Open to the Public: A Community-based Approach to Activating the Coney Island Pumping Station

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: A COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH FOR ACTIVATING

THE CONEY ISLAND PUMPING STATION

by

Benjamin D. Dodd

©2015 Benjamin D. Dodd

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in City and Regional Planning

School of Architecture Pratt Institute

May 2015

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: A COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH FOR ACTIVATING

THE CONEY ISLAND PUMPING STATION

by

Benjamin D. Dodd

Received and approved:

____________________________________________________ Date_______________ Thesis Advisor Signature ____________________________________________________ Thesis Advisor Name ____________________________________________________ Date_______________ Thesis Advisor Signature ____________________________________________________ Thesis Advisor Name ____________________________________________________ Date_______________ Chairperson Signature ____________________________________________________ Chairperson Name

Table of Contents

Chapter One ....................................................................................................... 2

I. Issue Statement ........................................................................................................................... 2

II. Goals and Objectives ................................................................................................................ 3

III. Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 4

A. Community-‐‑Based and Participatory Planning ..................................................................... 5

B. Historic, Iconic Buildings and Neighborhood Identity ......................................................... 10

C. Community Centers .............................................................................................................. 16

D. Community Resiliency .......................................................................................................... 27

IV. Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 29

Chapter Two ..................................................................................................... 31

Background ................................................................................................................................... 31

I. Existing Conditions .................................................................................................................. 34

Neighborhoods and Boundaries ................................................................................................. 34

Geography & Natural Features ................................................................................................. 35

Climate Change and Flood Risk ................................................................................................. 36

Vulnerable Populations .............................................................................................................. 38

Housing ...................................................................................................................................... 42

A Fragmented Public Realm ...................................................................................................... 46

Few Public Places ....................................................................................................................... 47

Recent Investment & Interventions in Coney Island ................................................................ 50

Community Assets and Emerging Opportunities ..................................................................... 51

Local Initiatives at Coney Island Creek ..................................................................................... 52

II. Site Analysis: Coney Island Pumping Station .................................................................... 54

Historical Background & Significance ...................................................................................... 54

Historic Preservation Efforts ..................................................................................................... 56

Previous Redevelopment Proposals ............................................................................................ 57

Current Conditions .................................................................................................................... 58

III. Summary of Findings and Opportunities .......................................................................... 62

IV. Case Studies ........................................................................................................................... 63

Lower East Side Ecology Center ................................................................................................ 63

Rockaway Waterfront Alliance .................................................................................................. 67

Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education ............................................................................ 70

Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center ................................................................ 73

Summary Analysis of Case Studies ........................................................................................... 76

Chapter Three ................................................................................................... 79

I. Participatory Planning Framework ....................................................................................... 80

Definition of the Problem ........................................................................................................... 81

Leadership & Facilitation ........................................................................................................... 81

Decisions to be Made .................................................................................................................. 84

Identifying Decision-‐‑Makers & Stakeholders ............................................................................ 86

II. Recommendations .................................................................................................................. 92

1. Landmarking .......................................................................................................................... 92

2. Participatory Planning RFP. ................................................................................................. 93

3. Vacant Buildings Disposal Guidelines .................................................................................. 94

4. Rehabilitation of Pumping Station. ....................................................................................... 95

5. Funding. ................................................................................................................................. 97

III. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 98

Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 99

Appendix A ..................................................................................................... 106

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Chapter One

I. Issue Statement

The historic Coney Island Pumping Station, designed by noted architect Irwin

Chanin and built in 1938, was deactivated and abandoned by the Fire

Department in the 1970s. The 4,500 square feet city-‐‑owned building is situated

along the southern shore of Coney Island Creek, a tidal estuary, and heavily

polluted former industrial waterway. Though neglected, the pumping station

stands as an iconic building in the community and a meaningful place for many

residents. Activating the station through a community-‐‑based participatory

planning process would make a long dormant community asset available for

public use. A community-‐‑based planning process would also provide

opportunities for collaboration among local residents and groups, and thereby,

increase the community’s collective capacity to plan for their future.

The City of New York has every reason to want to see this historic station put to

use by the local community. Coney Island is geographically isolated from the

city’s major commercial and employment areas, home to large minority and

senior populations and its residents face higher than average levels of poverty

and unemployment. Previous City-‐‑led interventions have targeted Coney

Island’s tourism and business sectors, and largely failed to address the

immediate needs of its residential population. Furthermore, with respect to

equity, public indoor spaces for recreation, socializing and promoting democratic

participation are scarce in Coney Island compared to the rest of the city. Finally,

in the wake of Hurricane Sandy’s devastating flooding in 2012, FEMA funding

has begun streaming into the community, presenting a rare opportunity to invest

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in the social and physical resiliency of New York’s low-‐‑income and minority

waterfront communities.

II. Goals and Objectives

This thesis proposes the activation of the Coney Island Pumping Station to meet

community needs using a community-‐‑based approach that could be the first step

in a strategy for helping Coney Island NYCHA tenant association leaders

overcome their differences, combine forces with other groups to advocate for the

community and plan for a more sustainable, resilient community. The first

objective of the study is to review the academic literature on four subjects

deemed relevant to the goal of the thesis. The second objective is to present an

analysis of existing conditions in Coney Island, with an emphasis on the Coney

Island Pumping Station. The third objective is to document case studies in which

city-‐‑owned buildings have been dedicated to or repurposed for public use. The

fifth objective is to propose a community-‐‑based, participatory planning process

framework for activating the Coney Island Pumping Station, including

leadership/facilitation scenarios and identifying major stakeholders. The final

objective is to outline a set of recommendations for activating city-‐‑owned

landmark buildings in general, and the Coney Island Pumping Station

specifically.

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III. Literature Review

In the following section, I survey four key areas of scholarship pertaining to the

goal of this thesis—activating the Coney Island Pumping Station through

community-‐‑based planning: (1) community-‐‑based, participatory planning; (2)

landmark buildings as anchors of neighborhood identity; (3) public community

and recreation centers; and (4) social or community resiliency.

Community-‐‑based, participatory planning most often refers to planning that

seeks to empower and organize historically marginalized communities to

directly influence the future of their communities. The need for such planning in

Coney Island is all the more crucial given that the City’s previous revitalization

efforts have largely been top-‐‑down, and provided minimal opportunities for

meaningful public participation.

The second section examines the role that historic, iconic buildings play in

creating and maintaining a sense of neighborhood identity and place attachment

by drawing on academic disciplines ranging from historic preservation to place

studies and environmental psychology. Studies regarding how place identity

and attachment are formed are few, and no studies were identified that

specifically address the link between place identity and historic, iconic buildings,

yet scholars across multiple disciplines agree that place attachment is a powerful

emotional bond, even without knowing exactly how these bonds are formed.

The third section traces the historical development of community centers in the

United States, which paralleled the emergence of the social work profession and

the settlement house movement of the early 20th Century. In recent years, several

city-‐‑owned facilities in New York City have been converted to community

5

centers, which offer a range of different programs to their local communities.

Noting this trend, I felt this subject warranted further inquiry as one probable

scenario for the Coney Island Pumping Station, a facility that could

accommodate a broad range of uses.

In the final section of the literature review, I explore the subject of social, or

community, resiliency, a topic largely missing in official post-‐‑Sandy planning

discussions in New York City. Coney Island’s physical vulnerabilities are by now

obvious, but they are compounded by weak social structures in the community

that have gone unaddressed. To protect residents of vulnerable communities,

disaster-‐‑planning experts urge strategies that account for both the physical and

social dimensions of resiliency. Engaging community residents through

community-‐‑based planning is one strategy for strengthening social resiliency in

the community, but the use of the Pumping Station itself could also serve to

build resiliency through climate education or job training programs.

A. Community-Based and Participatory Planning

Definition

Community-‐‑based planning (CBP) is a progressive planning approach which

deliberately seeks to advance the interests of poor and marginalized

communities by empowering and resourcing local residents with the technical

expertise they need to make planning decisions that affect their communities

(Kennedy, 2007). Community-‐‑based planning is distinct in its emphasis on

empowerment and local control over decision-‐‑making, and often involves

community organizing efforts. According to Wiewel et al., it seeks to “alter the

power relationships that constrain the flow of resources and opportunities to

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neighborhoods” by “mobilizing the power of numbers—residents, businesses

and institutions—to advocate, demand, negotiate and plan.” (Wiewel, Teitz, &

Giloth, 2008). In most instances, Peterman notes, “the mechanism by which

empowerment and control are achieved has been the community organization”

(Peterman, 1999). However, by the 1990’s, even government in a handful of US

cities had begun to recognize that “a planning process that begins with local

visions results in faster, less costly, more empowering, and more innovative

planning and development” (Planning for All New Yorkers: A 21st Century Upgrade

for New York’s Planning Process, 2010).

Historical Development

The community-‐‑based planning model emerged in response to the technocratic,

top-‐‑down planning of the urban renewal era, which left many poor and minority

communities disempowered and disillusioned (Kennedy, 2007; Shipley & Utz,

2012). The community-‐‑based approach was devised as a means of bringing

decision-‐‑making back to the community level and holding professional planners

accountable (Kennedy 2007). The settlement house movement of the early

twentieth century acted as a precursor to community-‐‑based planning (Peterman,

1999) in that it sought to “strengthen individual and neighborhood assets, and

build collective capacity to address community problems,” the settlement

tradition offered a truly community-‐‑based, comprehensive approach to

achieving social change”(Koerin, 2003).

Theory & Rationale

Much of the theory behind CBP is based in the seminal work of Paul Davidoff,

who argued that democratic principles demanded a more plural form of

planning than was commonly practiced at the time. Rather than requiring a

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single public agency to both create a plan and then conjure up alternatives as a

sort of academic exercise, Davidoff envisioned a model in which outside interest

groups, supported by like-‐‑minded planners, advocate alternatives to a public

agency’s plan, thereby “forcing public agencies to compete with other planning

groups to win political support.” Davidoff’s premise was that because all

planning decisions are value-‐‑laden, “appropriate policy in a democracy [must

be] determined through a process of political debate,” and therefore, “must

operate so as to include rather than exclude citizens from participating in the

process” (Davidoff, 1965).

Competing Notions of Participation

Although public participation grew out of the community-‐‑based planning

tradition, Davidoff’s critique of the rationalist planning tradition, along with the

work of other activists like Jane Jacobs, proved so influential that public

participation has today become “almost universal in planning practice” (Shipley

& Utz, 2012). Today, community-‐‑based planning is practiced in communities

across the economic spectrum. However, not all citizen participation is created

equal. As the practice has become more widespread, which methods to use and

how to gauge their effectiveness has been greatly debated.

Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation

By 1969, Sherry Arnstein had observed within three federal programs multiple

levels of participation (and nonparticipation) all employing the rhetoric of

“citizen participation.” Her now famous eight-‐‑rung ladder (see Figure 1-‐‑1)

provided a rubric against which participation programs could be evaluated

based on the degree of power “have-‐‑not citizens” were granted in “determining

the end product.” The bottom two levels (manipulation and therapy) include

8

efforts intended to merely educate or cure participants, which she called

“nonparticipation.” Levels 3-‐‑5 (informing, consultation and placation) contain

various degrees of tokenism, allowing citizens to be heard, but without any

guarantee their views will be heeded. At the top of the ladder, Arnstein placed

degrees of citizen power (partnership, delegated power and citizen control). In

these scenarios, have-‐‑not citizens are given either negotiating power, a majority

of decision-‐‑making seats, or full managerial power over local decisions(Arnstein,

1969). Almost fifty years later, even as the number of participation methods and

strategies has proliferated, Arnstein’s ladder continues to beg the foundational

questions of motivation and power distribution within public participation

processes.

Participatory Planning Programs

In his Public Participation Handbook, James Creighton, of the International

Association for Public Participation, identifies and describes 53 public

participation techniques, dividing them into two categories: those for getting

information to the public (18), and those for getting information from the public

(35). He argues that no single technique fits all circumstances, and provides a

detailed method for first determining the objective of the public engagement

process. The objective then informs the development of a public participation

program, which may make use of multiple techniques as participation objectives

shift at different stages of the process (Creighton, 2005).

Evaluating Participatory Planning

In fact, participation techniques vary so widely in practice, and yet, lack the

necessary tools for measuring their fairness and effectiveness, that the very

concept is contested by some (Day, 1997). Day identified a lack of consensus in

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the literature regarding what CP looks like in practice and what it aims to

accomplish, which makes it difficult to compare one participation method to

another.

Among government agencies especially, public hearings are commonly used to

fulfill public participation mandates, but frequently absent are any requirements

for government to respond to the public’s input. According to Innes and Booher,

“legally required methods of public participation in government decision

making in the US do not work…and yet they stay in place despite all that

everyone knows is wrong with them.”

Authenticity

Echoing Arnstein, one study of citizen participation in public administration

posited that all too often, an overreliance on administrative processes and

procedures puts distance between citizens and the issues at hand. Their diagram

shows three components of public participation: administrative structures and

processes, the administrators, and the citizens. In the conventional model,

citizens are kept at the periphery, limited to a role of judging between

predetermined alternatives. They suggest that more authentic participation could

be achieved, by “placing citizens next to an issue,” where “they have an

immediate and equal opportunity to influence the processes and outcomes.” This

moves citizens from a role of “judging” to one of “decision-‐‑making” (King,

Feltey, & Susel, 1998).

Community-Based, Participatory Planning in New York City

Although the community-‐‑based planning approach was forged in the

neighborhoods of New York City, advocates have struggled for decades to see its

practice gain wider acceptance. Section 197a of the City’s charter makes

10

provision for community boards and organizations that wish to develop

community-‐‑based plans. Although funding and capacity for such planning is

largely lacking at the community board level, some communities have spent vast

amounts of time and resources, with high levels of public input, to get their plans

adopted only to see them go unrecognized or unheeded by city officials.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community

members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. PB was launched

in 2011 by four New York City Councilmembers, and over a four-‐‑year period,

has been adopted in 24 council districts. In participating districts,

councilmembers offer one million dollars or more of their discretionary funds for

community residents to allocate toward a slate of community projects. The 2015

PB campaign gave city residents decision-‐‑making power over $25 million. While

this amount represents only a small fraction of the City’s annual budget, the

practice’s rapid acceptance suggests this form of democratic participation is in

high demand, and could be scaled in the future.

B. Historic, Iconic Buildings and Neighborhood Identity

Over the last half-‐‑century, architectural and aesthetic concerns have dominated

mainstream historic preservation discussions and decisions in the United States.

Appeals to preserving “cultural heritage” are common, but in practice, it is often

the physical and aesthetic characteristics of buildings that take center stage

(Ryberg-‐‑Webster & Kinahan, 2013). Kaufman (2009) has argued that this

elevation of architectural criteria overlooks and excludes the many ordinary

buildings that serve as cultural landmarks in their communities. He defines

cultural landmarks as, “places that help anchor a community’s cultural identity

by attaching historical memory to place” (page 47).

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In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs devoted an entire

chapter to addressing “The Need for Aged Buildings.” In it, she argued that old

buildings (mixed with newer buildings) were an indispensible factor in the

growth and vitality of neighborhoods.

“Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them. By old buildings I mean not museum-‐‑piece old buildings, not old buildings in an excellent and expensive state of rehabilitation—although these make fine ingredients—but also a good lot of plain, ordinary, low-‐‑value old buildings, including some rundown old buildings” (Jacobs, 1961, p. 187).

