Groceries for the Rich, Diesel Fumes for the 99%
BY ALINA MOGILYANSKAYA, The Indypendent
MAY 2, 2012, ISSUE #176
“It’s a bad deal on every level,” said Harry Bubbins, a South Bronx resident and founder of Friends of Brook Park. “Meanwhile, the South Bronx has had its own aspirations for the waterfront for many years, and the larger issue for the city and the region is the appropriate economic and environmental use of the Harlem River Yards.”

Local environmentalists launch live video stream of handsome red-tailed hawks nesting in South Bronx
Thursday, April 19, 2012
“By watching we learn how they live,” said Daniel Chervoni, head gardener at Friends of Brook Park, a South Bronx community group. “We need more gardens. We need more parks…so the hawks can live with us.”

PSC Watchdogs Give Out Second Annual Environmental Justice Award
March 24th 2012
On the sunny Saturday of March 24, PSCers along with Roberto Mukaro Borrero, Friends of Brook Park Board Member, gathered at Brook Park in the South Bronx to give out the second annual Environmental Justice Award. This year’s winner is Harry Bubbins, Director of Friends of Brook Park

Bloomberg and Diaz Jr. Write Op-Ed In Favor of Fresh Direct’s Move To The Bronx
Esther Zuckerman Sun., Feb. 26 2012

“The community has had waterfront access and mixed-uses aspirations for decades,” Harry Bubbins, director of Friends of Brook Park, told Runnin’ Scared about two weeks ago. “We want to entirely stop this — it’s a totally inappropriate use of taxpayer money.”

Bronx Residents Disapprove of Fresh Direct Deal
24 February 2012
BY ACACIA SQUIRES
“The entire waterfront, 100 acres of Port Morris, is owned by the public through the New York State Department of Transportation. And Mario Cuomo, the current Governor Cuomo’s father, signed off on the most absurd lease agreement ever.”
Bubbins is referring to a contract the state signed twenty-one years ago to change the site into a modern rail yard. A local real estate development company, the Galesi Group, was contracted to get the job done, but that never happened. People are angry that Fresh Direct is coming instead.”

Bronx residents to weigh in on new Fresh Direct HQ

by DANIEL BEEKMAN February 08, 2012

Fresh Direct will send polluting trucks through neighborhoods that suffer from sky-high asthma rates, said Mychal Johnson of Community Board 1, while Ed Garcia, who headed the defunct South Bronx Food Co-op, criticized the company for not delivering to the South Bronx. The proposed benefits include no written guarantees that Fresh Direct will hire a set number of Bronx residents, said Harry Bubbins of Friends of Brook Park, a local community group.

Bloomberg Defends Deal For New FreshDirect Facility

By Hunter Walker February 8, 2012
Harry Bubbins, the director of local “community-based environmental organization” Friends of Brook Park sent a letter to City Comptroller John Liu blasting the FreshDirect deal as an “egregious violation of the public trust.” Mr. Bubbins also criticized the potential environmental impact of the facility and the quality of jobs offered by FreshDirect.

Randalls Island Connector could become bridge to nowhere due to muddy South Bronx property deal

BY DANIEL BEEKMAN, January 24 2012

Harry Bubbins, executive director of Friends of Brook Park, a South Bronx group, called the Connector “an extremely important” project with widespread community support. But he blasted the easement negotiations.
“The site belongs to the state. It is unfathomable why we even have to pay to use it and Harlem River Railyards Venture should expedite the easement.”

Group Hopes to Transform Port Morris Gantries Into Riverfront Park

January 18, 2012 By Patrick Wall DNAInfo

The site could “serve as a lynchpin for a revitalized public space and a more robust public engagement with the waterfront,” said Harry Bubbins, a member of the community group, Friends of Brook Park, which has adopted the gantries site. The Historic Districts Council will name the Port Morris gantries as one of its 2012 “Six to Celebrate” sites. The designation entitles Friends of Brook Park to a year’s worth of the council’s technical support as it works to build local and official support for its revitalization vision.

Historic District Council names Port Morris Gantries and Van Cortlandt Village for preservation
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, January 13 2012

Friends of Brook Park, a South Bronx community group, asked HDC to recognize the Port Morris Gantries. The group is working on a proposal for the redevelopment of the abandoned ferry terminal as a waterfront recreation and education center, said Harry Bubbins, executive director. “We have no official public waterfront access along the coast of the South Bronx,” said Bubbins. “The gantries are an example of the rich nautical history of New York and could become a bridge to future community use.”

From the editor: Reclaim the Harlem River
21. Dec, 2011 by Bernard L. Stein

For years, organizations like Friends of Brook Park and the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality have looked at the Harlem and seen a necklace of green the length of the borough. A greenway would connect existing parks, like Mill Pond and Roberto Clemente, along with new parks built on unused land. Some of them would include fishing piers, places to launch kayaks and canoes, eco-classrooms and gardens.
Pie in the sky? Not really. To see the future, just look at the Bronx River. Not so long ago, it was an open sewer and garbage dump. Today, thanks to the hard work of volunteers whose efforts led to the formation of the Bronx River Alliance and the investment of millions of federal dollars, wildlife has returned, fish thrive, ospreys soar and egrets nest. People play in new parks, stroll and bicycle on the shore and canoe in the water.
Five years ago, Harry Bubbins of Friends of Brook Park urged the formation of a Harlem River Alliance, drawing on the experience of the Bronx River Alliance. Now the federal government has given advocates’ efforts a boost.

