It was your park day! Thank you.

Thank you to all who came out last Saturday and helped make Gulick Park a vibrant green space for our community! Between 150 and 200 neighbors came to participate. We went through all 50 pumpkins in the first hour–and promise to have more next year! We planted hundreds of bulbs and a half dozen new flowering bushes. The park should look better than ever next spring. We also collected a handful of oral histories, that we will work to put on our Web site.

Pictures of the day are on our Web site.

Fund raising was a great success. Congratulations to all the winners–enjoy your prizes! And thank you to all who placed a bid, bought raffle tickets, or bought a membership t-shirt. We’ll use this money to host future events, purchase planting supplies (above what NYC Parks & Rec gives us), and advocate for the renovation of the whole park.

Sam from SPiN with Barry (2nd place) and Ilan (1st place) the tournament winners.

Our first ping pong tournament was tremendous fun. Ilan Hausner took the grand prize (family SPiN membership) and bragging rights; Barry Huang took second place and the dijitalfix gift certificate. Thanks to all who played. We hope to convince the CVS on Grand and Willett to start stocking ping pong paddles and balls so we can all play more readily.

Thanks to our elected representatives who came by, Manhattan Borough President Stringer and City Council Member Margaret Chin. Both have been important supporters and funders of the capital renovation.

Activity leaders:
We need to thank Natalie from Roots & Vines for coordinating all the planting on Saturday. It was a lot of work, but everything came off wonderfully; adults and kids both had a good time planting. We look forward to seeing the fruits of this volunteering in the spring.

Annie Wachnicki from The New Museum ran the modern art activity. Fatima Glover was the day’s face painter, and Mickela Mallozzi taught the banghra dance lesson. If you would like any of their contact information for your own event, please e-mail info@gulickpark.org.

Sam Huang from SPiN helped officiate the tournament and Franck Raharinosy, owner of SPiN NYC, and Daniel Picciotto played the expo game.

We would also like to thank Christy Burke for spreading the a press release about the event.

Finally, we’d like to thank all the sponsors who donated items toward the event:

Still to come: a public meeting to share the community input collected in May about a future renovation and The Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre in the spring.

Wish us luck as we apply to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for grant money towards the restoration. This could let us begin the design process and renovate from the basketball courts west to Willett St. And, if we’re really lucky, possibly the playground, as well. If you would like to right a letter of support to be included in the application, please contact me directly.

As always, we welcome anyone who wants to volunteer, helping us organize events, activities within an event, obtain grants, lobby for capital funding, fund-raise, edit our oral history recordings into a Web presentation, or any ideas you have for Gulick Park. E-mail me or info@gulickpark.org.

If you didn’t get one of our members-only t-shirts, there are plenty more here.