I think last week, Jamine’s post covered most of our goals as a group very specifically. Our project design hasn’t changed, but this week we were able to use the update and proposal as a guide for how we’re currently working through our project.
A general meeting for community board 11 was held last night, and was attended by Gisella and Ashwini. Because it wasn’t specific to development in east Harlem, there wasn’t much for our group to take away to shape our design, but they noted an interesting dynamic during the meeting. They reported that the community members were given less time than city council members to speak, yet were shown much more support from other community members. El Barrio representatives do attend these meetings and made one of the brief announcements on the East River Plaza Developments. They distributed two flyers, a fact sheet and one advertising a community meeting specific to the East River Plaza Plan on March 28, which we plan on attending.
We were also able to delegate specific tasks to individual group members in order to submit the proposed deliverables. We’ll be divided between the popular education product, a case study of historical research, and a letter to Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito. We then need to come up with a more concise plan for distributing letters. Abhishek has already been working through his case study portion on Greenpoint of the analysis, and we will all use the thesis paper sent by N.E.R.V.E. as well as the class readings in order to construct a more holistic investigation. This information will be filtered down into our popular education products: a pamphlet, a flyer and a film. We’ve also found zoning permits requested by the developer of the East River Plaza.
Communication has been very successful between all group members, though we’ve found it difficult to all meet at once, which is our goal when we meet with our community contact again. We’d like to schedule a second meeting before spring break in order to discuss our PAR. All members of the group have been able to attend events, so far several community board meetings as well as meeting with our contacts.
I’ve found that eastharlempreservation.org has been an incredibly helpful resource; it’s updated nearly every day with articles particularly relevant to development within east harlem. The link to the site’s news articles is below. Their most recent article, from March 15, discusses a permit filed to build a 23 story residential development on 103rd st.
http://therealdeal.com/blog/2015/03/16/108-units-coming-to-east-harlem/
http://eastharlempreservation.org/private-development-real-estate/
They also have a section specific to the East River Plaza Development
http://eastharlempreservation.org/private-development-real-estate/east-river-plaza/
Calendar of El Barrio Unite Events:
http://www.elbarriounite.org/important-upcoming-community-events/
Amanda and All,
Thank you for the update! It sounds like you have continued to deepen your engagement in East Harlem and with your community contact, which is great. The materials you’re collecting and sites you’re visiting seem valuable, and the observations you shared from the Community Board meeting are interesting and revealing. What else are you learning? I would like to hear more (especially about how you connect this particular development project with broader issues and structure, which I’ve mentioned several times). And what else are you hoping to learn? Soon it will be time to start filtering through all the information and materials and get more focused and strategically coordinated as a group. We’ll talk about strategies for this in class next week. In the meantime, keep up the good work!
Hillary