Brooklyn

GAPCo Wins Design Trust Fellowship

Sculpture on the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, Grand Army Plaza

By Aaron Naparstek

10:00 AM EDT on October 4, 2007

Sculpture on the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, Grand Army Plaza

On the heels of Tuesday’s press conference, here is another exciting development at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. Robert Witherwax, an organizer of the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, sends along the following news:

As you may know, GAPCo applied for a fellowship from the Design Trust for Public Spaces, a progressive and exciting group that has supported such recent projects as the Times Square Streetscape Improvements and Reclaiming the High Line.

We are pleased to announce that our proposal — “Closing the GAP” — has been awarded a 2007-2008 fellowship!
We will be working closely with the Design Trust over the next few months to refine GAPCo’s consensus vision. From the first day, this has been a grassroots, community- and stakeholder-driven project, a fact that we are extremely proud of. We look forward to engaging all of GAP’s stakeholders in this exciting next step.

Aaron Naparstek

Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.