Here, Jacobs suggests that the architectural quality of old buildings should not be

the only, or even the primary consideration in preservation. Rather, old

buildings—even those in poor condition—are also important for the low value

they provide. She continues,

“Well-‐‑subsidized opera and art museums often go into new buildings. But the unformalized feeders of the arts–studios, galleries, stores for musical instruments and art supplies, backrooms where the low earning power of a seat and a table can absorb uneconomic discussions–these go into old buildings. Perhaps more significant, hundreds of ordinary enterprises, necessary to the safety and public life of streets and neighborhoods, and appreciated for their convenience and personal quality, can make out successfully in old buildings, but are inexorably slain by the high overhead of new construction” (Jacobs, 1961, p. 188).

In contrast to most contemporary studies which tend to measure the economic

value of preservation purely in terms of economic return (Mason, 2005), Jacobs

makes an “uneconomic” case for preserving old buildings. Old, worn down

buildings, she says, offer affordability, which supports a more diverse economy,

providing ideal space for the noneconomic sectors like the arts as well as other

essential enterprises. In refusing to equate the “highest and best use” with the

highest economic return, Jacobs is implicitly arguing for the social value of

commercial diversity, which is made possible by old buildings.

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Place Identity & Attachment

According to Kaufman, however, our growth-‐‑obsessed society’s treatment of

place as a commodity has precluded discussion of preservation’s social value.

“We do not hear explanations of how places nurture people and communities,

and why their persistence is valuable” (Kaufman, 2009, p. 30). Kaufman’s work

represents a rare convergence between preservation scholarship and an

emerging field known as place studies, which seeks to illuminate the complex

social and cultural value of places.

Place attachment is a multi-‐‑dimensional concept—first developed by human

geographers and phenomenologists and adopted more recently by

environmental psychologists—to describe the relationship between people and

places, and the meanings and connections fostered by their interaction.

Relph (1976) and Tuan (1974) are often cited as the earliest and most influential

theorists of place. Place theorists today largely agree that place attachment is an

“emotional bond or link that people share with specific places” (Kyle, Jun, &

Absher, 2013; Low & Altman, 1992). This bond also occurs at the cognitive level

through knowledge, beliefs and memories of places, which may influence one’s

notion of self, or “place identity” (Manzo, 2005). At the behavioral level, place

attachment is seen in actions aimed at “maintaining closeness” to significant

places (Hernández, Carmen Hidalgo, Salazar-‐‑Laplace, & Hess, 2007; Scannell &

Gifford, 2010) such as territorialism (Altman, 1975). Place attachment has been

studied in contexts such as the transition from home to college (Chow & Healey,

2008), and religious pilgrimage (Low & Altman, 1992).

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Place Attachment & the Built Environment

Preservationists have made wide use of place theories in claiming that the

unique scale and characteristics of historic neighborhoods and buildings

“contribute to a city’s sense of place” (Ryberg-‐‑Webster & Kinahan, 2013, p. 131),

“where stories of the past can be told in an environment that illustrates them,”

and where ”landmarks can become the focus of local identity and pride (Dedek,

2014, p. 65). But very few of these claims have been tested in any meaningful

way.

Although no studies were identified that specifically address how historic

buildings inform sense of place, the physical environment (both natural and

built) is believed by many theorists to be a significant factor in one’s sense of

place. Some have suggested place meanings and identities become less plausible

as the physical landscape on which they are based changes (Relph, 1976).

Stedman (2003), in one of the only attempts to measure this relationship, found

that place meanings are not purely social constructs, as some have suggested, but

that elements of the physical landscape are associated with experiences, which

inform the symbolic meanings underpinning place attachments. “The physical

landscape may change to such a degree that preferred meanings become

untenable or are maintained only through active effort” (Stedman, 2003, p. 683).

Threats to Place Attachment

Social psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove (1996) has argued that the

relationship between people and their significant places is so important, that

interruption and disturbance of these relationships leads to psychiatric disorder,

in the form of disorientation and alienation. In quoting the earlier work of British

14

psychiatrist Hugh Freeman (1984), Fullilove affirms the crucial link between the

psychological dimensions of place attachment and the physical environment.

“To obliterate a community’s landmarks and replace familiar environments with the tasteless impersonality of most present-‐‑day buildings seems like a recipe for social disaster in the long run, but it remains the task of scientific enquiry to demonstrate these dangers in a way that can influence the political process…There would seem to be an urgent need to pay attention to the psychological conservation of the environment—retaining familiar landmarks and forms of housing (Freeman, 1984, p. 13).

Dr. Fullilove’s extensive body of work focusing on the socio-‐‑psychological effects

of urban slum clearance programs on African American communities represents

a convincing response to Freeman’s call for further inquiry. She shows how

destructive change and displacement in many urban communities undermined a

sense of familiarity and belonging, and led to increased incidence of mental

illness.

Fullilove points out not only the psychological consequences of disruptive

change that undermine sense of place, but also the systemic causes of such

change like federal urban renewal policies. Today, especially in global cities like

New York, the continued concentration and segregation of wealth creates a grave

imbalance between areas that become nodes of power and those that are left

abandoned and disconnected (Sassen, 2013). In this context, change at the

neighborhood level is increasingly controlled and driven more by the global

magnates of capital and less by local communities. Kaufman argues that this

imbalance of power further threatens to undermine sense of place.

“The issue about places is not simply about whether change or stability is better… Rather, it is fundamentally a question of power and equity: of who gets to choose. In a perfect world, everyone would be able to choose stability or change in their environment. In reality, most people have little control over the fate of places they care about, whereas, by contrast, a few people—all too often outsiders—have the power to disrupt everything, sometimes ordering unwanted change, sometimes blocking desired improvement. The

15

situation is manifestly unfair, and it suits the interests of the powerful few to downplay the value of place affection and stewardship.” (Kaufman, 2009, p. 32)

Reinforcing Place Identity

Fullilove (2013) describes how a building in the Hill District of Pittsburgh was

designed to narrate the neighborhood’s history and reinforce its identity, and in

doing so, eased the weight of oppression and diffused much of the tension in the

community concerning gentrification. The Legacy building was proposed as part

of a strategy to stitch back together the predominantly African American

community that had been devastated by urban renewal starting in 1955. Despite

decades of decline and the displacement of thousands of residents, the

neighborhood maintained a rich history of jazz music and performance. To

recognize this cultural asset, the building’s designers had the names of twelve

jazz greats, voted on by local residents, inscribed in stone panels along the

building’s exterior. These panels, along with other architectural features,

demonstrated a respect and recognition of the neighborhood’s historical

significance that had long been lacking, and helped strengthen and stabilize the

neighborhood’s identity.

Place Attachment & Community Revitalization

Brown, Perkins, & Brown (2003) found that attachment to place is associated

with higher levels of social cohesion and social control and less fear of crime.

Residents with strong emotional bonds to place are more likely to participate in

community improvement and revitalization efforts, but that place attachments

decline with neighborhood deterioration. Interestingly, renters and those with

poor housing conditions showed lower place attachment to home, but not lower

place attachment to the block/neighborhood (Brown et al., 2003, p. 268).

16

While the Brown’s study establishes the importance of place attachment for

community stability and revitalization efforts, far less has been written on the

related connection between historic preservation and revitalization, “including if

and how community developers use historic resources (and why or why not)

and the relationship between building community capacity and capitalizing on

physical assets such as historic structures” (Ryberg-‐‑Webster & Kinahan, 2013, p.

128).

C. Community Centers

That community centers have a role in contemporary public life is rarely

disputed; but what exactly that role is can be difficult to articulate. One of the

main challenges lies in quantifying, much less evaluating, a phenomenon that

exists in a wide-‐‑range of forms. In a typical metropolitan region, one might find

any number of community health centers, youth recreation centers, senior

centers, after school centers, or centers serving several of these purposes. How

such centers are funded and managed adds further complexity to the discussion.

A great deal of the academic literature on community centers is tied to the field

of social work. But scholars of criminal justice, public health and urban studies

have also studied the role that community centers play in communities. The

following section will explore how community centers evolved historically,

highlight the most common programmatic functions they have served within

local communities, and show how methods for evaluating their effectiveness

vary widely and are largely tied to the service(s) they provide.

Historical Development

The modern concept of a community center traces its origins to the settlement

house movement of the late nineteenth century. Modern life in the new

17

industrial cities of Europe and America was especially challenging for the poor

and working class immigrants who had come seeking factory jobs but often

faced overcrowded housing, poverty, disease and lack of educational

opportunity. Settlement houses emerged as a neighborhood level response to

these issues.

The defining feature of the settlement model was the relocation, or “settling,” of

well-‐‑to-‐‑do, often educated, people among the urban poor (R. F. Smith, 2008;

Trolander, 1986). Judith Trolander (1986) explained these settlements as “a

meeting ground where the well-‐‑to-‐‑do as board members and volunteers and the

poor as clients could come together to try to solve social problems and bridge

class differences.” Settlement residents and volunteers would provide education,

arts and recreation, as well as help residents to form organizations that could

improve their lives, and in the process, they would gain valuable insights into

poverty and its causes (Husock, 1993).1

One of the main issues that settlement workers and other social reformers

worked to address was the lack of public space and opportunity for constructive

recreation and socialization, which were seen as the building blocks of a healthy

neighborhood and democracy. “Tenements blended families into masses, with

neither occupation, nor recreation, nor even common meeting grounds to define

and integrate them as coherent social units” (Kirschner, 1980). Overcrowded

dwellings forced individual family members to recreate and socialize outside the

1 While the primary focus of settlement houses was engaging individuals and families at the local level, settlement leaders often drew on what they were learning to advocate for social reforms. Many of the Progressive Era’s leading voices for child labor laws, urban parks, women’s suffrage and public health spent time in settlement houses (Davis, 1984; Koerin, 2003; R. F. Smith, 2008; Trolander, 1986).

18

home, often in commercial establishments like dance halls, movie houses, and

saloons.

To the reformers, the commodification of recreation was problematic both

morally—alcohol consumption and motion pictures were largely seen as

unproductive and unwholesome forms of entertainment—and politically,

representing a failure of government to provide alternative spaces and programs.

Recreation, they believed, “was a public responsibility, and therefore ought to be

carried on in a public or quasi-‐‑public facilities” like settlement houses, church

halls, and especially, public schools (Kirschner, 1980).

These concerns over public space coalesced during the second decade of the 20th

Century, as the growth of the settlement house movement was beginning to slow

and reformers were recognizing the limits of the model to accomplish its stated

objectives on a large scale. By 1907, a growing number of voices had begun

calling for greater use of public schools in the after school hours (Fisher, 1994).

They found it disturbing that use of school facilities was limited only to school

hours at a time when cities were facing so great a magnitude of social ills

represented a failure of government to understand and address the needs of

citizens.

Presenting at the National Conference of Charities and Correction in 1914, one

settlement house director, Harriet Vittum, described a situation in her Chicago

neighborhood in which a young man and his three brothers were convicted of

murder. While the boy’s mother admitted being unaware of her son’s social

activities, Ms. Vittum blamed not the boy’s mother (who was raising eleven

children), nor the dubious commercial establishments where the boy had spent

time, but with the government’s failure to provide adequate alternatives. “The

19

saloon and dugout under the viaduct had always been open and had beckoned

to [the young man], but the splendid schoolhouse right across the street from

[his] home had been closed to him since he left it at 14 to go to work.” In Ms.

Vittum’s view, the young man, “did not choose the saloon and dugout—Chicago

chose them for him” (Vittum, 1914).

School facilities, reformers argued, if used by a wider range community residents

and associations, could provide needed correctives to many of the social ills of

the city. Clarence Perry, who developed the “neighborhood unit” concept in

planning, spoke of using public schools as a means to replicate and multiply the

activities of settlement houses (Gillette, 1983; M. K. Smith, 2002). Gillette credits

Perry’s Wider Use of the School Plant, published by the Russell Sage Foundation in

1911, with providing much of the impetus for the community center movement

that would follow. Its vision was encapsulated in the popular slogan, "ʺevery

school house a community capital and every community a little democracy."ʺ

Perry and other reformers saw social centers as “a kind of department store of

constructive recreation” tailored to every age and cultural group in a given

neighborhood (Kirschner, 1980). This neighborhood hub concept is also reflected

in the writings of Clinton Childs, who organized New York City’s first school

center at PS 63 in the Lower East Side. He wrote,

“A community clubhouse and Acropolis in one; this is the Social Center. A Community organized about some center for its own political and social welfare and expression; to peer into its own mind and life, to discover its own social needs and then to meet them, whether they concern the political field, the field of health, of recreation, of education, or of industry, such community organization is necessary if democratic society is to succeed and endure” (Childs, 1912 quoted by Fisher, 1994).

In Childs’ understanding, a process of community organization and democratic

participation was to inform the programming of each social center. Similarly,

20

Frederic Howe envisioned the community center as “a people’s clubhouse”

where “autonomous neighborhood administration […] be developed, through

which people will work out their own recreational and cultural desires”

(Kirschner, 1980). Practically speaking, this would be realized through “strong

neighborhood boards connected by key community networks and institutions”

(R. F. Smith, 2008).

Fisher (1994) documents the widespread growth and success of the early

community center movement. In 1916, a National Community Center

Association was formed, and held its first conference in New York City. Two

years later, centers were operating in 107 cities, and over the next five years the

number of community centers would grow to 240. By 1930, the City of New York

alone had more than 500 community centers. According to Fisher, this growth

represented a tremendous increase in accessible neighborhood public spaces.

On the other hand, the form of local “bottom-‐‑up” control that movement leaders

had envisaged rarely became a full reality. Both the settlement and community

center movements changed radically as the social work profession became more

established, and the need for standardization of methods and practices grew.

Social work increasingly became the purview of professionals that were less

inclined to live alongside the poor. Some have blamed this shift for perpetuating

paternalistic forms of leadership that encouraged citizen passivity rather than

participation and empowerment (Fisher, 1994; R. F. Smith, 2008; Trolander,

1982). From 1930-‐‑1960, the federal government moved toward centralized service

provision, which reduced funding for neighborhood-‐‑based service delivery. In

response, settlements and centers were forced to adapt and gear programs

around federal funding initiatives rather than local social conditions, which

21

meant programs were largely devoid of meaningful citizen involvement. Fisher’s

final evaluation is piercing,

“In neither the social settlements nor the community centers had liberal reformers built neighborhood organizations that were either democratic or effective in combatting the causes of poverty” (Fisher, 1994).

Funding

Funding for neighborhood centers comes from a mix of private and public

sources and varies according to the programs being offered by each center.

United Way often matches whatever funding is received from government

agencies, and private foundations help fund new programs. Some of the more

established centers have built up endowments or hold capital campaigns to

maintain their buildings. The war on poverty in the 1960’s increased funding to

settlements and centers that provided anti-‐‑poverty programs (Koerin, 2003), but

as the target demographic of settlements has shifted to the “persistently poor” in

recent years, they have faced an increasingly challenging funding environment

(M. K. Smith, 2002, p. 2132).

Sternberg and Sternberg’s 1971 study of community centers lamented that the

vast majority of centers currently in existence were vastly underfunded,

understaffed and poorly designed, and that memberships overwhelmingly

reflected the segregation of the larger society. Their study combined both

architectural and planning insights in anticipating how community centers of the

future might provide an answer to the social stratification of our society,

bridging the gaps between races, classes and religious groups. The model they

propose would combine four components: (1) stimulating architectural form, (2)

a gathering together of as many institutions as possible that draw people out of

22

their homes, (3) an easy transition from passive to many kinds of active

involvement, with abundant chances for people to meet and greet informally, (4)

a mixing of different types of people (Sternberg & Sternberg, 1971).

