Myrtle Public Plaza
Myrtle Avenue was selected by DOT in the first round of the NYC Plaza Program, with our plan to build a public pedestrian plaza between Grand Avenue and Emerson Place on two blocks of the existing service road. As we wait for the professional design team to be assigned to the project by the City, we issued a Call for Ideas to gather and exhibit as many of your ideas and images as we can, which will all be used to help inform the plaza's design phase from the very beginning. While the deadline for submissions has passed, please feel free to continue to submit ideas. There will be future opportunities to participate as well, via community design charrettes, which will be held over the next year once the design team is in place. The pedestrian plaza is the result of a multi-year community planning process that began in the fall of 2005, where improving the avenue's public spaces became a major emphasis as individuals expressed their desire to have great public spaces to sit, eat, relax, people-watch, and to otherwise create a better sense of place.

Myrtle Avenue Public Art
The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership's public art initiative, which brings temporary outdoor sculpture to key sites up and down the avenue, was launched in summer 2008. We work in collaboration with the NYC Parks Department, the New York City Housing Authority, and the NYC Department of Transportation, to find sites for the sculptures on open space, parks, or sidewalks that are owned or regulated by these agencies. The Tree Hugger Project kicked-off our new initiative, with three pieces installed at the green street triangle at the Myrtle and Carlton intersection, and one large piece installed on the grounds of the Ingersoll Houses between Prince and Navy. Responses to our Request for Proposals for additional temporary public art, for up to 12 different sites along Myrtle Avenue, are accepted on a rolling basis.

Re-Imagine the Space Under the BQE
The Storefront for Art and Architecture brought Spacebuster, a mobile inflatable art installation, to Wallabout on Saturday, April 25th, 2009, to help us kick off a community planning process for the future of the area under the BQE. Spacebuster, created by the Berlin-based architecture collective raumlaborberlin, is designed to temporarily occupy open urban spaces such as squares, parking lots, and green spaces with a primary function to serve as a location for community events. Check out photos and and ideas from the workshop, and contact us online to submit your ideas for short- and long-term physical improvements, temporary or permanent programming ideas, or anything you think can enhance the space.

Myrtle Windows Gallery
For one month at a time, four times a year, ten storefronts on Myrtle Avenue between Clinton and Hall will convert part of their storefronts into the Myrtle Windows Gallery, an open-air art gallery that ‘breaks down the walls’ of the traditional private art gallery to bring two-dimensional art to the public arena via the storefront window, where it is accessible to anyone simply walking down the street. The initiative helps bring together local artists, local businesses, and the broader community in a dialogue about art in public spaces.

Home Grown & Locally Owned
If there's one thing Myrtle Avenue has an abundance of, it's independent, locally owned businesses. Our new marketing campaign, Home Grown & Locally Owned, features postcards and ads of 18 local businesses in this first phase of the campaign. From your family-owned hardware store to your mom and pop cafe to your friendly neighborhood mechanic, Myrtle's merchants are your neighbors in business, and the entire community benefits when our commercial districts thrive. If you haven't visited the avenue lately, it's time to pay your neighbors a visit.

Help Protect the Historic Wallabout Neighborhood
Our recently completed Cultural Resource Survey of the mixed-use Wallabout neighborhood north of Myrtle Avenue and south of the Brooklyn Navy Yard proposes the creation of a residential landmark district, in addition to the landmarking of a number of notable industrial and religious complexes north of Park Avenue. Researched by noted architectural historian Andrew Dolkart, who completed the landmark designation reports for both Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, the survey is now available here in PDF format. (The file is 2.1 MB, and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)