Public Employee Press

This park is really green

By JANE LaTOUR

Creating a new urban landscape takes a talented team of experts with technical skills and imagination. The restoration and redesign of Brooklyn's Canarsie Park, completed last year, began with a wish list from the community, elected officials and Parks Dept. managers.

They asked for a natural area with walking paths and lighting, picnic tables, a cricket field and a maintenance facility.

The park's eastern area was created in the 1800s with sports fields and tree-lined paths. The western section, originally the north shore of Jamaica Bay, was filled in with sand from Rockaway Beach to build the Belt Parkway in the 1930s. In the 1950s, the military put in a launch pad for antiaircraft missiles and in the 1990s, the Sanitation Dept. used some of it for composting. The conservation-minded Parks team used the leftover 7,000 cubic yards of asphalt millings and 15,000 cubic yards of compost in constructing the new park.

"I was inspired by the long sweep of the meadow in Central Park," explained lead Landscape Architect Katherine Bridges as she led a tour of the new park. "The land was so flat that we built the hill and put in the paths to add dimension."

Erosion control built in

Now there are undulating walkways, a sweeping expanse of mown meadow, grasslands, woodlands and forested wetlands, with over 90 kinds of trees and shrubs and 100 varieties of wildflowers. The park is environmentally sustainable, with erosion control measures such as areas bounded by range fence, which are not to be mown at all, and on-site retention of all storm water, with no hookups to outside sewers.

The team of experts who worked with Bridges - mainly members of Local 375 - included Environmental Engineer Tohamy Bahr, Electrical Engineer Magary Aime, Resident Engineers Vladimir Biba, Robin Bergfors on planting, Hydrologist Eric Rothstein. Restoration Specialist Sven Hoeger, Ikuko Nishimura, Tom Cleveland, Stacia Tull and Emmanual Thingue.

"In the New York City Parks Department, we have one of the premier design teams in the country," said Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 Secretary Jon Forster. "Our members consistently design and direct the building of beautiful, innovative, and inclusive parks throughout this City. But their work will go to waste unless the city makes the budgetary commitment to maintain these true works of art."

Now on a summer's evening, Brooklyn residents can play cricket, listen to concerts at the Music Pavilion, work out on the exercise trail, or explore the meandering pathways among the integrated ecosystem of shrubs, wildflowers and trees that grow alongside the fields of barley, buckwheat and oats.