As of 1993, some 300 settlements in 80 cities continued to operate as community-‐‑

based organizations—some without “settlement” in their name (Husock, 1993; R.

F. Smith, 2008). Today in New York City, United Neighborhood Houses is an

umbrella group representing 38 settlement house organizations. Their 2013

Blueprint for Neighborhoods put forth a wide ranging policy agenda aimed at

lifting up struggling, low-‐‑income families in NYC. This suggests that though the

organizational structures have changed, the mission of settlement houses today

hues closely to that of the original movement. In fact, some have recently called

for a return to the original settlement approach to community development,

citing the formation of new settlements in Cleveland and Boston, waning federal

funding for community development programs, and the model’s ability to link

the poor and affluent (Husock, 1993).

The City of New York initiated the Beacon community center program in 1991,

which, in its first three years, turned 37 public schools in disadvantaged

neighborhoods into community centers during the after school hours, weekends

and summers. The types of programs offered through Beacon bear a striking

resemblance to those offered by the early settlements and neighborhood centers.

Today, the city funds 80 Beacon centers in the five boroughs, all of which are

operated by community-‐‑based organizations.

23

Contemporary Community Centers

The contemporary community center is largely understudied as a whole,

singular entity. Because the type of programming found at centers ranges so

widely, scholars tend to examine individual programs in isolation, but not their

collective impact. Studies of community health centers, for example, measure the

various barriers and impacts of any of a wide range of health services (e.g. cancer

prevention, mental health or drug rehabilitation), on a target population (e.g.

youth, seniors or low income residents). The focus here will be on community

centers broadly, particularly those that provide community development

programming (social equity).

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT CENTERS

Anderson, Sabatelli, & Kosutic (2007) were arguably the first to examine how

youth center involvement complemented the role of family and peer

relationships in the lives of inner-‐‑city adolescents. They surveyed over 1,400

Connecticut youth between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to determine the

influence of family connections, youth center involvement and peer support on

the teens’ overall level of adolescent adjustment, based on four indicators: 1)

achievement motivation, 2) peer self-‐‑efficacy, 3) attitudes toward school and 4)

substance use. The results showed that both family connections and youth center

involvement (staff support and participation rates) were positively related to the

first three indicators of adolescent adjustment. This provides strong evidence

that youth centers provide an important context for youth and adolescent

development. However, the most effective centers, they suggest, will (a) have

direct access to parents and can offer parents opportunities to strengthen their

parenting skills, (b) provide opportunities for young people to develop

supportive relationships with peers, (c) offer stimulating activities and

24

supportive interactions with staff in order to promote greater youth

participation, and (d) tailor programming to the different developmental stages

of young people who attend the program (Anderson et al., 2007).

In a similar study, Quane & Rankin (2006) compared the availability of youth

service organizations between poor and non-‐‑poor African American

neighborhoods and the impact of participation on formation of self concept,

academic expectations and commitment to school. While not analyzing

community centers, per se, their conclusions are highly relevant for youth

recreation and community development programming. They found that youth

participation in neighborhood based organizations is directly associated with all

three indicators. Even more, their study found that while participation rates are

expectedly higher in neighborhoods with more youth resources, “the effects of

availability are higher in more disadvantaged neighborhoods.” This not only

provides evidence in support of the work of neighborhood youth organizations,

but also speaks to “the crucial importance of such programs in high poverty

neighborhood where they appear to provide a critical resource for low-‐‑income

families and their children.” Their study identifies the need for more research

into the social context provided by neighborhood organizations, a need which

Anderson et al. (2007) sought to address.

RECREATION FACILITIES & PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

Moody et al. (2004) identified recreation facilities and parks as an understudied

topic that could be better utilized in efforts to promote youth physical activity.

Their study surveyed directors at 44 recreation centers in San Diego County and

found that girls and low-‐‑income youth were among the most difficult

populations to reach. Inadequate staffing, funding and facilities were cited as the

greatest barriers to providing physical activity programs (Moody et al., 2004).

25

Perceived availability of recreational facilities was one important factor in New

Zealand youth engaging in physical activity (Utter, Denny, Robinson,

Ameratunga, & Watson, 2006). Recreation facilities most associated with physical

activity were parks, skateboard ramps, sports field, swimming places, gyms and

bicycle tracks.) Close proximity to a youth center, however, was not positively

associated with physical activity. Scott, Evenson, Cohen, & Cox (2007) found that

perceived proximity to recreational facilities increased physical activity among

middle school girls in the U.S., regardless of the actual distance to recreational

facilities. Recreation facilities associated with the highest rates of physical activity

were dance/gymnastics halls and basketball courts. Because perception seems to

be more important than actual distance, the authors suggest that promoting or

“raising the profile” of these types of facilities may result in increased physical

activity among girls (Scott, Evenson, Cohen, & Cox, 2007).

COMMUNITY CENTERS AND LOW INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS

William J. Wilson’s (1996) When Work Disappears cites recreation centers as one

among many types of neighborhood institutions that suffer in resource-‐‑deprived

inner city black neighborhoods. Such conditions, which resulted from

macroeconomic forces and the outmigration of white residents in the 70’s and

80’s, created a downward spiral of mass unemployment and concentrated

poverty, which gradually eroded the social and economic foundation that is

necessary for a thriving institutional base. He explains,

“As the population drops and the proportion of nonworking adults rises, basic neighborhood institutions are difficult to maintain: businesses…lose patrons, churches experience dwindling numbers of parishioners and shrinking resources; recreational facilities, block clubs, community group s, and other informal organizations also suffer. As these organization decline, the means of formal and informal social control in the neighborhood become weaker.” (Wilson, 1996, p. 44)

26

Wilson shows how community centers represent one thread in the larger social

fabric of a community. Along with businesses and financial institutions,

restaurants, churches and block groups—they are “a means of formal and

informal social control.” In neighborhoods marked by high joblessness, these

institutions are difficult to maintain, and therefore, either become weak or

disappear altogether.

NEIGHBORHOOD JUSTICE AND MEDIATION CENTERS

Criminal justice scholars have explored community mediation and justice center

models, as a decentralized non-‐‑judicial alternative to the criminal court system

(Danzig, 1973). These centers, which emerged out of the justice system reforms of

the 1980’s, seek to resolve disputes and prevent violence through neutral, third

party arbitration and dialogue. Hedeen & Coy (2001) have argued that the

community mediation movement’s dependence on the court system, often

compromises the integrity of the mediation process. Improvements to the referral

process, resource development and public awareness, they argue, would make

the process more effective. Others, however, have questioned whether such an

alternative system can ever fully deliver community-‐‑controlled popular justice

(Merry & Milner, 1993).

TECHNOLOGY CENTERS

Servon & Nelson (2001) document the rise of community technology centers as

one way to address the technology and education gap among low-‐‑income urban

populations, but suggest that more public sector support is needed to bolster

these initiatives. Norris & Conceição (2004) cite studies showing the growing

importance of computer competency in gaining employment. They highlight

examples of centers that provide afterschool and weekend programs for K-‐‑12,

children, youth and adults, but also programs to help seniors learn “high-‐‑tech

27

entrepreneurial skills” and in the process, become mentors to neighborhood

youth.

D. Community Resiliency

Hurricane Sandy’s impacts in 2012 drove home the reality and threat of climate

change in New York more than any previous storm or scientific study. Since that

time, planning to make the city more adaptable and resilient has become an

urgent matter. New York City’s Special Initiative for Recovery and Rebuilding

(SIRR) report, released in June 2013, outlined a bold and innovative set of small-‐‑

and large-‐‑scale infrastructure projects that would help protect the city against

future storms. Noticeably absent from the report, however, was any plan for

strengthening the city’s social infrastructure. According to Eric Klinenberg

(2013), social infrastructure consists of “the people, places and institutions that

foster cohesion and support.”

Disaster planning experts increasingly point out the important social dimensions

of resiliency for local communities, especially populations that are already

vulnerable due to economic isolation (Adger, Hughes, Folk, Carpenter, &

Rockstroms, 2005; Prewitt, Mackie, & Habermann, 2014). The Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change defines resiliency as “the capacity of social, economic,

and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or

disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their essential

function, identity, and structure, while also maintaining the capacity for

adaptation, learning, and transformation” (IPCC, 2014, p. 5).

28

Klinenberg compared how similar low-‐‑income neighborhoods fared during the

1995 heat wave in Chicago, and found that neighborhoods that contained

sidewalks, stores, restaurants and community organizations lost far fewer

residents than neighborhoods that were similar socioeconomically, but which

suffered from abandonment and deprivation. The presence of certain

neighborhood characteristics proved vital, both prior to and during the heat

wave, in bringing people into contact with friends and neighbors, forming an

“ecology of support,” which led to better survival rates (E Klinenberg, 2012, p.

125). In contrast, neighborhoods characterized by decades of abandonment and

decay lacked such social support structures, and saw far higher mortality rates.

Klinenberg suggests that “the best techniques for safeguarding cities don’t just

mitigate disaster damage; they also strengthen the networks that promote health

and prosperity during ordinary times” (Eric Klinenberg, 2013).

29

IV. Methodology

This study employs a mixed methodology. The demographic and economic

analysis in Chapter two utilizes data from the U.S. Census and American

Community Survey at multiple geographic levels. Data at the peninsula level

was originally collected as part of Pratt Institute’s graduate planning studio in

Coney Island in 2013. Because the current study sought to pinpoint significant

disparities between Coney Island, adjacent neighborhoods on the peninsula, and

the City as a whole, neighborhood level data was important. The “Southern

Brooklyn” chapter of the SIRR Report offered the most accessible neighborhood-‐‑

level data, and neighborhood tabulation area (NTA) data from the NYC

Department of City Planning’s Population Division filled in remaining gaps.

Anecdotal information for the existing conditions analysis was gathered from

NYCHA residents and tenant association leaders through roundtable discussions

at a November 2013 visioning session, which were based around the following

questions:

• What do you like about your community? • What bothers you about your community? • What would you change about your community?

Research for the four case studies in Chapter two was conducted through phone

interviews and follow-‐‑up email correspondence with the Executive Directors of

each organization (listed below) between October and November 2014. Each of

these cases provided recent examples of how public buildings in New York City

have been dedicated or partially dedicated to local community service providers.

30

Executive Director Community Organization Date of Interview

Jeanne DuPont Rockaway Waterfront Alliance Oct 13, 2014

Christine Datz-‐‑Romero Lower East Side Ecology Center Oct 24, 2014

Jan Hanvik The Clemente Center Nov 7, 2014

Sarah Calderon Casita Maria Nov 12, 2014

Informal interviews were also conducted with Lane Rosen of John Dewey High

School and Scott Krivitsky of the Michael Berdy School in September 2014.

31

Chapter Two

Background

The Coney Island that exists in the imaginations of many Americans and many

New Yorkers—the Coney Island of Nathan’s, the Cyclone and densely populated

urban beaches—only vaguely reflects reality. In contrast to the persistent and

nostalgic notions of Coney Island as “the people’s playground,” for most

residents of this coastal community, life today is a struggle. One need only

glance westward from the amusement district to notice the vast housing

complexes punctuating the seaside skyline. For residents of these buildings,

economic opportunities and decent wages are far more elusive than in adjacent

neighborhoods, leaving much of the community stuck in poverty, socially

fragmented and vulnerable in myriad ways. The struggles of the Coney Island

community were brought to light in months following November 2012, when

flooding, mold, and power and heat disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy

made already deplorable living conditions much worse.

Less than one year after Hurricane Sandy, Pratt Institute’s 2013 graduate

planning studio in Coney Island assisted tenant association leaders representing

seven different New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings in

Southern Brooklyn. Students spent several months engaging in demographic and

economic research and learning from local activists, leaders and planning

experts. The initial findings of the research were presented to a group of tenant

leaders and residents in a visioning session on November 2, 2013.

One of the recurring questions that emerged from the roundtable discussions

was how tenant leaders could achieve nonprofit 501(c)(3) status for their tenant

32

associations and, through these independent organizations, secure a more

equitable share of resources for their residents. One participant’s comment, in

particular, seemed to reverberate: “We want funding to improve our living so we

don’t have to depend on NYCHA.” These leaders had the growing sense—

presumably from years of being overlooked by government agencies,

intermediaries and private foundations—that unless their associations were

organized independently of NYCHA, recovery funds would likely bypass their

buildings and residents.

In the remaining weeks of the studio, students developed recommendations for

these leaders to organize their groups and build consensus around a range of

projects aimed at making Coney Island more sustainable and resilient. A follow-‐‑

up presentation of proposals and discussion with the tenant leaders was held on

November 21, 2013 at the Coney Island Houses Community Center.

Yet, nearly two years after the completion of the studio, as Sandy dollars have

begun to trickle into the community, more work is needed to achieve a level of

social solidarity that can lead to a socially and physically resilient Coney Island.

Tenant associations continue to advocate for their residents, and a few have

achieved 501(c)(3) status. But how successful these individual associations will

be in achieving lasting change remains to be seen. In many neighborhoods

throughout the City that have large NYCHA populations, community-‐‑based

organizations have been formed to advocate for these communities, but no such

organization exists in Coney Island. Instead, many of the tenant groups have

tended to work independently and resisted cooperating with other community

groups.

33

A carefully planned organizing campaign around a specific project could be the

first step in a strategy for helping these associations overcome their differences,

combine forces and work with other community organizations. It is the premise

of this thesis, that the Coney Island Fire Pumping Station provides just such an

opportunity.

Drawing on findings and observations gleaned from the studio, the following

section will present existing conditions pertaining to the Coney Island

community in general, and the Coney Island Pumping Station specifically. The

scope of the community level analysis that follows will be limited to information

that is deemed relevant to the repurposing of the Pumping Station site. These

findings would set the stage for the visioning component of a future

participatory planning process, which is discussed in Chapter three.

34

I. Existing Conditions

Neighborhoods and Boundaries

The Coney Island peninsula is actually comprised of three distinct

neighborhoods, which are separated by both visible and invisible barriers (see

Figure 2-‐‑1). Seagate, a private residential community, occupies the westernmost

end of the peninsula to 37th Street, and is open to residents only via gated

entrances at Surf Avenue and Neptune Avenue. The neighborhood known as

Coney Island occupies the west end of the peninsula from West 37th Street to

roughly Stillwell Avenue, and is home to a large concentration of seniors and

low income residents. At Stillwell Avenue, the elevated D and N subway lines

bisect the peninsula, separating Coney Island from the neighborhoods of

Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, which are home to a large Russian

community.

Figure 2-1 Neighborhoods of Southern Brooklyn

35

The analysis that follows will focus on the neighborhood of Coney Island

between West 37th Street and Stillwell Avenue, where a majority of the NYCHA

housing is located. The Coney Island “peninsula” will refer to the combined

neighborhoods of Seagate, Coney Island, Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach.

Geography & Natural Features

Figure 2-2 Map showing Coney Island Creek in 1879

Source: Westland.net

The Coney Island peninsula was once an actual island, separated from

Brooklyn’s mainland by Coney Island Creek (Lamb, 2006). This industrial

waterway stretched from Gravesend Bay to Sheepshead Bay, as seen in Figure 2-‐‑

2, but over time as commercial activity on creek decreased, it was filled in with

debris from, among other things, construction of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

One hundred acres of waterfront parks now line the mouth of the creek, creating

wetland habitat for migratory birds, and making it one of South Brooklyn’s finest

natural assets. Beaches stretch for nearly three miles along the south shore of the

peninsula, serving millions of visitors each summer.

