Community Board 12 Hears DOT’s Proposal to Expand Kensington Plaza Public Space

By Yehudit Garmaise

While Kensington residents may be seeing Kensington Plaza expand as part of the city’s Open Streets plan, Boro Park residents remain clear that they are not interested in a similar public space.

“We are a growing neighborhood, and we need every open street and parking space that we can get,” Moshy G. told BoroPark24. “We have enough traffic and parking issues.

“Please don’t do us ‘favors’ that will increase these issues even more.”

At last week’s Community Board 12 monthly meeting, Kyle Gorman, the acting assistant director of Public Space Partnerships and Programs, presented the Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) proposal to make permanent the Open Street at Beverley Road between McDonald Avenue and East 2nd Street.

Representatives from the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) claim, “more than 80% of 400 people who were polled in April liked the idea of more public space added to the community,” reported Gorman, who has in mind to expand the public space to provide more “cultural programming, ways to connect people to resources, and to give people opportunities to sit and enjoy all this neighborhood has to offer.”

More than 75% of Kensington residents surveyed said they visit Beverly Road on a daily or several-time-a-week basis, and more than 80 to 90% of those surveyed support changes to make Beverly Road to make it permanently a pedestrian-priority space, Gorman added.

The Kensington Plaza proposal, however, requires the removal of nine parking spaces, reported Kaarin Patterson, one of the DOT’s senior urban designers. “During the day, there would be five [parking spaces] on East 2nd Street that can be used for loading zones, and at night those can be again accessed.”

Instead of those extra parking spaces, Kensington residents who responded to the DOT’s survey said, they wanted to see “new programming, movable furniture, public seating, protected pedestrian spaces, greenery, and planters,” Gorman reported.

Respondents also would like to see “a new level of traffic calming and safety elements at this block,” Gorman said about what many describe as a dangerous turn from Church Avenue onto Beverly Road.

In 2012, the DOT responded to residents’ application to designate the sidewalk space in front of the Walgreen’s at Church Ave. and Beverly Road as “Kensington Plaza,” to address the lack of open space in the Kensington, Gorman recalled.

“Over the years, we have also added Avenue C Plaza, which is not far from the Beverly Road Open Space. “There is still tremendous opportunity to expand public space in this community.”

In Boro Park, however, where residents usually gather more in private spaces than in public ones, residents want to keep the streets and parking spots designated for drivers and not pedestrians.

“While our pedestrians and cyclists certainly deserve consideration, so do our drivers,” a BoroPark resident previously told BoroPark24.