On Monday, September 30, the Park Slope Civic Council held a public forum, for which I was the moderator, on the proposal by New York Methodist Hospital (NYM) to build an outpatient facility on a portion of the block bounded by Fifth and Sixth Streets, and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. A capacity crowd of over well over 100 people filled the Social Hall at Congregation Beth Elohim to hear a presentation by NYM on the proposed expansion. Most of the comments and questions from the audience concerned traffic impacts, loss of parking during construction, parking after construction, and the scale and massing of the proposed building. Some comments and questions were concerned with construction staging and construction-related noise impacts. A few others had to do with the demolition of a number of row houses, owned by NYM, on Sixth Street and on Eighth Avenue. In short, the audience covered a wide range of concerns with NYM’s proposal.
Council Member Brad Lander appeared briefly to express his support for NYM’s proposed expansion and to announce the formation of a traffic task force to look at traffic impacts during and after construction and how best to address them. I am pleased to be part of this task force, which will include representatives from NYM, Community Board Six, the New York City Department of Transportation, and others, including members of the general public. I am confident the task force will carefully analyze the traffic study NYM is undertaking and will take its own look at potential impacts and achievable measures to mitigate them.
Whether one supports NYM’s proposal, opposes it, or is somewhere in the middle, allow me to make a few points that might help inform the discussion and one’s opinion, about this proposal and much else.
- Park Slope is more than its buildings. A built environment that is urbane and green, best appreciated and negotiated without a car, is a treasure we are fortunate to have. But the character of Park Slope is its people first and its built environment second at best. Park Slope is not and should not become an urban Colonial Williamsburg, a well-preserved but lifeless artifact. In the past 150 years Park Slope has been built up, torn down, built up again. It has had an airplane crash into it and been rebuilt. In the 1960s and 1970s “urban renewal” almost came to Park Slope and the Civic Council helped see that threat off. In spearheading the creation and expansion of the Park Slope Historic District, the Civic Council has ensured or will ensure the preservation of some three thousand nineteenth- and twentieth-century buildings. The built environment is a mix of old and new, in varying scale and styles. But it’s the people that make Park Slope what it is. There’s a lot of talent and a lot of commitment in a small space. And we have a socio-economic diversity that isn’t fully appreciated.
- Nothing in creation, no human activity, is without impacts. This statement is not an invitation to complacency or indifference. We have the ability to manage the impacts of what we do. The traffic task force will look carefully at traffic impacts. The Civic Council will study and monitor construction impacts. And a specific environmental impact, namely the effect of the proposed facility on an aging, inadequate sewer system, must be studied and reported on.
- Park Slope is not a suburb-in-the-city. Park Slope lies smack in the middle of the biggest city in the country. The resulting density presents challenges and a rich set of opportunities. Schools and sidewalks are crowded. When traffic isn’t snarled it’s often going too fast. Scaffolding and dumpsters from even small-scale construction sites are much in evidence. Commercial and residential rents, to say nothing about housing prices, are at vertiginous levels. And yet, there are so many things one can walk to: parks, cultural institutions, schools, houses of worship, shopping, and medical care, to name a few. They’re all cheek by jowl here in the city. Encountering a neighbor, a friend, or a new acquaintance by chance while doing one’s rounds comes from this proximity and it is one of the defining characteristics of our community.
- Park Slope is not in a cocoon. Every day we go to other communities, and people from other communities come to Park Slope, for myriad reasons: work, school, worship, recreation, culture, eating out, shopping, medical care. We and our neighbors share concerns about schools, traffic and transportation, municipal services, green space, zoning, and much more. The Civic Council works actively and effectively with civic organizations in neighboring communities because issues don’t stop at whatever arbitrary boundaries one supposes Park Slope to have. We’re part of a larger, diverse environment, and that’s a very good thing. And in reply to the person at the forum who wondered about the “demographic” of NYM’s proposed outpatient facility, my answer is it doesn’t matter and the question was shameful. Park Slope is better than that and must remain a welcoming community, to say nothing of the fact that the hospital has an obligation to treat all comers.
I have stated on several occasions recently that the Civic Council’s role with respect to the proposed expansion is to be an honest broker. This role has two key parts. One is to ensure to the best of its ability that the concerns of the various constituencies engaged with this proposal are fully comprehended. The other is to ensure that NYM lives up to its agreement in 2009 to give serious consideration to the comments raised by the community in response to any expansion proposal and, if the comments are not to be incorporated in the final plans for construction, to provide an explanation as to why the comments were not incorporated. And we will remain engaged as an honest broker right through this process. That might not be enough for some but that’s our job.
Michael Cairl is President of the Park Slope Civic Council.