36

Figure 2-3 Elevation and Population Density In Coney Island

Source: earthobservatory.nasa.gov

Climate Change and Flood Risk

The peninsula’s elevation ranges from five to ten feet above sea level in most

places (see Figure 2-‐‑3), leaving the Coney Island population increasingly

vulnerable to flooding due to sea level rise. Beach nourishment efforts by the

Army Corps of Engineer’s have raised the elevation of Coney Island’s beaches to

roughly 15 feet above sea level to create a buffer of protection for most of the

peninsula’s oceanfront buildings. Between 1923 and 1995, $25 million was spent

on beach nourishment at Coney Island beaches. (Gornitz, Couch, & Hartig, 2001,

p. 69).

Coney Island has a long history of flooding caused by both minor and major

storms. After a 1962 Nor’easter one report noted, “Parts of Coney Island were

entirely inundated from ocean to bay” (New York State Sea Level Rise Report to the

Legislature, 2010). Flooding is also a regular occurrence outside of major storms in

Coney Island. NYCHA residents at the 2013 visioning session reported

experiencing significant flooding even during average rain events.

37

While Coney Island’s elevated beaches shielded its oceanfront buildings during

Sandy, neighborhoods like Manhattan Beach and Seagate, where beach

nourishment had been refused, saw major damage from the force of Sandy’s

waves. The most significant damages in Coney Island and Gravesend to the

north, according to the City’s Special Initiative on Recovery and Rebuilding

(SIRR) report, were caused by “stillwater” flooding through Coney Island Creek

and other smaller inlets. Floodwaters at the peak of the storm reached a height of

10 feet along Neptune Avenue and 13.3 feet in Seagate (SIRR, 2013, p. 341).

The extent of flooding during Sandy revealed significant shortcomings in the

way New York City’s evacuation zones were developed. Hurricane zone maps

by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had not been

updated after Hurricane Irene in 2011, while Federal Emergency Management

Agency (FEMA) flood insurance maps showing the 100-‐‑year floodplain had not

been updated since 1983 (Winston, 2012).

Extreme weather is expected to increase in both frequency and severity due to

climate change. Sea levels are projected to rise between 4 and 11 inches by 2020,

and between 11 and 31 inches by 2050, which could result in daily or weekly

tidal flooding and increased risk of storm surge in low-‐‑lying coastal communities

like Coney Island (SIRR, 2013, p. 44).

To address the threat of flooding in Southern Brooklyn, the SIRR report outlined

a concept for a tidal barrier and wetlands at Coney Island Creek. The barrier at

the mouth of the creek would contain culverts that would generally allow

regular tidal flow, but could also be closed at low tide as a storm approaches,

“converting the Creek into a water detention basin for surrounding

neighborhoods and holding back surge” (SIRR, 2013, p. 351). In addition to flood

38

protection, the levy was envisioned as a means of improving connections

between Coney Island and Gravesend and increasing access to open space. In

May 2014, the NYCEDC issued a request for proposals to conduct a study of both

the technical and economic feasibility of the project as well as possible near-‐‑term

solutions. Part I of the study (technical analysis) is slated to be completed by the

second quarter of 2015, and part II (recommendations) by the fourth quarter of

2015. The scope of this project remains to be determined; but it would

undoubtedly have environmental repercussions that would place limits on the

Creek’s use for recreation and transportation.

Vulnerable Populations

Coney Island’s physical vulnerabilities are compounded by the concentration of

vulnerable populations on the peninsula, and the segregation that exists between

various groups. With 51 people per acre, Coney Island is significantly denser

than adjacent neighborhoods like Seagate (28) and Gravesend (43) and higher

than the city’s average of 42 people per acre (SIRR, 2013, p. 339).

Figure 2-4 Coney Island Population and Sandy Surge Levels, 2012

Source: 2012 ACS 5-Year Estimates

39

This density is largely due to a substantial number of affordable housing

developments, which has resulted in a higher concentration of minority, senior

and low-‐‑income residents than is found in adjacent neighborhoods. Black

residents make up the largest share of Coney Island’s population (33.9%),

followed by Whites (31.6%), Hispanics (23.5%) and Asians (10.3%).

Coney Island is also home to a disproportionate share of seniors, adding yet

another layer to discussions of the community’s vulnerability. Residents between

the ages of 45 and 65, make up nearly 30% of the peninsula’s population

compared to 24% in New York City as a whole. Residents between the ages of 60

and 64 make up the single largest age cohort on the peninsula, eight percent of

the total population compared to 5.1% in NYC. Coney Island’s higher share of

elderly residents owes largely to the aging of long-‐‑term Mitchell-‐‑lama residents

and several large senior housing facilities.

The large number of senior living facilities in coastal areas presented enormous

challenges during Sandy. Despite ominous storm predictions and mandatory

evacuations in Hurricane zone A, officials decided that residents of senior

facilities in these zones would stay put (Preston, Fink, & Powell, 2012). This

required a massive post-‐‑storm relocation effort that put the lives of seniors and

rescue workers in danger.

40

Table 2-2 Race, Ethnicity, and Foreign Born Population, 2012

Coney Island/

Seagate2 Brooklyn NYC

Population % Population % Population %

TOTAL 30,018 100.0% 2,512,740 100.0% 8,199,221 100.0%

White 9,493 31.6% 896,464 35.7% 2,726,977 33.3%

Black or African American

10,181 33.9% 809,821 32.2% 1,877,772 22.9%

American Indian/ Alaskan Native

12 0.0% 3,876 0.2% 14,594 0.2%

Asian 3,097 10.3% 265,238 10.6% 1,045,972 12.8%

Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander

21 0.1% 1,020 0.0% 2,975 0.0%

Some Other Race 6 0.0% 8,452 0.3% 64,991 0.8%

Two or More Races 139 0.5% 30,249 1.2% 122,482 1.5%

Hispanic or Latino 7,069 23.5% 497,620 20% 2,343,458 28.6%

Foreign Born 10,353 34.5% 941,612 37.5% 3,023,865 36.9%

Source: 2008-2012 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates

Figure 2-‐‑5 shows the stark residential segregation of Coney Island’s racial and

ethnic groups, with whites concentrated in Seagate and Brighton Beach and other

minority groups in Coney Island. The geographic distribution of houses of

worship reflects a similar pattern, with Christian churches located almost

exclusively in Coney Island, and Jewish synagogues in Seagate and Brighton

Beach (See Figure 2-‐‑6).

3 The NYC Department of City Planning aggregates census tracts into neighborhood tabulation areas (NTA) for purposes of small area population analysis. Coney Island and Seagate are combined in Brooklyn NTA 21, which also includes small portions of Gravesend and Brighton Beach.

41

Figure 2-5 Racial/Ethnic Composition of Coney Island Peninsula

Source: NYTimes.com, 2010 U.S. Census

Figure 2-6 Coney Island Houses of Worship, 2013

Data Source: Google maps

These patterns of neighborhood segregation also run along economic lines.

According to 2012 ACS estimates, the percent of unemployed residents in Coney

Island hovered around 21%, which was more than double the citywide

42

unemployment rate of 10.2%. No other neighborhood on the peninsula had a

comparable unemployment rate, and these disparities in employment

correspond with stark contrasts between neighborhood income levels across the

peninsula. Figure 2-‐‑7 shows low-‐‑income census tracts in Coney Island and

Brighton Beach buttressed by middle-‐‑income tracts in Seagate and Manhattan

Beach. Median household income (MHI) in Coney Island ($32,100) and Brighton

Beach ($31,700) is far below the citywide MHI of $51,300. By comparison, MHI in

adjacent neighborhoods range from $61,500 in Seagate to $84,800 in Manhattan

Beach, far above average for the borough and City (SIRR).

Figure 2-7 Median Household Income in Coney Island with Surge levels from Sandy

Source: 2011 ACS 5-Year Estimates (MHI)

Housing

Although some pockets of single-‐‑family housing do exist in Coney Island, it is

the towering multifamily structures punctuating the skyline that most

characterize Coney’s Island’s housing type. Seagate, by contrast, is primarily a

43

single-‐‑family neighborhood and far less dense. Most of Coney Island’s

multifamily buildings provide publically supported housing in one form or

another. The New York City Housing Authority manages 40 residential

buildings, while the Mitchell-‐‑Lama program has rental and condo units in 10

buildings.

NYCHA’s 40 buildings in Coney Island are spread between nine developments,

all of which were built between 1954 and 1974 (See Table 2-‐‑3). These buildings

contain 4,098 total units and house almost 9,000 residents. The Haber Houses

development is dedicated to senior housing.

Table 2-3 NYCHA Developments in Coney Island

Buildings Units

Population

(2013) Year Built

Avg Monthly

Gross Rent

Carey Gardens 3 683 1637 1970 $415

Coney Island 5 534 1,204 1957 $494

Coney Island I (Site 1B) “Unity Tower”

1 193 510 1973 $424

Coney Island I (Site 8) 1 125 361 1973 $503

Coney Island I (Sites 4 & 5)

1 376 1,074 1974 $492

Gravesend 15 634 1,482 1954 $418

Haber 3 380 448 1965 $272

O’Dwyer Gardens 6 573 1,166 1969 $419

Surfside Gardens 5 600 1,117 1969 $370

Total 40 4,098 8,854

Source: 2013 NYCHA Development Data Book

Every one of NYCHA’s buildings in Coney Island was affected by Sandy’s

floodwaters. Lower level mechanical systems were especially hard hit, causing

residents to experience periods without electricity and heat, some of which lasted

44

several weeks. These services were eventually restored—albeit with less

reliability—using generators and temporary boilers, some of which continue

operating until long-‐‑term repairs can be made.

Coney Island has seen its supply of Mitchell-‐‑Lama (M-‐‑L) housing units drop

significantly in recent years as buildings have aged out of the program.

Community District 133 had 6,371 Mitchell-‐‑Lama units in 2015, down from 12,469

units at the height of the program, a total loss of nearly half its Mitchell-‐‑Lama

stock (See Table 2-‐‑4). Overall, 70% of Mitchell-‐‑Lama rental units have been lost,

and 39% of co-‐‑op units, leaving a total of 1,184 rental, and 5,187 co-‐‑op units

currently in the program, with more than 4,000 of these units currently eligible to

opt out. These losses are consistent with larger trends across the city. A report

issued by the Community Service Society found that across the five boroughs,

the Mitchell-‐‑Lama program lost 29,831 units, 45% of its stock, between 1990 and

2007 (Waters & Bach, 2008).

Table 2-4 Mitchell-Lama Units in Brooklyn Community District 134, 2013

Current

and Former Units

Units Lost Current Units % Change

Total 12,469 6,098 6,371 -49% Rental 3,980 2,796 1,184 -70% Condo 8,489 3,302 5,187 -39%

Source: Furman Center, retrieved from http://www.furmancenter.org/data/search on 9/7/2013

3 Community District 13 encompasses all of Coney Island, Seagate, Brighton Beach, and portions of Gravesend. Roughly 1,000 of the 6,371 current Mitchell-Lama units in CD13 are in Coney Island.

45

Mitchell-Lama Buildings on Neptune Avenue.

Photo Credit: Ben Dodd

Coney Island is also home to three mid-‐‑size adult homes—Mermaid Manor,

Ocean View Manor and Surf Manor—containing a total of 586 beds, according

the City’s Health Department. Although these privately-‐‑owned, for-‐‑profit

residences were intended for the elderly, investigations over the last several

decades found that many of these facilities had become “de facto repositories for

people who have psychiatric disorders but can live independently” (Bleyer,

2007). In the weeks after Sandy, the New York Times reported that hospitals in

South Brooklyn were overwhelmed by cases in the vicinity of Coney Island after

Coney Island Hospital, and it’s large psychiatric unit, suspended services. “Not

only is there decreased capacity, because Bellevue and Coney Island are off line,

but there’s increased demand because the storm or the loss of their residence has

been a stressor for mental illness, noted Dr. Andrew Kolodny, the chair of

psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center (Bernstein, 2012). The 1969 Plan for

New York City, which calls for a neighborhood health center in Coney Island,

proposed that a “community mental health unit” be included in the center,

which suggests that mental illness has been a chronic problem in the community

for decades (1969 Plan for NYC, p.141).

46

A Fragmented Public Realm

Fractures in the Coney Island community are also evident at the level of the built

environment. Beginning in the 1950’s under the moniker of “urban renewal,” the

City used eminent domain to demolish large swaths of Coney Island that were

deemed “slums,” and replaced it with towers in the park style housing, the types

of buildings Jane Jacobs called “a marvel of dullness and regimentation, sealed

against buoyancy or vitality of city life” (Jacobs, 1961, p. 6). This new form of

housing required the removal of businesses, historic bathhouses, and entire

bungalow neighborhoods. To accommodate the bulky, oddly shaped buildings,

physical streets also disappeared, especially in the Coney Island West Urban

Renewal area; leaving the street grid fragmented and disconnected. The way that

many of these buildings were set back from the street effectively removes

residents from life at street level, where casual social interactions most often

occur. With fewer “eyes on the street,” to use Jacobs’ phrase, safety is less certain,

which further encourages residents, especially seniors, to stay indoors.

These disruptions to Coney Island’s built environment occurred squarely within

the City’s officially designated “urban renewal areas,” which encompassed most

of Coney Island (see Figure 2-‐‑8), and the area where social problems have been

most persistent. Today, pedestrian and commercial activity is dismal along

Neptune and Surf Avenues, formerly lively commercial corridors, portions of

which have been widened to include up to four traffic lanes and two parking

lanes.

47

Figure 2-8 Urban Renewal Areas and Affordable Housing in Coney Island

Source: 1969 Plan for NYC

Few Public Places “We want more support groups and places to come together.” –NYCHA Visioning participant Public gathering places are extremely rare in Coney Island, especially spaces that

are perceived as “neutral” by public housing residents. The Parks Department,

which operates more than fifty public recreation centers, community centers and

field houses across the city, has no such facilities in Southern Brooklyn. Figure 2-‐‑

9 shows that currently, the nearest public recreation facility is the Fort Hamilton

senior recreation center in Bay Ridge.

48

Figure 2-9 Public Community & Recreation Centers Operated by NYC Parks Dept.

Data Source: NYC Dept. of Parks

There is one branch library on Mermaid Avenue, which was severely damaged

during Sandy, and took more than one year to reopen. The City’s Beacon

community center program, which offers after school programming and other

services in public schools, has one site in Coney Island at PS 288 (2950 West 25

St). The newly built YMCA (2980 W 29th St) has introduced much-‐‑needed

amenities to the community, and memberships are offered to lower income

residents at a reduced price. However, the extra step required to obtain these

reduced fees will likely create a barrier and limit the participation of many low-‐‑

income residents. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, two new storefront service

49

centers have opened in Coney Island—B.C.S. Coney Island Service Center (1702

Mermaid Ave) and Workforce1 Sandy Recovery Career Center (1906 Mermaid

Ave)—both of which will provide valuable and needed services for residents, but

would not constitute public gathering places.

