Protecting and improving the community for the people who live and work here

Essentially Sector B is Sara Roosevelt Park and two or three (East/West) streets beyond it.

Find out more here (including a map)

With appreciation to Farmer Ted, The Stanton Community Supported Agriculture or CSA and the M’Finda Gardener Chicken Caregivers.

From Debra Jeffreys-Glass VP Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition

We will plant more bulbs and work on getting a water source here!

Nice to have a visit with “Uncle” before the end of summer.

And.. a big Thank you to our stalwart crew and the ROAR Festival!!

And..

Work to be done to remove broken low-brick wall that invites all kinds of misuse!

Build a Block 5^th Pct meetings Now in person. Wednesday at 6:30pm November 16, 2022

Call for location (212) 334-0711

Some of our local officers have left for promotions. We wish them well but will miss the work they have done and their hard won knowledge about this neighborhood and its people.

Local policing can make an area much safer – they know the people and can act with that knowledge.

Good luck Officers Bozzo, and Urena and now Sgt Prado. Best of luck!

and glad to have PO Tsering Dhundup and PO Jasmin Mia!

Sign the Petition to Preserve The Pit with upgrades and repairs!

Sign HERE

Thanks “Doc” for keeping track of the Park. And thank you neighbors and parkgoers!

and remember to PlayFair for Parks!

NY4P in the News  Here is the Friday morning parks news round up. 

“We cannot alone overcome the systemic failures that have maintained the status quo we know today,” writes K Webster, President of the Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition and Play Fair member. “We need our policymakers to prioritize parks equity starting with investing and centering equity in a citywide plan.”

Op-Ed | Local communities have been fighting for our parks — it’s time for the city to help (amNY, September 22, 2022)

“In 1934 a newspaper editor celebrated the opening of Sara Roosevelt Park as “the birth of a new Lower East Side.” Built to provide relief for those living in tenement housing, it was by far the largest park serving the diverse communities across the Lower East Side and Chinatown.

For decades, this park lived up to that promise.

But as the city deteriorated in the late 50’s to 70’s, the park spiraled into violence with drug and sex trafficking. Park centers closed until the neighborhood stood up to wrest it back.

Out of those ashes, along with traditional park spaces, arose the Hua Mei Bird Sanctuary, M’Finda Kalunga Garden, Golden Age Center, bocce court, turtle pond, chicken coop, and the unique ‘Pit’.

Today, the park remains an essential refuge of gardening, nature, chess and sports, playgrounds, shared resources, and celebrations honoring cultures in this stretch of the city. “

Read on here

“Our community does the work.”

Info below:

The Stanton Building Task Force was formed by the Sara D Roosevelt Park Coalition, University Settlement, Green Map System, FABnyc, and Keena Suh’s Pratt School of Design Students to return this Park building to the community’s use.

The parkhouse, built for the public in 1934, was boarded up during the City’s financial crisis of the 1970s. During the 1980’s, after neighborhood volunteers, the 5th Precinct police and local non-profits reclaimed the park from violence, murder, and drug and sex traffickers, it became storage for all of Manhattan’s parks.  Promises from the Parks Department of its return for public use date back to 1982.

It’s time to return it.

With deep appreciation for this document to Wendy Brawer and Green Map System 

– Revised December 18th 2022

(former draft proposals are kept on the website (below) – we get smarter and more informed as we talk and listen to our neighbors).

Specifically, on the proposal for Sara Roosevelt Park Hester to South Delancey:

We’ve listened to nearby residents, local organizations, gardeners, businesses, and sports users, we’ve sent out updates, used social media, and conducted one in-park tabling for ideas and to create awareness (not nearly enough).

Our proposals, as always, draft pending true community engagement.  “In-Park” outreach with no ties to gentrification histories needed.

For safety, for beauty, for public park uses, for maintaining our unique strengths and our diversity, while upgrading for even more positive use, for encouraging the neighborhood and public to see Parks as their backyards, get-away vacation spots, their air-conditioning, for for uses aligned with the needs of our neighborhoods, that do not encourage further displacement of the low-income communities of color here via gentrification:

• After a number of consultations with birders over the years: New wrought iron fence around the bird sanctuary 5-7’ tall -north end for safety, 4’ for south section with gate so there are two means of egress in an emergency. Consult birders for any changes.
• Grand St. entryway. Remove brick walls along Grand Str for maximum visibility from the street.
• South Delancey entryway Remove broken steps, create two wide accessible pathways.
• Retain community stewarded garden plots.
• Pipe a water source – for Bruckner box and water fountain.
• Remove low brick walls that front the two side plots – misused. Restore decorative gates.
• Attach two metal tables in the open walk-way areas. Visible from street to provide seating that doesn’t encourage harmful or unsanitary acts.
• Repair asphalt from Delancey to Grand, or as much as funding allows, for accessibility.
• New, brighter lighting, downward facing in the area.
• Less vital: Fix the benches along the Pit.
• Do in sections so most of the park can remain open.
• Fix drainage in Pit in southern end.
• Share the Broome Parkhouse with a local community organization or return it for full community activation.
• We are currently seeking information from those who would be most impacted but we do not have enough information on what the people of  Forsyth Hester to Grand section want/need. Such as, how would it affect their parking needs? Small businesses, the local schools, Parks Dept, and residents need to weigh in on this part of the proposal.
• We assume Parks Department will address and heed all of this.

