On December 6th, 2008 the Immigrants and Parks Collaborative - Jamaica Branch, held the 5th annual Jamaica Community Tree Lighting at Rufus King Park to celebrate the holidays and community unity.

Led by Immigrants and Parks collaborative members Centro Hispano Cuzcatlán (CHC) and Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC) the celebratory holiday tree lighting and present give away was attended by over 300. The event has become an important neighborhood holiday tradition for Jamaica, and additional organizations have been brought into the fold as a consequence of the Immigrants and Parks initiative. This year, in addition to CHC's traditional leadership role in the tree lighting, fellow community groups like Cultural Collaborative Jamaica, Friends of Rufus King Park, GJDC, and King Manor Museum participated.

“The tree lighting at Rufus King Park is an important tradition for the community of Jamaica,” said Eduardo Barahona of CHC. “The event continues to bring unity to our diverse community and grow every year because of the collaboration between so many community groups.”

The event is a great example of a unique partnership between the community organizing-based nonprofit CHC and the local development corporation GJDC that could serve as a model for park-centered community development in other areas. CHC’s considerable constituency within the community - built up by years of organizing around immigration, housing, and park issues – coupled with GJDC’s 40 years of economic development and considerable financial and administrative resources make them a potent pair in tackling issues revolving around Jamaica’s most important open space. The two organizations’ complimentary strengths have contributed to improved physical conditions in Rufus King Park, a big increase in the park programming, and a decrease in tensions between various segments of the surrounding neighborhood.

Neighborhood residents paired with the resources of local business is a very potent collaboration indeed.

It’s raining today! And although most New Yorkers associate rain with inconvenience- as evidenced by broken umbrellas abandoned along the sidewalks, delayed commutes due to flooded subways and buses stuck in traffic, and wet people decked out in waterproof boots and jackets- RAIN actually provides as an essential resource for our city’s green, open spaces. Trees, plants, and grass that we all enjoy at city parks need water from RAIN to survive. So why do we still design infrastructure that keeps RAIN from the plants that need water?

The covering of our city’s land with hard surfaces- roofs, parking lots, streets and sidewalks- prevents RAIN from entering the soil and forces this resource into the sewers. Unfortunately, our sewers cannot handle the volume of stormwater runoff created by RAIN falling on hard surfaces thereby creating one of the largest pollution sources to NYC’s waterbodies, Combined Sewage Overflow. What is CSO? Runoff combines with sewage from our buildings- think toilets, sinks, showers- in a single pipe to be treated at one of NYC’s 14 wastewater treatment plants. When too much sewage and runoff enters the sewers during RAIN storms, the excess combined sewage dumps into our waterways. There are over 400 overflow points throughout NYC, contributing about 27,000,000,000 (BILLION) gallons of sewage per year!

So what does this mean for our parks? Parks along NYC waterbodies- Hudson River, East River, Bronx River, etc- are designed to keep people OUT of the water since they are currently too dirty to SWIM and FISH in. Water quality can be improved by simply viewing RAIN as a resource and sharing it with the trees, plants, and other green spaces that need them. From rain barrels and rain gardens to retrofitting tree pits and greenstreets to capture RAIN water rather then sending to sewers, small individual efforts contribute to a large benefit for all communities!

On Saturday, October 25th, 2008, the Immigrants & Parks Collaborative and the Sara D Roosevelt Park (SDR) Coalition hosted It’s My Park! Day in SDR Park. The event was a successful culmination of recent efforts to revitalize the park by involving community in park maintenance, programming, and physical improvements. It’s My Park! Day, a citywide effort to care for and celebrate New York City’s parks, is coordinated bi-annually by Partnerships for Parks. Over 200 community members of all background and volunteers from the Coalition and other community groups gathered at several locations in the park to paint playground equipment, care for street trees, plant bulbs, do general cleanup, and offer their thoughts and suggestions for the park through interactive community mapping activities.

“SDR needs big community activities like this so that people know this is one big park, not seven small parks” said a local resident who stopped to write suggestions for the future of the park on an interactive “community visioning map.” “The park is very activity oriented: it would be nice to have more space to just chill out,” said one local resident. “More trees and flowers, please! Less concrete!” offered another.

Community members at the event were not only improving and critiquing SDR Park last Saturday: they also had the opportunity to view a large-scale exhibition on the new People Make Parks Initiative, which was launched at SDR on It’s My Park! Day. This groundbreaking new initiative is a joint program of Hester Street Collaborative and Partnerships for Parks, and will expand the role of communities in park design by giving them the tools and resources they need to develop a vision for their local parks and share them with the Department of Parks & Recreation. The exhibition included People Make Parks’ major components, future plans, proposed test sites, and anticipated outcomes for under-resourced neighborhoods across the city. The exhibition also reported back to the community on plans that they have played a role in shaping for local parks, including the visioning processes for SDR Park and the Allen & Pike Street Malls.

SDR Park’s Hester Street Playground has served as a test site for participatory park design strategies and will close in January 2009 to be rebuilt according to a plan responsive to community input. SDR and the successful platform of It’s My Park! Day was therefore an ideal setting for the launch of People Make Parks. As Anne Frederick, executive director of Hester Street Collaborative and co-chair of the SDR Coalition, comments, “It’s My Park! Day provides a platform for residents, youth, and all kinds of stakeholders to have a hand and a voice in transforming their park spaces; our People Make Parks initiative will take the tools and resources that we have developed for community involvement in park improvements in the Lower East Side and Chinatown and make them accessible to neighborhoods throughout NYC.” The launch of the People Make Parks Initiative is just the beginning of an exciting series of city-wide events and participatory design processes that the Collaborative plans on being extremely active in.