Five of the NYCHA housing developments in Coney Island—Carey Gardens,

Coney Island Houses, Gravesend, O’Dwyer Gardens and Surfside Garden—

contain community center facilities. These centers range from small meeting

rooms with kitchens to larger multi-‐‑purpose gymnasiums. In the wake of Sandy,

Carey Gardens community center was one of the few that were available for

large town hall meetings. The O’Dwyer Gardens community center, which hosts

after school programs operated by Heartshare Human Services, was renovated in

the mid-‐‑2000s, and now includes a computer room, game room, kitchen, multi-‐‑

purpose room, library, and director’s office (See Figure 2-‐‑10). Gravesend

community center, where the studio follow-‐‑up meeting was held, is a small,

comfortable space, but is not easily accessible from the street, or from other parts

of the neighborhood. Questions of appropriate staffing, programming and

funding for NYCHA community centers have been debated for as long as

NYCHA housing has existed (Bloom, 2014, p. 103). Overall, NYCHA community

centers offer useful space for social gatherings, community meetings and in some

cases, daycare and after school services (Morse & Angotti, 2014, p. 8). Yet, their

survival seems constantly under threat. When federal funds were sequestered in

2013, NYCHA proposed the closing of over one hundred NYCHA community

and senior centers across the city, but funds from the City kept them open. The

Surfside Garden and Gravesend community centers sustained heavy damages

during Sandy, and as of November 2014, remained closed.

50

Figure 2-10 O’Dwyer Gardens Community Center renovations completed in early 2000s

Source: Edelman Sultan Knox Wood / Architects LLP

Recent Investment & Interventions in Coney Island

Looking at the previous two decades of public and private interventions in

Coney Island reveals a trend of large-‐‑scale investment largely aimed at the

wrong target (See Table 2-‐‑5). The one-‐‑sided approach of the City has been to

work with the local business community to revive the local tourism economy,

and by doing so, create jobs for local residents. However, amusement parks,

retail stores, restaurants and hotels—which were proposed in the City’s rezoning

plan—provide jobs, but not the kind of jobs that create long-‐‑term economic

mobility. Furthermore, public housing residents cited a litany of obstacles they

face in obtaining local jobs, things like prior criminal records, lack of skills and

racial discrimination by business owners. Overall, the kind of supply-‐‑side

strategies so sorely needed in Coney Island—programs that prepare the local

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This renovation focused on bringing the activity of this very lively Community Center back to the true ‘center’ of the space. By emphasizing the Lobby and providing maximum views into every room from this area, the sense of connectedness is enforced for the children who attend after school and alternative learning classes here. Boldly colored glazed wall tiles deliniate the massings of utility spaces further emphasizing the continuity of the spaces between the masses.

A new stainless steel vestibule and concrete canopy gesture to the community and revive the Center’s identity. Library, Game Room, and Meeting/Classroom are enlarged. The Computer/Music Room is upgraded with built-in furniture and new equipment. Larger, ADA compliant toilet rooms are provided as well as a Kitchen. Heating, cooling, lighting, security, and fire alarm systems are replaced entirely.

This project was awarded an AIA New York Chapter Merit Design Award for Interior Architecture in 2005.

CREDITS:Client: New York City Housing AuthorityContractor: Emco Tech ConstructionStructural: Dunne and MarkisM/E/P: Laszlo Bodak Engineers, PC

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51

population for participation in the larger citywide economy—have been

overlooked in favor of initiatives that favor the local tourism sector.

Table 2-5 Recent Capital Spending in Coney Island

Project Lead Agency Year Status Cost

Keyspan Park (now MCU Park) EDC 2001 Complete $55 million Stillwell Avenue subway terminal MTA 2004 Complete $300 million Brooklyn Borough Gas Brownfield Remediation

DEP 2009 Complete Data Unavailable

Rezoning / Land acquisition EDC 2009 Complete $96 million Coney Island YMCA Private 2013 Complete $23 million New sewer and water lines between West 12th and West 21st Streets

DEP Proposed $140 million

Upgrades to Avenue V Pumping Station (projected to reduce sewer overflow into Coney Island Creek by 87%)

DEP 2015 Complete $210 million

Community Assets and Emerging Opportunities

The original SIRR report suggested that the City’s long-‐‑term response to Sandy

would focus on physical infrastructure investment, but the change of

administrations seems to have shifted that focus in a positive direction. Federal

recovery dollars from Sandy have begun to pour into Coney Island, and some of

the initiatives recently introduced look promising, and appear to present a real

opportunity for the Coney Island community to not only recover from the storm,

but also become better positioned physically, economically and socially, to face

the future.

In September 2014, federal and city officials announced an allocation of $108M in

federal dollars to repair and protect the Coney Island Houses, as a pilot project

for all of NYCHA’s waterfront developments. An additional $3B allocation from

FEMA was announced in March 2015 for repair and retrofitting work on all

remaining Sandy-‐‑impacted NYCHA developments.

52

Also in 2015, Mayor DeBlasio announced plans to expand citywide ferry service

to three new areas in 2017 and two additional areas in 2018. Public subsidies

would keep the cost to the price of subway fare, making it a tremendous

economic opportunity for communities connected by the new service

(Rockaways, South Brooklyn and Astoria in phase I, and Soundview and the

Lower East Side in phase II). A sixth tentatively proposed route would depart

from Wall Street/Pier 11 in Manhattan and make stops in Staten Island en route

to Coney Island’s north shore. This proposed route represents an unprecedented

economic opportunity for Coney Island residents. The unreliability of bus service

across the peninsula currently makes connecting with subways at Stillwell

Avenue terminal very challenging, but a ferry landing in Coney Island would

provide alternative means for residents to access jobs in other parts of Brooklyn

and the City. It is unclear how a ferry landing would be integrated with the

proposed tidal barrier at Coney Island Creek.

Additional projects in the works include:

• Ida G. Israel Community Health Center, a vital medical facility for local residents, is being rebuilt.

• BCS Coney Island Community Services Center opened at 1702 Mermaid Ave in January 2015 and will serve as a rapid response site in the event of future disasters.

• Workforce 1 Sandy Recover Center (Mermaid Ave) will connect Coney Island residents to recovery jobs and job training.

• A field house and a comfort station slated for Calvert Vaux Park are both in pre-‐‑development /design phase.

Local Initiatives at Coney Island Creek

Two local initiatives also stand out for their connection to Coney Island Creek

and proximity to the Coney Island Pumping Station. Local historian Charles

Denson recently created a film about Coney Island Creek that sought to bring

53

attention to it’s historical significance and engage the community in planning for

it’s future. In 2014, Denson submitted a proposal for using the Pumping Station

site as a bio-‐‑filtration project that would help naturally clean the creek. His work

lays the groundwork for future creek advocacy along the lines of groups like

Newtown Creek Alliance and Gowanus Canal Conservancy.

Another strongpoint in Coney Island is a dynamic network of science and

technology educators that have partnered with local institutions like

Kingsborough Community College’s Maritime Technology Department and the

New York Aquarium to provide students with hands-‐‑on learning experiences in

the marine sciences. John Dewey High School assistant principal Lane Rosen has

been a primary catalyst in this growing movement. John Dewey’s marine biology

program, started in 1970 by Edward Wilensky, boasts five sections of marine

biology classes and a state of the art aquarium classroom with twenty tanks, and

students in the program are offered internships at the New York Aquarium. In

the early 2000’s, Rosen began organizing a coastal clean up event at Coney

Island’s Kaiser Park with the support of Partnership for Parks, New York

Aquarium and Cultural Research Divers. Participation at the annual event has

been on the rise in recent years and reached 150 students in 2014 (Rosen, 2013).

54

II. Site Analysis: Coney Island Pumping Station

Historical Background & Significance

The Coney Island Fire Service Pumping Station at Neptune Avenue and West

23rd Street was the second of two pumping stations built along Coney Island

Creek to help maintain constant pressure in the peninsula’s high pressure fire

service system. Coney Island’s amusement parks and other buildings were

highly susceptible to fires due to the prevalence of wood and other flammable

building materials. Major fires occurred at Steeplechase in 1907, at Dreamland in

1911, along the Boardwalk and Surf Avenue in 1932, and at Luna Park in 1944

(Bredderman, 2012).

The original pumping station, which is no longer in existence, was built on

Neptune Avenue, opposite West 12th Street in 1904-‐‑05, and was primarily

dedicated to protecting the amusement section of Coney Island. It consisted of

three gasoline engine-‐‑powered pumps, each with a capacity of 1,500 gallons per

minute. (Brush, 1909, p. 388).

Some historians fault the inadequate capacity of the high pressure system for the

fire that destroyed 15-‐‑acre Dreamland park on the eve of opening day in 1911

(Bredderman, 2012; Sally, 2006). One firefighter who was present at the fire

commented that, “the water pressure was so weak that it did not throw a stream

twenty feet and imagine, if you can, a picture of a fireman putting his finger over

a nozzle to increase pressure and make water go further” (quoted in Sally, 2006,

p. 30). The fire was so large, and the system so overtaxed that three of New

York’s fireboats—the Seth Low, the Zophar Mills, and the New Yorker—were

called on to supply water to the system (Cudahy, 1997, p. 251). Even with the

55

failure of the system so apparent, it would take another twenty years, and the

worst of Coney Island’s fires, the boardwalk fire of 1932, before the high pressure

system would be expanded.

Pumping Station Exterior and Interior

Source: Short & Brown, 1939

The Coney Island Fire Service Pumping Station at Neptune Avenue and West

23rd Street was built in 1938, adding five electrical pumps, and tripling the high

pressure system’s capacity to 13,500 gallons per minute (Short & Brown, 1939).

The station was completed with the help of the federal Public Works

Administration at a cost of roughly $450,000 ($7.6 million in today’s dollars). It

was designed by noted New York architect Irwin Chanin, who is better known

for skyscrapers like the Chanin building, and the Majesty and Century

apartments along Central Park West in Manhattan. The elliptical-‐‑shaped station,

which is believed to be Chanin’s only public works building, was distinct in its

functional and streamlined design, which was typical of the Art Moderne style,

whereas most public works buildings hued to a more classical style (Smith,

2011).

The station’s pumps were in active use for nearly 40 years, but by the 1970s the

modern pumper truck had rendered the high-‐‑pressure system obsolete, resulting

in the station’s deactivation in 1976. While the station was abandoned, all of

56

Coney Island’s 214 high-‐‑pressure fire hydrants remained standing, and

continued generating parking ticket revenue, for another 20 years until their

removal in 1996 (Newman, 1997).

Historic Preservation Efforts

Over the years, the building’s architectural significance has inspired several

campaigns for its preservation. The New York Landmarks Conservancy selected

the station for inclusion in its Public Buildings Inventory of 1976, the same year

the City vacated the building. Although the City’s Landmarks Preservation

Commission (LPC) supported the Conservancy’s bid for designation, no tenant

for the building could be found, which delayed the process. The Conservancy

nominated the building to the National Register of Historic Places4 in 1980, but

by 1981, when the listing was approved, vandals had already defaced the

building’s exterior and interior, removing the nickel-‐‑silver, steel and granite trim

(Clark, 1981). A pair of sculpted stone horses was removed to the Brooklyn

Museum sculpture garden for safekeeping, where they remain to this day.

When the LPC announced at the end of 2014 that it would hold a vote to de-‐‑

calendar, or drop from landmark consideration, a backlog of over one hundred

properties and buildings, the Coney Island Pumping Station was on the list.

Preservation advocates mounted an opposition campaign causing the LPC to

hold off on the vote in order to consider alternatives to the de-‐‑calendaring plan,

which are being accepted until May 1, 2015. The Historic Districts Council

advocacy organization has used its 2015 “Six to Celebrate” campaign to call for

4 The National Register of Historic Places Building Inventory form for the Coney Island Pumping Station is available through New York State’s Cultural Resource Information System at https://cris.parks.ny.gov/

57

prioritization of these threatened landmarks. Six to Celebrate provides

neighborhood groups with resources for organizing a landmark campaign.

Original Pegasus statues now on display at the Brooklyn Museum

Photo Credits: Ben Dodd

Previous Redevelopment Proposals

In 1990, the City announced a $23 million plan to redevelop the site as a

community center and housing for the homeless. The pumping station building

was to be converted to a community center, which would connect two wings of

transitional housing. The center would have provided social services, day care, a

health clinic and a community room, and the design by Skidmore, Ownings, and

Merrill, called for the incorporation of the winged horse sculptures, but nothing

ever came of the plan (Gray, 1990).

Coney Island historian Charles Denson has been one of the biggest advocates for

restoring and reusing the pumping station. As part of the 2014 Participatory

Budgeting campaign in City Council District 47, Denson proposed using the site

for a constructed wetlands bio-‐‑filtration project that would help filter stormwater

before it entered Coney Island Creek.

58

Current Conditions

Coney Island Pumping Station in September 2014

Photo Credit: Ben Dodd

Building Conditions:

Today the 77-‐‑year old pumping station is visibly worn from years of neglect, but

appears largely intact. Broken windows have long since been covered over with

masonry, and the façade is dotted with reflective markings.

Very little is known about the interior conditions of the pumping station since

it’s closing in the 1980’s. Clark (1981) noted that vandals had shattered most of

the green-‐‑glazed ceramic tiles that covered the interior in 1980. Considering that

the building’s main floor, which housed the pumping equipment (see Figure 2-‐‑

12) is twelve feet below grade, flooding impacts from Sandy seem highly likely.

59

Figure 2-12 Pumping Station Floor Plans

Source: Short & Brown, 1939, p. 474

The structural integrity of the pumping station is also unknown. In an email

from October 30, 2014, DCAS’ Executive Director of Compliance, Yohanna Salib,

reported that DCAS had no record of any engineering studies being done for the

Neptune Pumping Station. Conducting such a study could be an important first

step for anyone interested in knowing whether or not the building is viable.

Figure 2-6 Coney Island Pumping Station Site & Building Information

Block 6965

Lot 125

Owner Dept. of Citywide Administrative

Services

Address 2327 Neptune Avenue

Lot Area 68,255 ft2 (1.56 acres)

Lot Frontage 267.58'

Lot Depth 255’

Gross Floor Area 4,500 ft2

Source: NYC Dept. of City Planning, PLUTO 14v2

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Site Conditions:

The pumping station sits on a roughly 1.5 acre lot, bounded by Neptune Avenue

in the south, West 23rd Street in the east, Coney Island Creek in the north and

Mark Twain middle school in the west. An iron gate runs along the perimeter of

the lot, with access to the site provided via a gate along West 23rd Street. Several

mature trees have grown up around the building along with other natural

vegetation.

At street level, the lot appears largely overgrown, but an aerial view reveals a

pattern of neatly subdivided garden plots across the lot. How the garden is

organized and by whom is unclear. Although a sign hanging on the gate

indicates the site may have, at one time, been part of the Parks Department’s

Green Thumb garden program, the garden is not listed on the program’s

website.

An embankment runs along the Creek at the rear of the pumping station, but is

located outside the gate, and not part of the pumping station property. This

paved area is largely unmaintained, provides direct access to the Creek, and is

often used for fishing during warmer months as well as parking. An unpaved

portion of this area, visible in Figure 2-‐‑13, extends west along the creek behind a

portion of Kaiser Park, which contains parking and handball courts. This

undeveloped section of waterfront terminates within 100 feet of the Kaiser Park

walking path, and presents an opportunity to greatly improve access to the

waterfront in the future.

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Figure 2-13 Pumping Station, School and Adjacent Waterfront Park

Source: Google (basemap)

Zoning & Land Use

The pumping station lies within an R5 residential district, which permits a

variety of housing types, but typically produces three-‐‑ and four-‐‑story attached

houses and small apartment houses. The maximum residential floor area ratio in

R5 districts is 1.25, while community facilities are allowed FAR of 2.0. Maximum

lot coverage is 55% while building height is limited to 40 feet with streetwall

setbacks required above 30 feet. Rear and side yard requirements also apply to

any portion of buildings taller than 33 feet. Parking spaces are required for 85%

of dwelling units.

