2008-02-04

Endangered Coney Island Community Gardens

Update 2008.02.05: Added link to More Gardens! Web site. This is one of the topics on the agenda for their general meeting this Thursday evening. See my Google Calendar in the sidebar for details.


Community Gardens in Coney Island. Map Credit: OASIS
Map of Community Gardens in Coney Island

West of the subway stations and main attractions at Coney Island lie several community gardens, shown in light green on the map above. City community garden activists have identified three of them, highlighted on the Google Map below, as critically in danger of being lost to development.


View Larger Map

These three endangered gardens are under the jurisdiction of NYC's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). They do not have the protection conferred to most other community gardens in New York City by transfer to Parks or purchase by the Trust for Public Land.

Surf Side Garden
2829 Surf Avenue, corner of West 29th Street

Unity Tower Tenant Association
1917 Surf Avenue, corner of West 20th Street
Founded in April 1993

Senior Citizens Block Association of Mermaid Ave
2917 West 20th Street, between Surf and Mermaid Avenues

Links

More Gardens!
Gardens To Close as Coney Prepares for Building Boom, Brooklyn Eagle, March 5, 2008

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

During beach season, I usually park on West 29th and Surf, so I am a little acquainted with the people who take such loving care of the Surf Side Garden. What can be done to help them keep their beautiful garden?

Sincerely, Deborah Matlack (Bay Ridge)

Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener) said...

Deborah: Two things you could do:
1. Attend Thursday evening's More Gardens! meeting. The details are in my Google Calendar in the sidebar.
2. Email me and I can give you contacts for the gardens. My email is in my profile.

Unknown said...

Hello, my name is Daisy and I was looking at this blog post. I am a journalism major and I wanted to do an article on the Coney Island Community Gardens but I was unable to contact the gardeners or anyone that is associated with them. I have tried looking for your email and I was not sure of how to find it. Please respond, thank you.

Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener) said...

Daisy: My direct email is in human-readable form in my profile. I don't make it machine-readable to reduce spam.

I have no direct contacts with anyone from the Coney Island community gardens. You can find contact information for community gardens on GreenThumb.