Lots of Lower East Side families enjoyed a beautiful afternoon in Luther Gulick Park yesterday, taking in a puppet show put on by the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater. The event was part of a grassroots campaign to reclaim the park, at Delancey and Columbia streets, after years of neglect.
Wednesday night, that campaign takes a major step forward. In a public workshop, to be held at the Abrons Arts Center, residents will have one last chance to tell Parks Dept. officials what they’d like to see before designers begin sketching out preliminary plans.
Brian Crowley, one of the leaders of the Friends of Gulick Park, told us the evening will be a lot more structured than previous visioning sessions. Participants will break up into five groups, each with its own facilitator. Here’s a look at the topics each group will tackle:
- Movement through the park: entrances, exits, and pathways.
- Layout of park uses: different activity areas, how they interconnect.
- Sight lines and visibility: vertical elements, openness.
- Role of the park in the community: cultural connections, demographics of users, potential users, how the park can serve these
- Look, sound, and feel of the park: the materials of the park: quantity of plants, of solid structures, or play equipment, immobile elements, moveable elements, etc. and the ratio of these. How colorful, interactive, etc., is everything?
Following the meeting, the Friends of Gulick Park will put together a final report, which park designers will use in creating a blueprint. Once the preliminary concept is on paper, the Parks Dept. will come back to the community for more feedback.
Anyone who’s interested is welcome to attend Wednesday night’s event. It will be held at 6:30 p.m. at Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street. For more information about the revitalization of Gulick Park, see our previous stories and the Friends of Gulick Park web site.
