Holding a Ribbon-Cutting for Alice’s Garden

On September 24, I was joined by the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association, the Clinton Housing Development Company, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) and neighborhood volunteers in a ribbon-cutting for Alice’s Garden, a small strip of PANYN-owned green space between 33rd and 34th Street, 9th and 10th Avenues that is now a formally-recognized community garden.  As you may know, for many years the garden had been tended by its namesake, Alice Parsekian, but after her death in 2009 it was locked to the public.  Beginning in the summer of 2010, I spearheaded negotiations between PANYNJ, which owns the land, and community organizations so that Alice’s Garden could officially be opened to the public.  Dozens of volunteers, led by my former aide Sarah Meier-Zimbler and CHDC’s Shanti Nagel, spent countless hours cleaning the lot, laying down a brick path, and establishing plots which gardeners now tend.  Alice’s Garden is a testament to the hard work of a broad coalition and exemplifies the kinds of good works that are possible when a community works together.