I had assumed this entire time that the application for the block party would be at the community board’s website. After frantically searching through it for an hour, however, I couldn’t find anything. I ended up calling our community board’s office, and they told me that the application is actually located at the nyc.gov website.
The application was far LESS obnoxious than I thought it would be. In a quick 20 minutes I (with some help from Bryan) filled out the application and left my office for the community boards office. I met with Florence and she was extremely polite and helpful. Right off the bat she told me that my personal check wasn’t valid. I needed either a money order or certified check. Ugg. I walked over to the local Bank of America, got myself a money order, and trekked back to the office. Florence took my check and told me that I would have to come to the community board on meeting on May 7th. Sweet! The approval process is almost over!
A few weeks ago Rebecca Jacobs, one of TOPP’s newest employees, had mentioned to me that she wanted to help organize the block party. Today, I recruited her to help. First, we had to figure out which activities we would like to have at the party. This was tricky because we wanted the activities to cater to a wide variety of ages, be adventurous yet safe, and be fun yet educational. After thinking long and hard this is what we came up with:
- Sidewalk Astronomy with 10 inch diameter - Rebecca’s father has a telescope that he brings out onto the street to show people the wonders of outer space.
- Group art wall (on paper) - We plan to set up a giant wall with paper on it. We will then provide art supplies to party participants so they can draw on the paper.
- Food vendors
- Mime and/or puppet shows
- Photo booth - We plan on setting up a photo booth in we will take photographs of party participants that they can take home with them.
Additionally we needed to come up with a music program for the night:
- 7pm – 8pm – Band #1
- 8pm – 9pm – DJ #1
- 9pm – 10pm – Band #2
- 10pm – 11pm – DJ #2
- 11pm – 12pm – Band #3
Finally, we had to figure out how where we would have the party, and how we would organize the activities. This is what we came up with:
If we were going to have the party between Washington St. and Gansevoort St. we had to talk to all the business on the block. Bryan, Rollie, (two of my other co-workers) and I first went to Florent. Florent, which is closing on June 28, is a lunch favorite at The Open Planning Project. We thought it would be really cool if we could coincide our block party with the last day the restaurant was open. Restaurant Florent loved the idea! So we had a date: Saturday, June 28th. After leaving Florent, Rollie and I talked to the other restaurants on the block: Los Dados, Marcelleria, and Nero.
Ok, enough work for today. Now that I have a plan together, I’ll fill out and submit the block party application tomorrow.
I finally got in touch with the elusive Mrs. Arenas today. She was very polite in explaining to me that if I wanted to have a block party before the end of June I had to get my application in by then end of this week. When I asked her why I had to have it in so soon, she told me that it can take up to 30 days for the community board and 60 days for the city to approve my application. It it already Wednesday, so I really only have Thursday and the rest of Friday to plan the party and fill out the application. This seems like a short amount of time, but given the number of smart urban planners in my office, I not really worried about pulling it off.
I called the number that was on the bulliten board and some one picked up! Apparently Community Board 2 has full time employees that handle many of the administrative tasks that come through the board. The man who picked up said that I should talk to Florence Arenas. However, he informed me that she was out sick today. Even though I didn’t get to talk to Florence, it was refreshing to know that every weekday from 10AM-6PM there is someone from my community board that I can talk to. I’ll try calling again tomorrow. Hopefully Florence will be feeling better by then ;-).
I still haven’t gotten a response from my email to Mrs. Arena. Maybe that email address is outdated? I decided to be pro active and ask around the office to see if anyone else had any ideas on how to contact our community board. I bumped into TOPP’s Executive Director Jacki Arasi at the end work today and asked her if she had any thoughts. She told me that she had seen a bulletin board on Greenwich Street which has postings from Community Board 2.
Today, on my way to the subway after work, I stopped to take a look at the bulliten board. I was out of luck. The board hadn’t been updated for almost a year. It did, however, have a phone number on it. Maybe that number is more up to date than the email address on the website? I’ll try to call them tomorrow morning.
I was right. Lily, one of my coworkers here at TOPP, did know where to find information about our community board. Apparently the information can be found here. Lily, also updated our projects wiki page to include information about the community board. I plan on writing an email to Florence Arena, our board’s community coordinator, asking her how to go about applying for a block party permit. I hope she responds soon!
By Anil on April 25, 2008.
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