Surrounding blocks include a mix of single-‐‑ and multi-‐‑family residential,

industrial/manufacturing, public facilities and institutions, and open space and

recreation uses. Building three of NYCHA’s Carey Gardens development is

located in the block directly south of the pumping station. IS 239 Mark Twain

School for the Gifted and Talented and Kaiser Park are directly to the west. New

York Bread Company occupies part of the industrial building directly to the east

62

of the pumping station, the same building that housed Ida G. Israel healthcare

facility prior to Hurricane Sandy.

III. Summary of Findings and Opportunities

The threat of climate change and sea level rise pose significant threats to the

Coney Island peninsula, but social fragmentation and economic isolation in this

low-‐‑income community further compound these physical vulnerabilities. Thus

far, the public housing community in Coney Island has not been as organized as

in other parts of the city, but tenant leaders are very aware of having been

excluded from the political process in the past and of new development and

funding opportunities arising from Hurricane Sandy.

The vacant Coney Island Pumping Station presents an opportunity for NYCHA

and other Coney Island residents to join together in a collaborative process to

secure and activate a much-‐‑needed resource for their community. Indoor public

spaces are a real need in the community, and activating the pumping station

could help address this need. In recent years, multiple parties have demonstrated

a sustained interest in revitalizing Coney Island Creek and the surrounding

beaches. While the community should consider many possible uses for the

station, these local initiatives and their leaders could be become helpful allies in

the cause of generating conversations and ideas within the community.

63

IV. Case Studies

The following four case studies provide examples of different ways that vacant

buildings in New York City have been adapted and reused for public purposes.

The Lower East Side Ecology Center, established in 1987, and the Rockaway

Waterfront Alliance, started in 2005, both occupy former fire service buildings in

waterfront communities in New York City, and have made environmental

education and stewardship key components of their mission. One organization

leases the building from the city while the other acquired the property from the

city.

Lower East Side Ecology Center

East River Park, Manhattan The Lower East Side Ecology Center (LESEC) has been offering environmental

educational programs in the Lower East Side since 1987. The organization got its

start setting up 24-‐‑hour drop-‐‑off locations for paper and plastics recycling prior

to NYC’s curbside program. Most of these drop-‐‑off sites were located at city-‐‑

owned community gardens, and thus, composting became a natural extension of

the organization’s recycling programs. But in 1998, the LESEC’s largest site on 7th

Street was sold to developers, prompting the organization to transfer operations

to their present location in East River Park. In 1998, the LESEC set up office and

learning space in the park’s historic Fire Boat House at the foot of Grand Street.

64

Grand St. Fireboat House in 1948, with fireboat George McClellan in the foreground

Photo credit: John Landers

Fireboats were used heavily through much of the 1900’s along New York’s

industrial waterfront (See Figure 2-‐‑14). At its height, the Fire Department’s

Marine division boasted as many as ten fireboat stations, including the station at

East River Park, which was organized in 1898 as Engine Company 66. While the

station was not built until 1940, the site served as quarters for three different

fireboats: the William L. Strong from 1898 to 1938, the George B. McClellan from

1938 to 1953, and the Governor Alfred E. Smith from 1961-‐‑1992 (Crosby, 2013).

The station was briefly disbanded in 1955, but reactivated and renamed Marine 6

by the Fire Department in 1959. Budget cuts in late 60’s and 70’s reduced the

number of stations citywide to four. The Grand Street Fireboat House was finally

closed in 1992, leaving only three fireboat stations in current use today.

Today the Fireboat House, under the jurisdiction of the NYC Parks Department,

has been renovated to include sustainable features like a green roof to absorb

rainwater and help keep the building cool in the summer. The small facility

serves as a hub for the Ecology Center’s environmental stewardship and

education programs. Whether collecting food scraps for composting, growing

65

oysters in the East River or teaching students about “combined sewer outfalls”,

their programs aim to enhance the connection between local residents and their

natural environment and create a more sustainable city.

The Lower East Side Ecology Center in East River Park with the Williamsburg Bridge in background

Source: Lower East Side Ecology Center

According to LESEC’s Executive Director Christine Datz-‐‑Romero, the Manhattan

Parks Commissioner was eager to have a community partner to help reactivate

the underutilized park. The Parks Department initially granted the LESEC

permission to use one room within the fireboat house for two years, in exchange

for offering environmental programming. They recently agreed to a ten-‐‑year

agreement, which allows the Ecology Center’s growing staff of eight to access

both floors of the fireboat house (Datz-‐‑Romero, 2014).

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A green roof, which LESEC staff maintain, was installed at the Fireboat house in 2012

Source: lowdownny.com

The repurposing of the fireboat house in East River Park offers several important

lessons relevant to the Coney Island Pumping Station. First, the location of the

building—in an underutilized waterfront park—seemed to figure prominently in

determining the future use of the building. Ultimately, the purpose of the facility

shifted from maritime service to environmental education, but its core water-‐‑

based use has remained prominent. By providing space for LESEC, the City

positioned a local CBO to advocate for open space improvements, and facilitate

engagement with the East River. This effort has helped reestablish a vital

connection between the Lower East Side community and the East River. In a rare

nod to the importance of continuity in a fast-‐‑changing city, the repurposed

fireboat house also stands as “a valuable reminder of the city’s maritime history”

(CHERP, n.d.).

67

Rockaway Waterfront Alliance

Far Rockaway, Queens

The Rockaway peninsula in southern Queens lies in a different borough than

Coney Island, but only a mile of water separates the two landmasses, making

these two community’s quite similar geographically. Many of the same

socioeconomic challenges facing Coney Island are also present in the Rockaways.

Former firehouse acquired by RWA in 2009

Photo Credit: NYC EDC

Non-‐‑profit organization Rockaway Waterfront Alliance (RWA) was founded in

2005 as out of scale waterfront development was accelerating in the community.

Instead of fighting developers, the founders sought to give youth in Far

Rockaway—through planning and environmental stewardship programming—a

voice in deciding how acres of vacant land in the community would be used.

Over the last nine years, RWA has become an integral part of their South Queens

community by offering a wide range of after school and summer programs,

internships, workshops and community events. In the summer of 2014, for

example, high school interns in the RWA Shore Corps program were enlisted to

assist in a dune recovery program overseen by several state and federal

68

government agencies. These students will be utilizing GIS-‐‑technology to

inventory native and non-‐‑native tree species over a 40-‐‑block radius and their

work will ultimately inform which tree species will be planted on a new second

dune intended to protect the Rockaways from future storms like Sandy (“RWA

Works…” 2015).

In 2007, the RWA responded to a Request for Proposals (RFP) issued by the NYC

Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to acquire and develop an

abandoned fire station at Beach 59th Street. The RFP was one of four issued that

year by EDC seeking to find new uses for former firehouses that DCAS had

originally proposed be sold at public auction. When community members

mounted strong opposition, the Mayor’s office formed community steering

committees that drew up guidelines for each RFP, and the City Council passed a

resolution requiring each firehouse to be restricted to community facilities uses

(Res. 0892-‐‑2007; Res 0893-‐‑2007; Res 0894-‐‑2007; Res 0895-‐‑2007). RWA’s submission

proposed turning the firehouse into the Rockaway Institute for a Sustainable

Environment (RISE), and within six months of winning the RFP in 2009, they had

$1.5 million in commitments from elected officials. However, it would take

another five years, from 2009 to 2013, for the City to transfer the property to

RWA. During that time the organization met weekly with agency officials, took

out loans to hire lawyers, architects and construction contractors, and navigated

the ULURP process and environmental studies.

RWA is moving forward with plans for the center. Designs have been finalized

and construction on the facility should be completed by spring of 2015. Founding

director Jeanne DuPont anticipates that programming will expand significantly,

and hopes to involve seniors and adults. But the bureaucratic delays and hurdles

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have given DuPont serious reservations about whether RWA’s path to property

ownership is one other New York City nonprofits should seek to emulate.

Mandates and restrictions from the City—including code-‐‑ and ADA-‐‑compliance

and prevailing wage hiring—increased the actual acquisition costs far beyond

the one-‐‑dollar amount that was agreed upon. RWA initially proposed spending

$2 million to refurbish the firehouse, but five years later, DuPont estimates the

actual cost of the project could reach $2.5 million.

Figure 2-15 Rendering of the future Rockaway Institute for a Sustainable Environment

(RISE) by David Cunningham Architecture Planning, LLC.

Source: rwalliance.org

The ongoing costs of managing the facility will also prove challenging, and

perhaps even prohibitive for RWA. The City banned any new buildings on the

site and required public assembly use, which prohibits any business activity,

leaving RWA dependent on private donations or rental income to fund ongoing

activities. DuPont anticipates that few in the community, however, will be

willing or able to pay for use of the space.

The amount of time required of RWA leaders for agency meetings presents

another barrier to small community-‐‑based nonprofits. Ultimately, these meetings

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detract from the organization’s mission and siphon resources away from

programs and capacity building.

The acquisition and transformation of this facility provides a compelling

example of city-‐‑owned property being turned over to a newly established

community group to allow the continuation and expansion of existing

programming. While the repurposing of this vacant firehouse will benefit the

local community, owning the facility has already siphoned off a substantial

amount of time and resources that could have otherwise been invested in

programming. Today, Dupont questions the sustainability of this model over the

long term, and wonders in hindsight if a leasing model, with the City

maintaining ownership, might have been a more viable option for RWA.

Communities not only benefit from reactivated public buildings, but in some

cases, community residents have actually helped shape the programming of

these buildings to meet the direct needs of the community. Two prominent

community organizations in New York City offer fitting examples of community

initiated efforts to use or activate public school buildings. Casita Maria Center for

arts and education in the Bronx and the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and

Educational Center in the Lower East Side are both culture and arts centers

operating in former or current public school facilities.

Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education

South Bronx The Casita Maria Center for Arts and Education has served New York’s Latino

community longer than any other nonprofit organization. Casita was founded in

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1934 by two public school educators who, in the settlement house tradition,

began working out of a Harlem apartment with the children of recently arrived

Puerto Rican families. Their focus was on providing the religious and

educational support and activities that would allow the children, and by

extension, their families, to thrive in the United States. In 1961, the organization

relocated to a former synagogue in the South Bronx, where it remained a place of

refuge and support for children as the neighborhood fell prey to disinvestment

and fires in the ensuing decades.

Former (left) & Current (right) Casita Maria Headquarters

Photo Credits: Bronxsynagoguges.org (left) and casitamaria.org (right)

Today Casita Maria operates out of a new state of the art facility, thanks to a

fruitful partnership with the NYC Department of Education that was forged in

2004, when Casita Maria opened part of its former facility to a newly formed

school, now known as the Bronx Studio School for Artists and Writers. With new

grades added each year, the school quickly outgrew the space. At the same time,

Casita Maria’s facility was in disrepair, and becoming increasingly burdensome

to maintain. Casita’s board considered various revenue generating schemes,

from building a new movie theater to renting space to other groups, but in the

end, concluded that their property—both the synagogue and an adjacent

parcel—could be redeveloped to better suite both parties.

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Casita worked with DDM Development and Services, who helped negotiate the

details of the project with the NYC School Construction Authority, including

demolition of the former synagogue facility, construction of a new 6-‐‑story, 90,000

square feet facility and a 99-‐‑year lease agreement with the NYC Board of

Education, which pays Casita a small amount rent on an annual basis.

This unique public private partnership has numerous benefits for Casita Maria.

According to the space-‐‑sharing agreement, CM has 24-‐‑hour access to the sixth

floor where their office, classroom and gallery space is located. The first five

floors of the facility are used by the Bronx Studio School during the day, but are

available to CM in the after school hours, on weekends and during the summer

months. The Department of Education handles all structural and mechanical

maintenance throughout the building, which means that, aside from choosing

paint colors and replacing light bulbs on the sixth floor, Casita Maria’s staff can

focus on carrying out and expanding the reach of their programs.

According to Executive Director Sarah Calderon, since moving into the new

facility in 2009, the number of students CM serves onsite has doubled from 400 to

800, and a stronger fundraising program has helped expand offsite programs as

well, bringing the total number of students served to 1,500.

Capital funding for the project was secured through the Bronx Borough

president, and funneled directly to the School Construction Authority. Following

on the success of the CM Center, the Borough President helped facilitate a similar

project, the New Settlement Community Campus, which opened in the Bronx in

2012. According to Ms. Calderon, this suggests that such co-‐‑developments and

shared-‐‑space agreements could be replicated across the city. Calderon described

73

a draft grant proposal that was developed by Casita Maria which proposes the

creation of a document that would help other arts groups negotiate shared space

agreements with public schools.

Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center

Lower East Side, Manhattan The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center is one of only six public

art centers in New York City offering studio space for artists. The center, referred

to colloquially as the Clemente, grew out of the work of three Latino artists from

the Lower East Side who saw an opportunity when a 100,000 square foot

building became vacant in 1993. The city had closed PS 160 in 1973, but for the

next twenty years, the building was used for immigration services and English

language classes. As federal funding for these programs was drying up,

gentrifiers and new housing developments had begun encroaching on the

neighborhood, and threatening to change its character. These artists, intent on

keeping the school out the hands of private real estate interests, began operating

the space for local artists and the community.

The exterior and entrance of the former PS 160 building in 2006 prior to renovations.

Photo Credits: Michael Minn

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The Clemente Center operated with an informal leadership structure and ad hoc

policies in its early years. As is common with many nonprofits, this period

provided needed flexibility as the institution’s identity and mission took shape,

but these eventually became an obstacle. Since 2008, the Clemente Center has

hired an executive director, received state and federal grant money, created a

master plan for refurbishing the PS 160 building, and worked with the City’s

Department of Design and Construction to restore and bring the building up to

code.

Today the center functions as a hub for Latino culture and arts activity in the

Lower East Side. Former classrooms now serve as theater, gallery and studio

spaces for local artists and community organizations. Of the sixteen performing

arts and educational groups using the building, thirteen have designated

residency space in the building in addition to the more than 50 individual artists

renting studios.

Clemente’s use of the PS 160 building was initially facilitated by the NYC

Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), an agency charged

with generating revenue through leasing city-‐‑owned properties. This mandate

regularly came into conflict with Clemente’s not so lucrative (not for profit)

mission of supporting the arts, resulting in repeated attempts to sell the building.

Eventually, however, the City transferred oversight of the building to the

Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), whose mandate is to support and secure

funding for the arts.

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The newly renovated Clemente Center was revealed in 2013

Photo Credits: Boweryboogie.com

Cultural Affairs has proven a more likeminded landlord. The ten-‐‑year lease

DCLA offered the Clemente stipulates that the income generated from artists and

groups in the building goes not to the City for rent, but back into a building

maintenance fund. Artists are prohibited from subletting their spaces in the

building to ensure the arts, not rent collection, remain primary.

The Clemente Center presents an example of the city acknowledging the value

that arts and culture bring to a community, value beyond the purely economic.

In a city where “highest use” is often synonymous with “best use,” the Clemente

demonstrates that, under the right circumstances (in this case a transfer of

ownership between city agencies) uses other than high-‐‑end residential can

become viable. “You can make the economic argument,” says Clemente’s

executive director, Jan Hanvick. “These sites can be sustainable once you fix

them up. You can charge for birthday parties and film screenings. But we can’t

rely only on the economic argument, otherwise we wouldn’t do anything.”

