After an 18-year battle, the Columbia Street Waterfront District will officially open the gate to a new community garden on June 11.
Dubbed the Urban Meadow Brooklyn, the 8,000-square-foot site on the corner of President and Van Brunt Streets once housed Mother Cabrini Chapel, named for the patron saint of immigrants.
However, the chapel was severely damaged and ultimately demolished following the city’s ill-fated sewer reconstruction in the 1970s.
From early 1992 to 2000, the site was in limbo and plans were bandied about to turn it into, among other things, a parking lot, senior housing and dog run.
In 2000, the Parks Department officially acquired the trash-strewn lot, but it remained cordoned off due to the lack of capital budget funds necessary for the park construction.
After a series of community-based design workshops in 2003, interest was reinvigorated to turn the lot into an open space, but the $800,000 price tag halted the project for the next five years.
Enter landscape designer Julie Farris, who in 2005 converted a nearby empty lot, located on the corner of Columbia and Sackett Streets, into a temporary pasture.
Farris then set her sights on constructing a permanent green space in the area, and the former Cabrini site fit the bill.
In 2007, Farris hit a few government-inspired stumbling blocks which threatened to kill the project, and appealed directly to Borough President Marty Markowitz.
Markowitz hooked Farris up with the Parks Department’s GreenThumb program and legendary gardening guru Edie Stone.
Funding also began to filter in through the Clean Air Communities, Con Edison, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, American Stevedoring Inc. (ASI), The Independence Community Foundation and the Architectural League.
Today the garden features a grove of young flowering dogwoods and wildflowers.