">Fowl play: Bronx neighbors are staging a coop at urban chicken farms
BY NICOLE LYN PESCE, DAILY NEWS, September 29th 2011

“Raising chickens in New York City is not unusual,” says Taylor. “It’s legal, it’s sanitary, and if anything, we’re going back to normal, to the city’s agricultural roots, when everyone used to own their own chickens.”
Kesselman first hatched the idea for a backyard chicken run more than a year ago as she became more involved in the Brook Park community garden.
“I am very dedicated to my neighborhood,” she says, “and I started thinking that this could be a fun project for the garden.”

Public Comment on Fracking Opens
By Yi Yang. Sep 7, 2011
Environmental groups across the country are denouncing the SGEIS and continue to call for a complete ban on fracking.
“This so-called study is filled with lies to justify the devastation of our environment and economy,” said Harry Bubbins of the New York City-based environmental organization Friends of Brook Park (FoBP). “You can’t stop fracking fluids from seeping into the Catskills or into upstate wells.”
Another member of the FoBP, Jess Ramos, added, “Only a complete and total ban on this devastating practice and an immediate transition to renewable energies will allow life to continue.”

Farms Crop Up in the Bronx
By Sophia Hollander
Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2011
Though we are one of the long standing farms and have jump started a number of other sites in the area and haven’t just “cropped” up, see a map with Brook Park and our fellow gardens featured. Click here.

Bronx artist recreates freezing death of immigrant in Brook Park art piece
BY TANYANIKA SAMUELS
Thursday, June 9th 2011

In February 2007, a 20-year-old Honduran immigrant worker froze to death in a makeshift shelter in the woods within yards of a Long Island Rail Road Station. News reports of the death moved Alicia Grullón deeply. “There were people around but no one really noticed,” she said. “That anonymity was striking.” The Highbridge artist, who creates performance pieces dealing with race, class, gender and activism, felt compelled to act. “I wanted to make people more aware of what is happening in their own backyard without them realizing it,” she said. The result is Grullón’s performance piece “Illegal Death,” which reenacts the quiet demise of the worker. On Saturday, she will perform her piece in Brook Park.

Advocates say: Put the brook back in Brook Park
by Cheryl Chan, June 3, 2011

Brook Park takes its name from Mill Brook, whose waters once burbled through today’s Webster and Brook Avenues. Now the environmental organization that helps oversee the park wants to bring the brook back. “What we are trying to do here is make a green park, and a blue park,” says Aaron Petersohn, manager of the Friends of Brook Park’s Brook Daylighting Restorations Project. Petersohn is heading an effort to bring the buried stream that once ran through Mott Haven back to the park at Brook Avenue and East 141st Street.

NES Luncheon Composted at Brook Park in the Bronx
by Shawndel Fraser May 3, 2011 Nature, Ecology and Society Colloquium

Recycling committee members Maggie Ornstein and Christine Caruso took our food and paper waste to the South Bronx for composting. Our Friends at Brook Park graciously offered to compost it for us. With all of their fantastic initiatives, our compost will likely contribute to Community Gardens and other green thumb initiatives across the South Bronx.

Community Gardens Fear Wilting Under Massive Cuts in Federal Block-Grant Money
By Adrian Fussell, April 13, 2011, Village Voice

“We as a community need to figure out a way to communicate effectively with those in power,” says Ray Figueroa, program director of Friends of Brook Park. “We have to talk their language. Their language is numbers.” Figueroa’s project tries to bring healthy, locally grown food to people living in an area thick with fast-food restaurants and high rates of obesity and diabetes. (The Bronx as a whole is the state’s unhealthiest county, NY1 recently noted.)

At a Program on Audits, Listening Works Both Ways
by Elizabeth A. Harris
NY Times January 26, 2011

“It’s rare to see elected officials actually stay and listen,” said Harry Bubbins, a man in a rainbow-colored, knit hat who stepped up to the microphone to talk about parks and development in the South Bronx.

Tennis, anyone (rich)? It’s advantage wealthy at swanky Randalls Island club
By Daniel Beekman
DAILY NEWS January 25th 2011

“Rather than provide a public service, they are generating revenue from the rich on the backs of the poor,” said Harry Bubbins, of Friends of Brook Park, a South Bronx advocacy group. Matthew Washington, chairman of East Harlem’s Community Board 11, which includes Randalls Island, compared the facility to Chelsea Piers. “We want the public to have access and need ways to pay for our parks,” he said. “Finding the right balance can be challenging.”

