Help Plan The Future Of Two Parks On Carroll & Henry Streets
CARROLL GARDENS/COBBLE HILL – Carroll Gardens neighbors will have an opportunity next week to share their ideas for improvements to Carroll Park (bounded by Court, President, Smith, and Carroll Streets).
NYC Parks is hosting a visioning session at 7pm on Tuesday, February 26 across the street from the green space at P.S. 58, The Carroll School (330 Smith Street).
“If you care about Carroll Park, come out on February 26,” said Council Member Brad Lander at last Wednesday’s Community Board 6 General Board meeting. “It’s been a long time since that park has had investment…. This is an opportunity for the stakeholders of the park to come out, say what they’d like to see, and then for us to make a long-term plan which will take money and time to think about what it should be.”
Named after U.S. Senator Charles Carroll, an American Revolutionary leader and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Carroll Park is Brooklyn’s third oldest public park. Built in the 1840s as a private community garden, the green space was acquired by the City of Brooklyn in 1853 for use as a public park.
Carroll Park last had a major redesign in 1994 when $1.3 million went toward new plantings, reorganization of the play spaces, and the installation of play equipment. To maintain the historic character of the park, cast iron gates and fences were installed and the park’s Soldiers and Sailors World War I Monument (1920) was restored. Today the park features an asphalt yard for basketball, a baseball/kickball diamond, a play area with a compass-shaped spray shower, a shaded area with public restrooms, and bocce courts.
Plans for a second park redesign are happening further north. “Another community planning process is underway for the LICH parks,” Lander added. “As you know the three LICH parks are now owned by Fortis…. They let us know at one of the recent meetings that they were going to be doing work that was going to require the months-long closure of LICH Park 3 while they work on the building next door, and we said, ‘Isn’t it time then for you to come forward and work with the community to figure out what kind of work will be done in that park?'”
Located on Henry Street (at Pacific), LICH Park 3 is part of Fortis’ seven-building redevelopment project to convert several former Long Island College Hospital sites into luxury residences. Lander, Community Board 6, the Cobble Hill Association, Senator Brian Kavanaugh, and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon have formed a working group that regularly meets with Fortis to discuss the status of the contentious project. Read more about the project, named River Park by Fortis, here.
An agreement in 1995 between LICH and the NYC Parks Department requires that Fortis allow the community to provide feedback on the redesign of the park, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported.
“Last week [February 7] there was a community planning session—about 50 people in Cobble Hill came out to talk about what they want,” Lander added. “That [discussion] will be coming to the CB6 Parks Committee on March 20th so [Fortis] can present what they will be doing there, what kind of work Fortis will be funding.”
Some of the amenities discussed at the planning session include a performance space, more landscaping and green space, and handicap accessibility. Locals also requested that the developers leave the park’s existing chess tables, Brooklyn Paper reported.
Fortis will present its proposed redesign of the Henry Street park (LICH Park 3) to the Brooklyn Community Board 6 Parks Committee on Wednesday, March 20. Location to be determined.