I just got some snail mail from the community board office telling me that the board’s meeting was moved to Monday, May 5th.  These guys still communicate via snail mail?  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised …

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:

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!

Its getting closer to summer so its time to start creating a more detailed plan for our block party. I know that getting community board and city approval for a party can be an extremely long process, so we need to start on that first. But who is our community board? I have no idea how to find this information. Maybe I’ll try sending an email to my mailing list on NYCStreets.org and see if anyone there knows. This is the email that I am going to send:

Hey,

So if we want this party to happen we have to start planning because
it is almost summer.  Lily, you seem to have the "Community Board"
knowledge.  So who do we contact to see if we can throw a block party
Gansevoort St.?

We really need to pick a date and get community board approval before
we can continue planning.

Thanks,
Anil

First things first, I had to figure out how to organize the people involved in planning this party.  What did I end up deciding to use?  NYCStreets of course! NYCStreets is a website produced by The Open Planning Project that helps New York City residents organize themselves.  I created a project called TOPP Block Party.  The project provides me with wiki-pages and mailing lists.  I am going to use the wiki page to aggregate information that we learn about the block party and use the mailing lists to communicate with all the people involved in planning it.  I am extremely excited to use this website for a community project, because this was the intention for its creation.

A few nights ago, The Open Planning Project (TOPP) and Transportation Alternatives, put on an event at the New York Historical Society called “Street Renaissance: How You Can Transform NYC Streets”.  At the event these two groups announced that they would be giving out 30 mini grants to NYC residents who wanted to throw block parties.  At the reception after the event a number us who work at TOPP discussed throwing a block party of our own.

We only had one one intention for out block party: make it as fun as possible.  A successful party would be one were we could have neighbors get out of their apartments and meet each other.  We also thought it would be nice if the block party was held during the evening.  The West Village gets a number of visitors from outside the neighborhood on weekend nights.  This block party could be a great way for the West Village to show off its public spaces to the rest of the New York.

The reason TOPP is starting this blog is because we feel that throwing a block party in New York City can be an unnecessary intimidating experience.  We hope that by documenting our journey through this process we can help future New Yorkers throw block parties of their own.  So welcome and join us for the ride.