We have a synthetic turf field in this section and are oversaturated with synthetic turf fields (used primarily by outside groups). Issues with carcinogenic materials.

More problematically, no one we spoke to, who lives (or plays) or has businesses here (for decades) had heard of this or, if they had, did not think it affected them.

In this area of SRP ‘The Pit’ is one of the only active, versatile, and well used space (by the community): The Burmese Water Festival, the New Museum, elected officials, ROAR, badminton, Tai Chi, Bike Polo, Soccer (the soccer ‘pitch’ recently painted as an East River Park mitigation), etc. As such, The Pit use makes the area safer, as does the gardening by SRPCC volunteers and the 5^th Pct’s Youth Explorers. City Relief also provides a safety on south Delancey on Thursdays.

– Revised December 18th 2022

(former draft proposals are kept on the website – we get smarter and more informed as we ask our neighbors).

revised since July 2022 SRPCC Update

Petition To Save “The Pit” and Draft Proposals for Delancey St. South to Grand St. North

Updated Draft Proposals for Upgrades & Safety Measures: Grand north to Delancey south

And Please Sign Our Petition: “Don’t Bury The Pit!” 

Draft proposal for upgrading Delancey/Broome Street/Grand section in Sara Roosevelt Park

Current Use: 4 large garden plots (one, the Hua Mei Bird Sanctuary, 3 main entryways, one Parkhouse (serving all five NYC boroughs), Park’s staff parking inside the park at Broome, a synthetic turf soccer field, and ‘The Pit’.

Entryways

-Grand Street: Open up for maximum visibility. Remove high brick walls alongside Grand to create maximum visibility from the street. Repair sloping entryway.

-Delancey Street: Renovate entryway for wheelchair accessibility. Redo plaza with permeable pavers.

Bird Sanctuary and three plots on Delancey

–Hua Mei Bird Garden: Install new 7’ wrought iron fence surrounding this garden for safety. Remove dilapidated temporary fencing to restore gate to original opening between ‘The Pit’ and the Garden to allow for two egresses in an emergency. Remove two benches nearest the Bird Garden that overlook the Pit.

–Three front gardens: remove broken low brick walls that front the side plots that are misused.

–Pipe a water source for all gardens – Bruckner boxes and water fountain.

-Seating in plaza: fasten 2 small metal tables with attached seating – close to street.

– Dept. of Sanitation install trash cans both sides of Delancey (ala ChinatownBID’s on Grand).

Preserve/Repair/Upgrade ‘The Pit’ Area: [See details of the Petition and Sign here!].

‘The Pit’ is a vital, flexible, shared and uniquely multi-use adaptive space. It’s the areas main anchor of positive use. 

Preserve the uniquely flexible Pit area – reimagined for even more flexibility.

Street soccer, ball hockey, bike polo, skateboarders, skaters, uni-cyclers. Children learn biking, Tai Chi, running track, Burmese Water Festival, New Museum, ROAR resource fair, Chinese Progressive Assoc., Stanton CSA, CB3, bike helmet giveaways, local children’s programming, movies under the stars, outdoor roller rink, with headphones piping music into participants’ ears.

1. Unclog and repair drainage in The Pit at the southern end, which has been a longstanding problem.

2. Addition of a community ceramic mural to the walls surrounding “The Pit” to emphasize it as an actively used space.

3. Installation of “Goalpher,” a 4 foot high and 6 foot wide subterranean goal system that can be opened when the community wants to play soccer, ball hockey, or bike polo, and put away underground when the community wants to use the space for any other purpose. When the goal is stored away, it is stored underground and the space can operate as if it isn’t there.

4. Return benches to the southern end and repaint benches surrounding the Pit.

5. End parking of Parks staff inside the park in the Broome area in front of the parkhouse.

6. Additional lighting to enhance late night play and all around safety.

As funding allows:

-Install permeable pavers Grand to Delancey – work in sections to allow some areas to remain open.

-Activate the Broome Parkhouse with a shared use that dynamically engages parkgoers here.

Don’t Bury “The Pit”!