near future. Senator Squadron will be in attendance. We hope our other elected city officials or representatives from their offices can attend, too. NYC Parks & Recreation has been invited and is working to send a spokesperson.

On Sunday, May 16th, 2010, we will host a major event in the park. This will be our largest effort to help our neighbors express their opinions about Gulick Park now and what they would like to see in a future renovation. (The rain date will be the next Sunday, May 23rd, 2010.)

For an overview of this process visit this page of our site.

Because of our earlier successes, we have been selected to partner with The Hester Street Collaborative and Partnerships for Parks both of which have experience gathering community input and turning it into a presentation for park designers.

During the day of May 16 we will have several visioning stations:

1. model making, where you can create a physical version of your dream park.
2. story mapping, where you can draw and write on a large map of the park, noting your memories and hopes for the park.
3. Design tagging, a kind of scavenger hunt for labeling good and bad elements of the current park
4. Wish Objects, put your wish on a fish, decorate it, and set it into ‘the river’ toward the future park
5. Interviews, extending the Oral History Project with in-park interviews.
6. Surveys, we’ll have some specific questions to more numerically tabulate opinions about the current park and wishes for the future. This will also be on-line for those who cannot attend on the 16th or 23rd.

These events should be a lot of fun for all ages. Food, beverages, and possibly some entertainment will also be provided.

Click around our Web site for more about this visioning day or to find contact information if you wish to volunteer for this event. After the visioning day, we will collect the information and begin creating a report. At that time there will another opportunity to see the report and voice your opinions. Stay tuned.

Remember to keep an eye on the park in the coming weeks as the bulbs you planted in empty tree pits last autumn begin to pop up and bloom.

We continue to engage NYC Parks Department about further and more substantial temporary improvements and we will keep you informed as possibilities develop.

Thanks to an inquiry from Kate Louis of Partnerships for Parks, the Parks Department’s photo archive has unearthed some images of Luther Gulick Park and Playground under its first construction–back when it was known as Downing Playground.

Click on the first image on the left to open a little slide show. That first picture gives a sense of the area before the housing projects.