Speaking Up

Comunity-based activism

The Civic Council has always been on the ready to go to bat for the neighborhood, from initiating the planting of thousands of trees in the 1960s and '70s to securing our historic district to pushing for New York City's first contextual re-zoning to letting the Department of Transportation know that the people of Park Slope were overwhelmingly opposed to the transformation of 6th and 7th Avenues into one-way speedways.

Here are some of the campaigns we and our constituents - the people of Park Slope - are working on now:

• Our Buy in Brooklyn shop local campaign, launched on Nov. 13, 2007, aims to preserve the independently owned shops so integral to the fabric of life in Park Slope and all of Brooklyn.
• We are pushing for citizen input into the Atlantic Yards project. The people who will be most affected have had virtually no say in the largest private development in Brooklyn history.
• We are asking Whole Foods to redesign its first Brooklyn store, planned for the corner of 3rd Avenue and 3rd Street. We want the giant grocery chain to stand behind its reputation for environmental responsibility by building a far "greener" store then currently planned - one that will contribute to the quality of life in the community rather than detract from it.
•  We are charter members of GAPCo, the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, which is fighting to make the plaza one of the City's great public spaces. GAPCo was inspired by our March, 2005 Traffic and Transportation Community Forum.
•  We have begun to study the feasibility of expanding the Park Slope Historic District. Architecture is a key element of our neighborhood's character, and the people of Park Slope have learned that the 2003 downzoning controls scale but not appearance.