Streetsblog New York City

The asphalt expanse where Flatbush and Vanderbilt Avenues meet at the north end of Grand Army Plaza. Photo: Google Street View

We missed it in the run-up to the holidays last month, but this item in the Brooklyn Paper is worth a longer look. DOT has announced its intention to implement some safety fixes at the northern end of Grand Army Plaza.

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the agency may calm the racetrack conditions on the plaza's north end, where drivers speed around the traffic circle without stopping:

The suggested improvements would do away with the loop in favor of a normal traffic light with a left turn signal at the intersection of Vanderbilt and Flatbush avenues inside the circle.

The people have spoken, choosing a design for Grand Army Plaza that connects it to Prospect Park, taking Flatbush Avenue underground and making pedestrians the primary users of the space.

"Canopy," a plan submitted by a team of French designers, took people's choice in the "Reinventing Grand Army Plaza" competition, sponsored by the Design Trust for Public Space. It was also selected last month by competition jurors as one of two top designs.

"Canopy" is one of few submissions that actually connects the plaza with the park. Like last year's Grand Army Plaza Coalition proposal, it at least takes a stab at dealing with area-wide traffic management issues -- a major consideration for any workable redesign.

While raising the profile of the project and drawing the attention of thousands of Brooklynites, it's unknown how much of an impact the competition will have on the eventual design. The Brooklyn Paper reports:

"The contest wasn’t intended for a design to be constructed," sniffed Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, which is conducting traffic studies as a first step in its own plan to fix the plaza.

"The competition has produced some very interesting concepts, which we will bear in mind as we continue to think about the future of Grand Army Plaza," he said. "We’re still looking into the designs [to evaluate their feasibility]."

Last Saturday, the opening of the Design Trust for Public Space's "Reinventing Grand Army Plaza" exhibit quickly transformed the plaza, normally devoid of any street life, into a vibrant public space. Visitors were welcomed with live music, a dance performance, food and exhibition tours. This photo set on Flickr has over 400 shots from Saturday's event. City Room reports:

Gone are the wasted expanses of concrete behind the arch, where ambulances used to lie in wait for traffic accident victims. The winning ideas include squaring the traffic circle to make more regular intersections, putting a canopy or elevated pedestrian walks over the plaza, creating a shelter for a year-round green market, adding a bike rental shop, and putting a visitor center at the subway stop.

The plaza, home to the city’s second-largest green market, close neighbor to four top Brooklyn attractions, and the occasional rooster, was done in by the car.

Residents in Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, the four neighborhoods it separates instead of unites, are hard pressed to figure out how to reach the Bailey Fountain and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch without becoming roadkill. The traffic whizzing around the plaza has been called “the only concrete and asphalt roulette wheel in the world.”

You can check out the designs of all 30 finalists here, and if you see one that you think promises to improve conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, don't forget to give it your people's choice award vote.

Photo: The Design Trust for Public Space

This morning officials announced the winners of the "Reinventing Grand Army Plaza" competition, a contest that drew 200+ proposals for transforming the gateway to Prospect Park into a public space worthy of its landmark status. A jury composed mainly of designers, planners and community advocates selected four designs to receive cash prizes, while winnowing the entrants to a field of 30, to be displayed on-site through October 13. Members of the public will be able to vote for their favorites via text message, with results announced on October 8.

After the exhibit, the Design Trust for Public Space and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, along with NYC DOT and the Parks Department, will participate in a series of public workshops based on the top 30 designs, with the ultimate goal of composing a new plaza master plan.

Prize-winning designs are "Canopy" and "Please Wake Me Up!" (pictured) in a tie for first, "Urban Stripes" was awarded second place, and Brooklyn's Garrison Architects took third with "A Center for Brooklyn." Unfortunately, not every finalist made a serious attempt to address GAP's complex traffic issues, which will be essential to creating a lively and inviting public space. On the other hand, the guidelines do indicate that entries "did not have to be realistic."

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 is great about Grand Army Plaza?

2. What existing problems could be addressed by a Plaza re-design?

3. What potential uses or opportunities for the Plaza might a Plaza re-design incorporate?

Additionally, GAPco organizer Rob Witherwax writes:

Next week there is an important meeting of the Community Board 6 Transportation committee. Please try to attend:

WHEN: Thursday, 17 January 2008, 6.30 PM

WHERE: Prospect Park Residence, 1 Prospect Park West (at Union Street)

AGENDA: Discussion with representatives for the Department of Transportation on pending traffic calming request for Prospect Park West and 8th Avenue, and for decongesting Union Street approach to the Grand Army Plaza.

Photo: pianoman75/Flickr

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 of 2008 at the Brooklyn Public Library or the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

To document GAPCo's progress to date, the existing context of the Plaza and the competition's goals and aspirations, GAPCo is creating a Briefing Booklet for competition entrants and they want your thoughts, ideas, hopes, frustrations and visions for Grand Army Plaza represented in this publication. The briefing booklet will quote from responses to this questionnaire. Please answer the following questions by December 20, 2007.

1. What about Grand Army Plaza currently functions well?
2. What existing problems could be addressed by a Plaza re-design?
3. What potential uses or opportunities for the Plaza might a Plaza re-design incorporate?
4. Please include your name, organization/affiliation, neighborhood and contact information in your response.