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The question becomes, under certain circumstances, can the discussion of

“highest” use be suspended long enough to discuss the “best” use? What is the

best use for this property? And what role do communities play in answering

these questions?

Summary Analysis of Case Studies

The above studies present four recent examples of how public buildings in New

York City are being used by communities and community organizations. Each of

the four building arrangements is as different as the set of circumstances from

which they emerged. In the three cases involving leasing or licensing agreements

(Casita, Clemente, LESEC), the City has granted community organizations full or

partial access to the facility while continuing to oversee and maintain the space.

This is true even in the case of Casita Maria, which retains private ownership of

its property but leases it to the Board of Education. This keeps costs lower for

Clemente and LESEC, which are not required to pay rent, and in the case of

Casita Maria, the City actually pays a small amount of rent to the organization.

These three organizations have also benefited more or less, from having the

City’s design and construction resources at their disposal in renovating their

facilities. In the Rockaways case, on the other hand, after ownership of the

firehouse was transferred from the city, renovation, operation and maintenance

of the facility—and the associated costs—fell to the community organization

alone. Finding and securing funds for such costs has proven difficult, and unless

the non-‐‑profit funding environment shifts dramatically, may actually limit the

organization’s capacity going forward. In the end, it is unclear why the City was

intent on disposing of the firehouse facilities, rather than renovating and leasing

them to community based organizations, as was the case in the other three cases.

77

Secondly, the four cases provide insight into the City’s approach to negotiating

real estate transactions with community groups. The three cases involving

lease/license agreements were made through private negotiations, and the

Rockaway firehouse acquisition came about through RFP. None of the cases

involved any robust type of democratic participation, which seems largely due to

the City’s ad hoc approach to vacant buildings, and less so with each

organization’s value for community input. Working out an agreement with an

existing CBO offers a more straightforward, efficient way for the City to work

with communities than facilitating a public planning process. One slight

exception is the Clemente case, in which the City initially granted use of the PS

160 facility to an informal group of local artists, and over time, a more formal

organization developed and increased in its capacity to manage and maintain the

facility.

Overall, these case studies demonstrate that city-‐‑owned buildings are a valuable

asset to local communities, and a vehicle for strengthening the community-‐‑based

non-‐‑profit sector. The most successful cases, however, are those in which the

City, as landlord, leases facilities that are in good working condition, rather than

transferring ownership and burdening non-‐‑profit organizations with long term

facility costs and restrictions on use of the property.

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Table 2-7 Case Studies Comparison

LES Ecology Center

Rockaway Waterfront

Alliance

Clemente Soto Vélez Center

Original Facility New Facility

Neighborhood Lower East Side Far Rockaway South Bronx South Bronx Lower East Side

Facility Location East River Promenade at Grand Street

58-03 Rockaway Beach Boulevard

928 Simpson Street

928 Simpson Street 107 Suffolk St

Organization Founded 1987 2005 1934 1934 1993

Type of Programming Composting and E-

waste recycling; Ecological Education

Youth and community development / Environmental stewardship

Arts and Education

Arts and Education Culture and arts

Facility Location East River Promenade at Grand Street

58-03 Rockaway Beach Boulevard

928 Simpson Street

928 Simpson Street 107 Suffolk St

Faciliy Description 5,000 sf; 2-story 7,200 sf; 2-story Unknown

90,000 sf; 5-story building; includes 400 seat theater

100,000 sf / 88,000 sf useable; Dutch Neo-

Gothic style;

Facility Built 1940-41 ca. 1931 ca. 1925 2009 1898

Former Use/Date of Deactivation

Grand Street Fire boat house until 1992

Engine Co. 265 Ladder 121 until 2004

Hunts Point Jewish Center NA

P.S. 160 until 1973; Solidaridad Humana until

1993

Facility Reopened 1997 Under Construction 1961 2009 1993

Lease/Acquisition Details

License agreement with Dept. of Parks

Acquired for $1 thru EDC/HPD Request for

Proposals

Casita acquired synagogue in

1958

DOE has 100-year lease and

pays Casita minimal rent

10-year lease with DCLA; Space rentals feed maintenance fund

RenovationsGreen building

renovations completed by Parks Dept. in 2012

$2.5M renovation in progress NA

New Construction by

SCA

$12.4M renovation completed by Dept.

Cultural Affairs in 2013

Architect DesigNYC & Andrew Berman Architect Genseler Architects Unknown

NYC School Construction

AuthorityCBJ Snyder

Casita Maria Center

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Chapter Three

The previous chapter established that the waterfront community of Coney Island

faces significant economic and social challenges, in addition to climate

vulnerabilities. It also examined the history and current conditions of the Coney

Island Pumping Station, which in many ways parallels that of the larger Coney

Island community. Abandoned by the City in the 1970s, the historic station has

suffered from decades of neglect, and appears largely forgotten by the outside

world. However, the site remains a place of significance in the community, a

place where residents have cultivated a community garden, and where Coney

Island Creek is easily accessed for fishing. The station also falls within an area

that has been the focus of several local initiatives aiming to revitalize the Creek

and adjacent waterfront parks. Large youth events and a short film have helped

generate energy that could potentially be leveraged for local organizing and

planning in a neighborhood that lacks strong community-‐‑based organizations.

At the same time, the creation of non-‐‑profits by several NYCHA resident

associations suggests that NYCHA residents are both wary of being excluded

from the post-‐‑Sandy political process, and willing to mobilize to ensure their

voices are heard. But if these community groups are to achieve long lasting

impacts in Coney Island they will need to support one another, work

collaboratively and earn the trust and respect of the community. The Pumping

Station presents an opportunity for local groups to organize, plan and advocate

together for activating and restoring an underutilized community asset and

landmark.

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I. Participatory Planning Framework This final chapter provides a community-‐‑based participatory planning

framework for activating the Coney Island Pumping Station. The four primary

goals of this framework are to (1) identify the problem the participatory planning

process is intended to address, (2) explore and evaluate various

leadership/facilitation scenarios in Coney Island, (3) identify the decisions that

will be made within the process, and (4) begin to identify decision-‐‑makers and

community stakeholders. A framework, by nature, is preliminary and

exploratory, and anticipates what “could be” without proscribing what “will be.”

If the process were to move forward, this framework simply provides a starting

point for leaders to use as they begin planning the process.

It should be noted that this framework represents a shift in direction from earlier

studio work. Whereas the initial studio proposal suggested that the pumping

station building be used for a specific type of youth programming, this process

leaves the type of programming open to many different possibilities. While the

youth programming proposal was based on insights gleaned from local

educators and NYCHA residents, it was decided that a pre-‐‑determined program

would remove a layer of control over the project from the hands of the

community, potentially compromising the integrity of the project and forfeiting a

valuable opportunity for community ownership. The author maintains that the

previously proposed programming could be one appropriate and relevant use

for the pumping station, but would prefer that community residents explore

multiple options and arrive at their own conclusions. With this in mind, much of

the information that informed the original studio proposal was included as part

of the existing conditions analysis in Chapter 2.

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Definition of the Problem

The existing conditions analysis in Chapter 2 identified both a broad range of

community issues, as well as site-‐‑specific factors that could be addressed

through a community-‐‑based planning process. To summarize, the Coney Island

Fire Services Pumping Station occupies a prime location adjoining a park on

Coney Island Creek, but the city-‐‑owned building has been vacant since the 1970s,

and the 1.5-‐‑acre site as a whole is largely underutilized. Meanwhile, in this

highly segregated community, there are few indoor public spaces where people

of differing economic statuses, backgrounds and neighborhoods can come

together to socialize, network and collaborate, learn new skills, recreate, or plan

for the future. The threat of future disasters like Sandy leaves Coney Island’s

future increasingly uncertain, making the need for a stronger social

infrastructure all the more crucial.

Leadership & Facilitation

The following decision-‐‑making framework is intended to explore which

decisions will be made, by whom, and at which points in the process. It provides

a basic framework for a community planning process, one that is responsive to

unexpected changes and circumstances that may arise during the process. The

framework incorporates features of the recent Bridging Gowanus community

planning process as well as the New York City Council’s Participatory Budgeting

campaign.

Facilitation Scenarios:

The way in which decisions are made is highly dependent upon which party is

leading the planning process, and the type of plan the process intends to achieve.

For example, residents working directly with a city agency or representative

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would have greater certainty that the plan’s goals would eventually be

implemented, but the plan’s goals may be only partially consistent with the

community’s goals. On the other hand, local residents working independently of

the City could be reasonably certain that the arrived upon plan would reflect

their goals, but much less certain of the plan’s implementation. This type of plan

could, however, serve as a valuable tool for advocacy.

Three possible facilitation scenarios are described below: an ideal, an alternative,

and a preferred scenario. The participatory process described in this chapter will

be based on the preferred scenario.

Figure 3-1 Leadership Scenarios

IDEAL SCENARIO: A Coney Island-‐‑based planning entity works with NYCHA residents and key stakeholders to create a community-‐‑based plan.

Ideally, a community-‐‑based planning process would be initiated and facilitated

by a community-‐‑based organization with broad planning experience and

credibility among local residents, but no such organization currently exists in

Coney Island. Community Board 13 is an important political body in Coney

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Island, but as with most community boards outside of Manhattan, has very

limited capacity for planning.

ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO: Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) planners facilitate participatory process for community residents. DCAS, who controls the pumping station site, is not an agency that specializes in

planning, however, they do employ a director of planning and several planning

staff, so it is not outside the realm of possibility that the agency could take the

lead. This arrangement would change the dynamic of the process considerably,

by placing a City agency in the drivers seat, and might ultimately compromise

the community-‐‑driven nature of the process.

PREFERRED SCENARIO: Councilmember Mark Treyger’s office works with a coalition of NYCHA Tenant Association Leaders to develop a plan using various forms of participatory engagement.

In the Bridging Gowanus planning process currently underway, the City

Councilmember, Brad Lander, has steered the process with support from Pratt

Center for Community Development. This model would have obvious

advantages in Coney Island, in that Councilmember Mark Treyger could bring

political clout, connections and funding to bear on behalf of the NYCHA

community that may be lacking from the process in other scenarios.

The councilmember working closely with a coalition of NYCHA tenant leaders

seems like the ideal scenario in Coney Island. Treyger serves on the City

Council’s Committee on Land Use, Committee on Parks and Recreation and

chairs the Committee on Recovery and Resiliency. In addition, Treyger serves on

the subcommittee on Planning, Dispositions and Concessions, the same

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committee, which in 2007, restricted DCAS’s sale of three firehouses (including

the Rockaway firehouse mentioned in Chapter 2) to community services uses.

Whether Treyger’s office would have the capacity for such community

engagement would need to be carefully considered. In the end, the

councilmember may wish to work with a third party planning consultant,

particularly one with community-‐‑based, participatory planning experience.

Decisions to be Made

Participatory planning processes aim to solve a particular problem by addressing

a series of questions using the input of citizens and stakeholders. A successful

and transparent participatory program will make explicit which questions will

be addressed by citizens and at which point within the process. Due to the lack

of previous community planning efforts in Coney Island, I am proposing that the

preliminary decisions, which would lay the groundwork for the public events, be

made among a core group of citizen leaders (the TA leaders and Councilmember

Treyger), rather than the community at large. This scenario, rather than

excluding the voices of the community, aims to elevate those voices in the

community that have historically been marginalized, and at a foundational phase

of the process. The questions to be addressed by this group would include:

• Should the Coney Island Pumping Station indeed be preserved and reused? • Who will direct and facilitate the community planning process? • What other community leaders and stakeholders need to be involved in the participatory

process and in what capacity? • Which participatory methods will be most effective in engaging each of the targeted

stakeholder groups? • What criteria will be used to evaluate proposed uses for the pumping station/site? How

will these criteria be weighted? (e.g. popularity, technical feasibility, historical continuity / suitability of use, financial viability, climate adaptability, etc.)

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By addressing the above questions prior to the community participation phase, it

would help ensure that the issue being addressed in the larger public forum

phase is clear and straightforward: the future of the pumping station. The six

scenarios listed below in Table 3-‐‑1 range from leaving the pumping station

untouched to removing the station altogether. However, the planning framework

in this chapter assumes, for reasons discussed below, that neither scenario one

(no action) nor scenarios four and five (involving demolition of the station)

would be beneficial to community residents.

Table 3-1 Scenarios for the Future of the Pumping Station

Scenario Description 1. No action Leave the station and site untouched 2. Preserve Preserve and restore the station to its

original condition 3. Adapt & Reuse Preserve and convert the station to a

new use 4. Convert & Redevelop Preserve and convert the station to a

new use as part of larger site redevelopment

5. Demolish Demolish and dedicate the site to open space

6. Demolish & Redevelop Demolish the station and redevelop the site for some other purpose

The exclusion of scenarios 1, 5 and 6 is suggested for several reasons. For

decades, historic preservationists have advocated for landmark designation of

the pumping station based on its distinct architectural style. Additionally, the

function of the pumping station serves as a connection point to Coney Island’s

historic amusement parks and the notoriously epic fires that continually

threatened to destroy them. In the November 2012 studio visioning session, one

participant lamented that, “history is being erased by development. It’s harder to

reminisce without landmarks and other tangible sites.” This comment suggests that

the concepts of “place meaning” and “place attachment” discussed in Chapter 1

are not only operable and applicable in Coney Island, but also under threat. It

86

also suggests that these place meanings and attachments are linked specifically

to historic iconic buildings in the community, like former Childs restaurant, the

Shore Theater. I would argue that the Coney Island pumping station, while far

less prominent constitutes one such icon, which helps to anchor a sense of place

and neighborhood identity in Coney Island, and therefore, propose that

scenarios 1, 5 and 6 be dropped from consideration.

If the coalition agrees that something should in fact be done with the Pumping

Station, this would leave two related questions for the public engagement phase

of the process:

• How should the pumping station be repurposed or reused? • Which of the proposed uses are most viable/feasible, and create the greatest overall

benefit to the community? In keeping with the community-‐‑based nature of this planning process, this

framework will stop short of determining which participatory methods to

employ to help the community arrive at their answer. The question of methods is

included above, and should be explored by the NYCHA coalition during the

planning phase of the process. Creighton (2005) provides helpful guidance in this

area, and strongly urges practitioners to develop a participatory planning

program that utilizes different methods based on the decisions being made, and

the stakeholder groups being targeted.

Identifying Decision-Makers & Stakeholders

Decision-makers

The pumping station property is currently owned by the Department of

Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), which manages the city’s real estate

holdings. The Department is led by Commissioner Stacey Cumberbatch, who

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reports to the First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris, the second highest ranking

official at City Hall. When inquiring about the pumping station property, I

corresponded with two staff members in DCAS’s Asset Management division,

which is overseen by Deputy Commissioner Ricardo Morales and fifteen other

executive-‐‑level staff.

It is common for the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) to be involved

when the City is disposing of or transferring real estate. Nate Bliss, the current

Senior Vice President of Development at EDC, led the city-‐‑initiated strategic

planning and 2009 rezoning of Coney Island as director of subsidiary Coney

Island Development Corporation.

The local councilmember should establish a working relationship with DCAS

and EDC as early in the process as possible. Having the support of higher-‐‑level

city officials could help ensure wider latitude in the planning process and fewer

obstacles to plan implementation. Support from City agencies could also take the

form of direct staff involvement in the planning process. Figure 3-‐‑2 lists relevant

DCAS and EDC officials and staff.