The Future of Food in NYC
By Tara MacIsaac
Nov 23, 2010
“Opening up space to aspiring urban farmers is part of the plan. Quinn said the council will pass legislation to create a database of city-owned property farmers can use to grow crops. Harry J. Bubbins of Friends of Brook Park, a South Bronx-based environmental organization, said it is not enough. According to Bubbins, Quinn has concrete plans for supporting other aspects of local production, but needs to do more to support urban gardens.”

Parks And Bronx Bird Enthusiasts Celebrate Red-tailed Hawk Release Three Months After Rescue
by NYC Parks Department
Oct 06, 2010
Thanks to them, the red tail hawk was rescued and a vital component of our diverse eco-system lives on,” Bubbins said. “Wildlife is able to thrive in our Parks and young people have the opportunity to learn and expand their imaginations and become the next generation of park stewards because of people like [Nieves and Chervoni].

Festival brings residents to Harlem River shore
Posted on 30. Sep, 2010 by Lisha Arino The event was hosted by the Harlem River Working Group, “a coalition of about 40 community organizations around or working with the Harlem River,” said Chauncy Young, one of the event’s organizers. Members include: Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., the National Park Service, Partnerships for Parks, Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, Friends of Brook Park, Friends of the Woods and the Harlem River Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy.

Richard Serra Sculpture Rusts in Bronx Yard
By SAM DOLNICK
Published: September 24, 2010
“Harry Bubbins, an environmentalist who has fought to improve waterfront access in the South Bronx, is one of the few who knows about the Port Morris “installation.”…

 

He and the local advocacy group Friends of Brook Park seek to create a sculpture garden at the gantry site that would be modeled on the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens. The centerpiece, Mr. Bubbins dreams, could be the Serra sculpture. It would certainly reduce shipping costs.”

Planting Seeds
In New York’s urban core, pastoral dreams take root
By Tali Woodward, September/October 2010 Sierra Club Magazine

In this part of the Bronx, fast food dominates the landscape. You can smell something deep-fried and sweet from inside the nearby Brook Avenue subway station, and there’s a McDonald’s next to the exit. Around the corner, a produce market sells droopy celery, bruised eggplant, and tomatoes that are more pink than red….For Unique, the Brook Park garden offers a chance to experience food right off the vine. Today he’ll sample mint, strawberries, and kale.
Some of the other kids don’t care as much about the garden’s produce; they’re more interested in the beehive in the corner, the thrill of spending a summer day in the sun, the chance to do something for the community.

As pact with city expires, gardeners concerned
By Joe Hirsch
Harry Bubbins, director of the area’s largest community garden, Brook Park, is among the skeptics. “They want to put up condominiums, big boxes, you know the deal,” Bubbins warned a crowd of about a hundred at a festival honoring immigrants at the park in July.

New Rules Worry Community Garden Advocates
By COLIN MOYNIHAN July 6, 2010
“They’re greasing the wheels for development,” said Harry Bubbins, a Bronx gardener, who added that he and others had outlined legislation that they hoped would be sponsored by City Council members in order to designate gardens as parkland and forbid building on them.”

New Yorkers rescue baby hawk in South Bronx by canoe
July 1, 2010 by Leslie Koch
A baby hawk was rescued from a South Bronx street on Sunday by a quick-thinking resident, who enlisted the help of an expert falconer and a local environmental group.

Bronx Kill’s oyster cult: Eying bivalves to clean polluted water
BY DANIEL BEEKMAN, Tuesday, June 22nd 2010

“This would expose more people to the wonder of our waterways,” said Harry Bubbins, who runs the Mott Haven group.
The oysters won’t be fit for human consumption, but could help clean the narrow Bronx Kill, which has been devastated by dumping, sewage and landfill.

Group fights for water rights
BY VISHAL PERSAUD
NY Daily News, Tuesday, June 15,2010
WATER, water everywhere, and no place to put a paddle. That’s the gripe a Bronx group is raising over lack of public access to the Harlem River waterfront at the new Mill Pond Park in Mott Haven.

Homeless advocacy group holds rally in Brook Park

By Joe Hirsch May 27, 2010
The city should be moving people out of homeless shelters and into vacant apartments built during the real estate boom that now stand empty, advocates from the community organization Picture the Homeless said…

The bold new faces of urban farming
Salon.com, by BY SARA BRESELOR May 2010

The South Bronx is a textbook example of the urban “food desert”: lots of people, a dearth of grocery stores, an abundance of fast food and, unsurprisingly, staggering rates of diabetes and obesity. Ray Figueroa, program director at Friends of Brook Park, attacks these challenges — as well as the bleak vista of a neighborhood full of abandoned property — with literal vigor: High-school students in his ASPIRA program tear up pavement on deserted lots to cultivate healthy crops that supply local food pantries.

Rewiring the City

The New York Moon, by NICK JURAVICH with photographs by BLAINE DAVIS

When Petersohn speaks of “rewiring,” he refers specifically to the natural water cycle that the swale will facilitate, which will effectively treat and process over 1.5 million gallons of rainwater per year without the help of the city’s combined sewer system.

Friends of Brook Park s