GAPCo Wins Design Trust Fellowship

GAP_arch.jpg
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.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

New Grand Army Plaza Concept is “Brilliantly Obvious”

By Aaron Naparstek |
In the most recent issue of the Architect’s Newspaper, Editor-in-Chief William Menking has some very enthusiastic things to say about the Grand Army Plaza Coalition’s project, Rethinking Grand Army Plaza (download the proposal here) which was recently awarded a 2007-2008 Design Trust fellowship. Menking writes: This past month I served as a juror on the […]

What is Your Idea for Grand Army Plaza?

By Aaron Naparstek |
The Grand Army Plaza Coalition, which recently won a grant from the Design Trust for Public Spaces, has launched an Ideas Competition for its Reinventing Grand Army Plaza project. If you want to participate, answer the following questions in full sentences, and email your responses by the end of the week to survey@reinventingGAP.org. 1. What […]

A Community Workshop to Re-envision Grand Army Plaza

By Aaron Naparstek |
All across the city neighborhood groups are coming together to re-envision and plan their own communities. In the last few months we’ve seen valuable community-planning processes taking place in Hell’s Kitchen, the Meatpacking District and, to a certain extent, along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. People aren’t waiting around for real estate developers or city […]

You Can Finally Walk to Grand Army Plaza Without Fear

By Ben Fried |
Gathering at the new public space beneath the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch at Grand Army Plaza this morning, city officials and community leaders celebrated the reclamation of asphalt for people at the crossroads of Brooklyn. One of the borough’s iconic places is finally a destination that people can get to comfortably, thanks to a slate […]

Reinventing Grand Army Plaza: What Are Your Ideas?

By Aaron Naparstek |
The Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo) and the Design Trust for Public Space are launching an "Ideas Competition" called Reinventing Grand Army Plaza. Building on GAPCo’s on-going effort to re-envision this historic Brooklyn crossroads, the Ideas Competition will solicit new, creative proposals for Grand Army Plaza’s re-design. Top submissions will be exhibited in the summer […]

It’s Time for DOT to Think Big at Grand Army Plaza

By Ben Fried |
The view of Grand Army Plaza from Union Street. DOT has proposed converting parking on Union to another moving lane. Union Street in Brooklyn has a problem: The queue of cars waiting to drive through the intersection at Grand Army Plaza sometimes stretches as far as the eye can see. The bottleneck, which causes a […]