Stakeholders

Figure 3-‐‑2 identifies four main categories of stakeholders that may have an

interest in activating the Coney Island Pumping Station: NYCHA stakeholders

(NYCHA), other neighborhood stakeholders, Civic organizations/institutions,

and Political representatives/entities.

NYCHA TENANT ASSOCIATION LEADERS AND RESIDENTS

NYCHA residents comprise the largest share of the Coney Island population,

and thus warrant a separate category. To ensure their views are well represented,

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extra efforts should be made—including language translation and targeted

advertising—to encourage NYCHA residents to become engaged in the process.

OTHER NEIGHBORHOOD STAKEHOLDERS

Other neighborhood stakeholders include homeowners, business owners, school

officials and parents, and religious institutions within walking distance of the

pumping station. Lane Rosen, specifically, is an Assistant Principal at John

Dewey High School, and has been very active in encouraging student

involvement in stewardship of Coney Island Creek. Partnership for Parks, a

private-‐‑public partnership, has helped Rosen host beach cleanup events and

supported local residents in forming the group Friends of Kaiser Park.

CIVIC GROUPS & INSTITUTIONS

This category includes a mix of newer organizations and well-‐‑established

institutions serving Coney Island. The New York Aquarium and Kingsborough

Community College draw visitors and students from all five boroughs of the

City, and provide valuable programming, expertise and resources to the Coney

Island community. The Coney Island History Project is directed by Charles

Denson, a staunch advocate for Coney Island in general, and Coney Island Creek

specifically. As part of Councilman Treyger’s 2014 participatory budgeting

campaign, Denson proposed using the pumping station site for a bio-‐‑filtration

project that would naturally clean Coney Island Creek.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVES AND ENTITIES

Government representatives at all levels are influencers and decision-‐‑makers,

and can function as strong advocates for local communities. As mentioned

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earlier, they should be kept informed of and encouraged to be involved in the

planning process.

Figure 3-2 Stakeholder Map

Table 3-‐‑3 identifies specific individuals and groups within each of the four

stakeholder categories, and indicates their geographic reach and sector, along

with a contact and phone number when available. The tables list twelve civic

organizations/institutions, six NYCHA tenant associations, fourteen other

neighborhood stakeholders5 and six government entities or representatives.

Selection of neighborhood stakeholders was based on two factors: physical

proximity to the pumping station (within ½ mile), or vested interest in the site or

surrounding area (including Coney Island Creek). These tables offer a starting

5 A total of fourteen churches were identified within ½ mile of the pumping station site, but only the four with closest proximity were included.

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point for the development of a collaborative planning process involving

community members at many levels, and are not intended as an exhaustive

listing of all possible participants.

Table 3-3: Stakeholders by Category

Civic Organizations / Institutions

Name / Entity Geographic Reach Sector Contact Phone

60th Precinct Community Council Community Government Judd L.

Fischler (718) 946-3311

Alliance for Coney Island Community Local Tourism /Development Johanna Zaki (718) 594-7895

Coney Island Community Service Center Community Non-profit Lisa Jones 718-310-5620

Coney Island Generation Gap Community Non-profit Pam Harris (718) 975-0447

Coney Island History Project Community Culture Charles Denson 510-292-6898

Coney Island STEM Collaborative Community Education Lane Rosen 718-373-6400

Friends of Kaiser Park Neighborhood Civic Organization Rocco Brescia (917) 873-9261

Kingsborough Community College Maritime Technology Program

City Education Anthony DiLernia 718-368-5525

New York Aquarium Community Culture & Education

John Dohlin/Dr. Merryl Kofka 917-838-2647

New York State Marine Education Association State Education Lane Rosen 631-632-9216

Partnership for Parks City Non-profit; Recreation (212) 360-1310

Urban Neighborhood Services, Inc. Community Non-profit Dr. Mathylde

Frontus 347-374-2455

Neighborhood Stakeholders (NYCHA)


Carey Gardens Tenant Association Neighborhood Public housing Shirley Aikens 718-864-4856

Coney Island Houses Neighborhood Public housing Deborah Reed 718-496-7111

Coney Island I (Site 8) Neighborhood Public housing Victoria Lynch 718-265-3027

Gravesend Residents Associaiton Neighborhood Public housing Deborah Carter 347-350-4966

O'Dwyer Gardens Residents Association Neighborhood Public housing Illma Joyner 718-501-2338

Unity Tower (Coney Island 1B) Neighborhood Public housing Wanda Feliciano 917-204-1129

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Neighborhood Stakeholders (Other)


Community Gardeners Neighborhood Urban Agriculture Unknown

Coney Island Gospel Assembly Neighborhood Church Pastor Connie Hull-Sanfillippa (718) 996-9301

Coney Island Prep Public Charter School Neighborhood Public

Education Jacob Mnookin 718-513-6951

Discover Group, Inc. City Industrial Business 718-456-4500

IS 239 Mark Twain School City Education Carol Moore (718) 266-0814

John Dewey High School Community Education Lane Rosen 718-373-6400

Liberation Diploma Plus H.S. Community Education April Leong 718-946-6812

Naomi AME Zion Church Neighborhood Church Rev. Dr. William Smalls (718) 266-1303

New Church International Neighborhood Church Pastor Edwin Malave

New York Bread Co. Community Commercial bakery (718) 946-2246

PS 188 Michael Berdy Neighborhood Public Education

Frederick Tudda 718-266-6380

PS 288 Shirley Tanyhill School Neighborhood Public Education

Joelene-Lynette Kinard 718-449-8000

PS 329 The Surfside School Neighborhood Public Education

Selema Dawson 718-996-3800

United Community Baptist Church Community Church Pastor Connis

M. Mobley (718) 266-2263

Governm ent Representat ives / Enti t ies

Name / Entity Geographic Reach Sector Contact, Title Phone

Borough President Eric Adams Borough City Government (718) 802-3700

Community Board 13 Community Local Government

Chuck Reichenthal, D. Manager

718.266.3001

Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (8th District) National U.S.

Government (718) 373 - 0033

District 47 Councilmember Mark Treyger City City

Government 718-373-9673

NYC Economic Development Corporation City Government

Entity Nate Bliss (212) 312-4263

NYC Parks Dept. City City Government

Kevin Jeffery, Borough Commissioner

(718) 965-8900

State Senator Diane Savino State State Government (718) 333-0311

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II. Recommendations The following section outlines five recommendations, both policy-oriented and community-level action items, intended to both advance the primary goal of this thesis—activating the Coney Island Pumping Station using community-based planning—and urge the City to rethink its approach to vacant buildings.

1. Designate the Coney Island Pumping Station a New York City landmark

The Landmark’s Preservation Commission should schedule a hearing and grant

the Coney Island Pumping Station landmark status immediately. Listed on the

National Register of Historic Places in 1981, the 77-‐‑year old pumping station has

now been closed and awaiting city landmark designation for 39 years, longer

than it was in service (38 years).

The structure is not only architecturally distinct, but also holds value as a

cultural landmark, representing important chapters in the history of Coney

Island and of the United States. It evokes the massive federal spending of the

Depression era, a time when the U.S. government became a crucial player in the

nation’s economic recovery through investments in infrastructure and jobs when

the private sector was reeling. Secondly, it stands as a memorial to Coney

Island’s devastating and spectacular history of fires (Sally, 2006). The station’s

electrical pumping equipment was far more reliable and powerful than the

previous steam-‐‑powered pumps, and enabled the fire department to more

effectively protect the Coney Island community.

Landmark designation would add a layer of protection against future demolition

of the pumping station, and obligate the City, as owner, to bring the building

back to a “good state of repair,” Landmarking would also provide impetus for

the City to find a tenant organization that could make use of the space.

93

2. Request that EDC issue a RFP for a participatory planning process for activating the pumping station.

NYCHA tenant association leaders and Councilmember Mark Treyger should

request that the New York City Economic Development Corporation issue a

Request for Proposals for a participatory planning process for activating the

Coney Island Pumping Station. The request should stipulate that EDC consult

with the NYCHA coalition to develop guidelines that would be included in the

RFP. These guidelines might specify a time period for the planning process, the

minimum number of meetings to be held, and targeted stakeholder groups to be

engaged.

This type of grassroots activity helped initiate the repurposing of the 135th Street

Gatehouse Pumping Station in Harlem in 2006. Patricia Cruz, the executive

director of performing arts group Harlem Stage, identified the facility, which had

been vacant since 1984, as a potential space for her organization, and began

organizing meetings and consulting with city agencies. At one visioning session,

City College architecture students, local teachers and parents and church

members, community activists, and artists all shared their ideas for transforming

the Gatehouse as well as the surrounding community (Hostetter, 2002). The plan

that resulted included new green spaces and playgrounds, and the conversion of

the pumping station into performance space for Harlem Stage. The City’s

Department of Cultural Affairs provided $18M in funding, and the remaining

$3M came from private sources. At the time, Harlem Stage planned to raise an

additional $5M for an endowment, cash reserves, programs and operating

expenses (Pogrebin, 2006).

94

3. DCAS should develop guidelines and procedures for helping communities activate vacant city-owned landmark buildings.

Further analysis of the events surrounding the Rockaway firehouse acquisition

(ch.2, page 71) suggests that, at the time, DCAS lacked any intelligible

mechanism for meaningful community input in the disposal of city-‐‑owned

buildings or properties. In early 2007, the agency proposed selling five former

firehouse facilities at public auction with no restrictions, and was met with

strong reactions by community boards, borough presidents and community

members.

In response, the Mayor’s office formed local community steering committees to

create development guidelines that would inform the RFP for each site. These

committees consisted of the borough presidents, the local City Council member,

community board members, and representatives from City agencies and the

Mayor’s Office (CityLand Online, 2007). A vote by the City Council on May 30,

2007, further restricted the sale/leasing of the firehouses to community facilities

uses (CityLand, 2007, page 71).

95

Table 3-4 Former Firehouses Facilities Disposed of by DCAS in 2007

Source: NYC EDC

This case might be interpreted by some as an example of the democratic process

functioning with proper checks and balances, but it also raises troubling

questions about what, if any, procedure the agency follows in determining how

to dispose of city-‐‑owned buildings. Adopting a planning framework similar to

the one outlined earlier in this chapter would provide a more predictable,

participatory process for disposal of city-‐‑owned buildings.

4. The City should rehabilitate the Coney Island Pumping Station into a useable space.

It is the responsibility of the City government to see that its inventory of

properties is in good repair. Not only that, but it is in the City’s best interest to

help the Coney Island community put the Pumping Station to new use. Vacant,

deteriorating buildings are an eyesore in their communities, and detrimental to a

thriving public realm. City-‐‑owned buildings especially, should be seen as local

assets and activated to improve the surrounding neighborhood.

Firehouse / Address Size

City Council Restrictions on

Sale Awardee

RFP Award Date

Property Transfer

Date Engine Company 15 / 269 Henry Street

5,000 sf Community facility

Henry Street Settlement NA Pending

Engine Company 36 / 120 East 125th Street

8,400 sf

Sale limited to Community Service Provider (CSP)

Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute

2008 2014

299 DeGraw Street 4,250 sf

Limited to 10-year Lease to CSP

Brooklyn Philharmonic (folded in late 2013)

2008 NA

58-03 Rockaway Beach Boulevard 7,200 sf Sale limited to

CSP Rockaway Waterfront Alliance

2008 2013

Engine Co. 212 / 136 Wythe Avenue

6,000 sf Sale limited to CSP

The People’s Firehouse, Inc. and Neighbors Allied for Good Growth

2008 2008

96

The planning process described above provides a means for determining how

the community would like to use the facility, but it is not likely to yield a single

champion, either an individual or organization, that would have the existing

capacity to implement the community’s desires. Therefore, the City should take a

leading role in design and rehabilitation of the station, as it has on a number of

occasions with similar buildings.

Avenue V Pumping Station, Gravesend

The recent DEP rehabilitation of the Avenue V Sewer Pumping Station in

Gravesend provides precedent for the city taking the lead in the repair and

restoration of city-‐‑owned landmark buildings. In the project, DEP spent $200M

installing new pumping equipment and sewer infrastructure that will reduce

combined sewer discharges into Coney Island Creek by nearly 90 percent.

Noting the historic pumping house as “national and city landmark-‐‑ eligible,”

DEP also coordinated with New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and

Historic Preservation (OPRHP) and New York City Landmarks Preservation

Commission (LPC) in an $8M restoration of the interior and exterior façades of

the station (Newman, 2015).

East 125th Street Firehouse, Harlem

In addition, EDC, on behalf of the Dept. of Cultural Affairs, is currently

managing the renovation of the East 125 Street firehouse listed above in Table 3-‐‑

4. The approximately $8M project includes $6M in city capital and $2M in private

support, and will convert the space into the new home of the Caribbean Cultural

Center African Diaspora Institute.

97

5. The City should fund the community planning process, building renovations and the first five years of operations at the Pumping Station.

The City should fully fund this project from the planning process through at least

the first five years of operation. Such funding would send a strong signal that the

City’s takes seriously the need for capacity building and long-‐‑term resiliency in

the community. Arts and culture organizations using city-‐‑owned buildings

regularly receive such support through Department of Cultural Affairs, and

other non-‐‑profits should be no different.

Community-‐‑based organizations that rely solely upon private funding face an

often-‐‑volatile donor market, especially after taking on large capital investments.

In such cases, city provision of a building, even at no cost, may become a burden

for the organization, if no additional support is provided.

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III. Conclusion The argument of this thesis has been twofold. First, I have suggested that the

Coney Island Pumping Station comprises a significant place in the historical,

physical and social landscape of Coney Island, that it is worthy of landmark

designation, and that as a community landmark, it should be put to use by and

for the community. Concern for equity is a primary factor in this argument. The

residents of Coney Island, many of whom are minorities and seniors, have for

decades dealt with disproportionately high levels of unemployment and poverty,

and exclusion from the political process. In an already underserved community

like Coney Island, allowing a city-‐‑owned building like the pumping station to sit

empty and become an eyesore rather than converting it into a community asset,

seems the very definition of adding insult to injury.

Equally important, however, is the process or method through which the

pumping station is activated. Dismal economic conditions and geographic

segregation have left the social fabric of the Coney Island community in

fragments, with virtually no strong community organizations to mobilize and

advocate for residents. For the city to treat the pumping station as merely a real

estate holding would be to miss a unique opportunity to address these social

dynamics. Activating the station through community-‐‑based, participatory

planning would give NYCHA tenant association leaders and other community

groups an opportunity to work collaboratively and grow their capacity for future

community projects. If the City allows this type of process, and more than that,

supports it financially, it could become a first step in repairing the social

infrastructure and strengthening the community’s resiliency to face future

storms.

99

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Appendix A

Ideas for Activating the Coney Island Pumping Station

The following list includes ideas for activating the Pumping Station that were gleaned from student peers, faculty advisors, and Coney Island residents over the course of writing this thesis. They are provided as fodder for future brainstorming and discussion:

• Dance studio • Recording studio • Radio station • Rehearsal space • Incubator Kitchen • Restaurant • Art gallery/studio space • Bio-filtration site for Coney Island Creek • Bookstore • Pre-K education facility • Boat building workshop • Museum • New York Aquarium satellite site • Marine science center • Waterfront recreation center • Bicycle kitchen • Citizen science station/environmental classroom • Workforce development center • Community technology center • Business enterprise incubator • NYCHA training center • Community planning studio

Documents

Open to the Public: A Community-based Approach to Activating the Coney Island Pumping Station