Myrtle Avenue: Past, Present, Future
As part of the celebration of MARP's tenth anniversary, we are building a community archive to document the social, cultural and commercial life on Myrtle Avenue. This community-based project is intended to capture and document public life on the Myrtle Avenue commercial corridor by creating an archive, which involves collecting and organizing community donated materials and personal stories that document the public culture, commerce, built environment, and day-to-day life on the avenue, either from the past or present. Read more about the project or contact us online to submit your ideas for materials or to set up a time for us to record or document your stories.

Public Plaza Coming to Myrtle
Myrtle Avenue has been 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. The design phase will begin soon, so check back as we roll out plans to solicit participation and design ideas from the community. 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. Four sites along the avenue were studied in-depth, including Myrtle from Hall Street to Emerson Place, the four-block section of the commercial district with a parallel service road and single-story retail buildings. For a summary of the reports and proposed improvements, visit Placemaking and Public Space Enhancements.

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, 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 & SONYA
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. We're teaming up with SONYA to curate our third show, running from April 23-May 18, which will serve as a Prelude Exhibition for the 10th annual studio stroll.

MARP Turns 10
The Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project Local Development Corporation, or MARP, turns 10 years old in 2009. Back in the late 1990's, a number of community leaders working together as the economic development committee of our neighbor Fort Greene SNAP, decided that it was necessary to create an entirely new non-profit to explicity focus on restoring Myrtle Avenue to its former status as a major neighborhood Main Street, by cleaning up the garbage and graffiti, lowering the retail vacancy rate, improving the retail mix, and improving the condition of the building stock and streetscape. We've come a long way, and we'll be hosting a number of events this year, both small and large, to reflect on the past, present, and future of Myrtle Avenue.

Myrtle Avenue Public Art Program
The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership has launched its new public art initiative, which will bring temporary outdoor sculpture to key sites up and down the avenue. We will be working 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. Stay tuned for a soon-to-be-released RFP that will detail the program guidelines and other sites that have been selected for public art.

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)