For more information about this project, please visit: http://www.reinventingGAP.org. Email info@reinventingGAP.org with questions or to be placed on the competition mailing list.

Someone who is not a traffic engineer please reinvent me!

Top photo: Nakeya B./Flickr
Bottom photo: 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 Design Trust's latest funding round. We were presented with many well-crafted and smart proposals, and settled on two projects to fund: Closing the Gap: Rethinking Grand Army Plaza and Park Design for the 21st Century. The Grand Army Plaza Coalition's proposal to reroute the roads around the difficult and inaccessible traffic island-cum-monument is such a brilliantly obvious solution that one wonders why it hasn't been tried before. The roadbed between the plaza and Prospect Park will be closed and used on the weekends for a farmer's market, allowing pedestrians to actually access this beautiful space without having to cross many lanes of traffic. (This will all be accomplished without denying drivers access from Flatbush and Vanderbilt avenues and Eastern Parkway to Prospect Park West.)

You can download a PDF of the current issue of the Architect's Newspaper here.

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.

With city workers pouring concrete in the background (and StreetFilms' cameras rolling), New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced pedestrian and cyclist improvements for Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza yesterday. The plan calls for 11,000 square feet of new, landscaped pedestrian islands, a separated bike path, new crosswalks and pedestrian signals.

The redesign should do a lot to help make pedestrian and bike crossings safer and more convenient, particularly on the Prospect Heights side of the Plaza. With new crosswalks connecting Prospect Heights residents directly to the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch and Bailey Fountain, two of the city's most truly awesome historic monuments, DOT's plan may also help activate the beautiful but under-used public space in the center of GAP's traffic maelstrom.

DOT's plan for the Plaza is a direct result of work done by the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, a group of community organizations that myself and others started up back in the spring of 2005 to begin to reclaim and re-envision Grand Army Plaza as the great public space that it was originally designed to be.

Yesterday's press conference was notable not just for the physical changes taking place in the Plaza but for the changes that have taken place at New York City's transportation agency. When we started GAPco, DOT staffers weren't permitted to attend our meetings or even speak at our press conference with Danish urban designer Jan Gehl (Dalila Hall from the Brooklyn Borough office disobeyed the ridiculous order and said a few words anyway).

Yesterday, Grand Army Plaza Coalition organizer Rob Witherwax stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the podium with Sadik-Khan, Borough President Marty Markowitz, Council member Tish James and Prospect Park Alliance president Tupper Thomas. The press conference, staged in front of the Brooklyn Public Library, was probably visible from the apartment window of former Commissioner Iris Weinshall who lives on Prospect Park West.

While the news at GAP yesterday was all positive, GAPco organizer Michael Cairl still qualifies DOT's work as "a good first step." To get a sense of what he means by that, immediately after the press conference Sadik-Khan and DOT Alternative Modes Director Ryan Russo were peppered with questions from Park Slope Civic Council member Ezra Goldstein about why the agency still hasn't done anything to change the seemingly malicious traffic signal timing that traps pedestrians -- often dozens of them at a time -- on a tiny strip of concrete in the middle of Flatbush Avenue between Prospect Park and the Library. Russo said DOT wanted to see how the new crosswalks worked before making any more changes in the Plaza.

For a "before," an "after," and one very compelling "long-term vision" plan, click through to the jump below.

Related:

• It Must Have Required a Concerted Effort to Ruin It...
  
• Reconnecting Grand Army Plaza
• Grand Plans for Brooklyn's Iconic Public Space
• StreetFilms: Reclaiming Grand Army Plaza
• StreetFilms: Grand Army Plaza Community Survey

Read more...

One of the most ambitious New York City Streets Renaissance projects currently underway is the Grand Army Plaza Coalition's initiative to re-conceive New York City's biggest, most chaotic traffic rotary into one of the city's finest public spaces.

A couple of weeks ago GAPco hosted a "Livable Streets" forum at the Brooklyn Public Library to present findings from a community workshop conducted in March. The big idea? Reconfigure traffic to allow the fountain and arch to connect directly to the front of Prospect Park, as depicted above. The Brooklyn Papers reported:

Grand Army Plaza could be transformed from an intimidating, speeder-friendly highway in the center of Brooklyn to a calmer traffic circle under a revolutionary plan that continues to gain speed of its own.

At a meeting last week at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central branch, a citizens group presented its most fully drawn plan to reconfigure the plaza and reconnect the landmark Soldiers’ and Sailors’ arch with the entrance to Prospect Park, creating a safe, car-free walkway (see map).

Currently, the circle is a mess of misleading crosswalks and dangerous traffic islands that separate park users from the recently restored Bailey Fountain and Arc de Triomphe-inspired Civil War monument in the center of Grand Army Plaza.

Thanks, in part, to GAPco's work, captured in this StreetFilm, the Dept. of Transportation is already forging ahead with short-term pedestrian and cyclist improvements around the dangerous Flatbush Ave. and Eastern Pkwy. intersection.

Below is an aerial shot of the Plaza as it is currently designed. Note the six lanes of one-way traffic running along each side of the interior circle and the intimidating crossing between the Prospect Park and the Arch.