Grand Army Plaza Coalition

Plaza to the People

The Grand Army Plaza Coalition, GAPCo, wants to restore people to the place; they want to end the Plaza’s status as the Borough’s grandest but least used public space.

“We are a coalition of individuals, organizations, and businesses who are committed to improving the public’s experience of Grand Army Plaza,” reads the mission statement for the coalition, which sprang into being after the Plaza’s wasted potential was widely lamented at the Civic Council’s March 3, 2006  forum on Traffic and Transportation. “The Plaza currently functions as little more than a massive traffic rotary, separating communities in its wake.”

A brochure prepared for a March, 2007 Community Workshop included this description of GAPCo's goals:

People, culture, nature, transportation. These forces weave and collide on a daily basis in Grand Army Plaza. Much of the movement around the Plaza is productive, and contributes to the vitality of this urban space. Residents move across and around the plaza pushing strollers and shopping carts; visitors stream to the institutions and gaze at the monuments; trees provide shade over the plaza’s benches for respite on warm days; and at all times, cars and trucks and buses whiz through the plaza’s matrix of streets, and the subways rumble underneath. Grand Army Plaza is a magnificent jewel; but its luster has dimmed. There are numerous imbalances in the use of today’s Plaza, that [Prospect Park Designers] Vaux and Olmsted could not have foreseen. For example, the importance of the Plaza as a traffic circle challenges the original intent of the berms and Bailey Fountain for quiet relaxation, and the need for vehicles to negotiate the Plaza’s curves and turns creates uneven speeds, difficult lane changes, and conflicts with pedestrians and bicyclists. Many of the benches around the Plaza are often isolated, while popular bus stops lack seating or shelters. And the berms are overgrown and underused, their statues half-hidden, while other parts of the Plaza lie exposed to the sun.

This great space, once a unique gathering point for Brooklyn, has become an obstacle that divides Brooklynites.

This defies logic, at a time when people cross Grand Army Plaza more frequently, and in greater numbers, than in a long time. New residents of booming Prospect Heights and Crown Heights still seek out Park Slope’s services. Park Slope residents are rediscovering the cultural attractions of Institute Park. The existing network of pedestrian paths, bike lanes, and bus routes does little to ease this interchange. The appeal of spending time in Grand Army Plaza is also diminished by the proximity to traffic, the poor condition of many amenities, and the insufficient signage. Right now, transportation trumps people, culture, and nature; we need to restore balance, just as Grand Army Plaza’s designers achieved so elegantly over a century ago.

GAPCo videos and documents, including the report on the March, 2007 community workshop, may be downloaded at http://www.grandarmyplaza.org/