Thanks so much to all of you who braved the nasty weather last night to attend the Myrtle Avenue Pedestrian Plaza Community Workshop, held on February 1st at Benjamin Banneker Academy. The meeting, facilitated by AECOM, the Citys selected engineering and landscape design firm, and sponsored by DOT and DDC, was the final meeting where community members could review and provide feedback on the progress of AECOMs working designs for the reconstruction of Myrtle Avenue between Hall Street and Emerson Place.
For those of you who werent able to make it, the designs that were presented are available in PDF format (You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader, and will probably need to zoom in quite a bit. Please email us any feedback you might have and we'll forward it along to the landscape designers). The structure of the meeting was similar to AECOMs meeting in October 2010. AECOM first introduced Matthew Geller, the public artist selected for the site, and then presented their current design concept for the reconstruction, including the updated street geometry, programming diagram, materials palette for the street furniture, storm water capture concepts, and conceptual plans for the plaza's layout. The audience asked questions about everything from lighting and security and the placement of bike racks to the specific engineering for storm water plans and species of trees.
After the presentation, the 42 attendees broke into smaller groups led by AECOM team-members to mark up and draw on aerial view layouts of the street and plaza, to give specific feedback on the design and amenities of the plaza, and to make recommendations for the design team moving forward. Each group seemed to have different priorities, but a couple of often overheard comments included: moving the eastbound bus stop one block to the west, adding more street lighting throughout the area, adding more bike racks, and ensuring that the plaza didn't try to be all things to all people. Overall, community members asked many thoughtful questions and gave the design team valuable feedback to incorporate into their designs before presenting to the Community Board's Transportation Committee on Tuesday, February 15th. If you werent able to make it last night, but have pressing opinions that you want to share, it isnt too late! Please submit comments to Sarah by email sarah@myrtleavenue.org and we will be sure to pass your ideas along to the design team.
In a separate issue from the design, we also received questions and comments related to MARP/(BID)s involvement. Though MARP helped to promote last nights meeting via flyers, posters, emails blasts, and was at the meeting to welcome attendees, the meeting was facilitated by AECOM, and paid for by DOT and DDC. At this point, MARP/BID will be the ultimately maintenance partner of the plaza after it is built, so we will continue to provide a lot of input, but all local stakeholder input is just as important. The redesign and reconstruction of Myrtle Avenue between Hall and Emerson has been a long-time planning goal that originated from community meetings facilitated by MARP, and has finally been made possible through years of community outreach, fundraising, and the NYCDOT Plaza Program. As a refresher, here is a project timeline:
October December 2005
Working with Pratt Institute urban planning professors and students, MARP held a workshop open to all local stakeholders that sought to gather public perceptions of all public space on Myrtle Avenue and suggestions for improvements. With workshop findings, MARP laid out a multi-year path for both short- and long-term improvements, and formed a strategy for pursuing larger public space and streetscape improvement initiatives.
May 2006 June 2007: Planning for Public Space Improvements at Four Sites
Working with Project for Public Spaces, MARP held two public planning workshops, one each in the fall of 2006 and spring 2007, to solicit more concrete ideas for improving four specific areas along the avenue (which came from the 2005 meeting), and produced four bound documents with recommendations and conceptual plans for each site. See here for more details.
June 2007 September 2008: Assembled Capital Money for Hall to Emerson Streetscape & Pedestrian Plaza
Prior to the existence of the NYC Plaza Program, MARP raised about $3.5 million toward implementing pedestrian improvements between Hall and Emerson: About $2 million was raised in cooperation with NYC Department of City Planning from Federal CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality) funds; $1 million in capital funds were allocated from Council Member Tish James; and $500,000 in capital funds were allocated from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
September 2008: NYC Plaza Program Award and Presentation to Community Board 2
Via a competitive application process, MARP was awarded participation in the first round of the DOTs NYC Plaza Program, and DOT presented the proposed street geometry for pedestrian and safety improvements for the four blocks of Myrtle Avenue between Hall Street and Emerson Place to Brooklyn Community Board 2s Transportation Committee. The transportation committee voted 8 to 0 in favor of the proposed changes.
June 2009: NYSCA Funding Award to Support Best Practices Research
MARP received some operating support from NYSCA to complete some internal research into best practices of pedestrian plaza design, and to solicit some design ideas from the public while DOT was issuing its landscape design RFP.
August November 2009: Release of Call for Ideas
To ensure that MARP staff was well-informed about creative design concepts, best practices, and the community's priorities for the plaza, we held a call for ideas, asking professional designers and amateurs alike to contribute design concepts for the Myrtle Plaza or submit compelling photos of features from existing public spaces that might serve to influence the design of Myrtle's space.
February 2010: Designing the Myrtle Avenue Pedestrian Plaza Mini-Exhibition
MARP displayed submissions to the Call for Ideas, photos and research of public space best practices, and a large scale map of the proposed street geometry in order to collect some community feedback. About 80 community members visited to share recommendations for the programming and activities, amenities, greening, and aesthetics of the space.
October 2010: AECOM's First Community Workshop for the Myrtle Avenue Pedestrian Plaza
Using MARPs community feedback and preliminary research on the future plaza site, AECOM, the DOT-selected engineering and landscape design firm, held a meeting to gather feedback from the community for the layout, programming, design and amenities of the Pedestrian Plaza. There are 60 attendees, whose feedback AECOM gathers to inform their design.
If you have still have any unanswered questions, please feel free to call Sarah. And again, for those of you who werent able to attend, the designs that were presented are available in PDF format, and additional comments can be submitted to Sarah at sarah@myrtleavenue.org for submission to the designers.
