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ABOUT FRIENDS of COLUMBUS PARK 14TH ANNUAL SUMMER FIELD DAY for KIDS JUNE 2013 IN MEMORY of BOBBY LEE ROBERT LEE ALBERT SUN FINANCIAL LITERACY for KIDS 2010, 2011 JACQUELYNN YOUNG SCHOLARSHIP for HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS 2013 SUMMER FIELD DAY at COLUMBUS PARK ABOUT SPORTS for KIDS PICTURES COLUMBUS PARK PAVILION HISTORY RESTORATION GRAND OPENING - OUR VISION ALERT! ALERT! RATS, RATS, RATS in COLUMBUS PARK We are now members of the CHINATOWN WORKING GROUP COLUMBUS PARK BALL FIELD VICTORY ABOUT COLUMBUS PARK CURRENT ISSUES SPECIAL THANKS to OUR CONTRIBUTORS WHY KIDS?OUR KIDS, OUR FUTURE
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Volume 77, Number 23 | November. 07 -,13 2007
Villager photos by Tequila Minsky Officials and community members celebrated the reopening of the Columbus Park pavilion last week. Park pavilion reopens 110 years later... in Chinatown By Julie Shapiro When Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe took the mic at the opening of the Columbus Park Pavilion, he said he didn’t want to keep the audience waiting any longer. “We’ve already waited 100 years for this ceremony to start,” he said. In fact, 110 years have passed since the pavilion was built at the north end of Columbus Park, and the structure had long been due for a renovation. Fenced off and deteriorating, the pavilion spent much of the last 30 years as a way station for homeless people and the city’s most ubiquitous bird. “This was a pigeon pavilion,” Councilmember Alan Gerson said at the ceremony. “Now it’s a people’s pavilion.” The pigeons are mostly gone — and they’ll stay that way if the netting and the “Do Not Feed The Pigeons” signs do their work — leaving Chinatown residents free to pack the pavilion for the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday morning, Oct. 25. The open-air pavilion, surrounded by landscaped plants, is accessible by restored stairs and a new elevator. The pavilion’s original wood ceiling beams, stripped of paint, support a newly extended roof. The enclosed bottom floor of the pavilion contains a small recreational room, complete with a ping-pong table, along with a coatroom and public bathrooms. Recently decorated with pumpkin cutouts and wispy spider webs for Halloween, the space opened Oct. 1 to host art therapy and yoga classes, “Mommy & Me” programs and after-school and senior activities. “It’s beautiful,” said Arthur Magnani, 80, who grew up in the neighborhood and still lives there. When his parents came to New York in 1921, they went to dances in the pavilion. Magnani later spent summers swimming in a pool on the other side of the park. Back then, the neighborhood was Italian, but now the park, at Baxter and Bayard Sts., is part of Chinatown. The local flavor permeated the ceremony, as performers clad in bright, sparkling costumes sang, danced and drummed up a storm, brightening the cool, gray day. When a line of officials with gold scissors snipped the green ribbon, cymbals clashed and a fabric lion — maneuvered by two members of Master Yip’s Martial Arts School — burst into dance. “[The pavilion] is a great way to bring the community together for performances,” said William Castro, Manhattan borough Parks commissioner. Castro’s favorite part of the project is the landscaping, which includes new plants, benches and lighting. “It’s fabulous,” said Jodi White, program manager at the Chinatown Partnership, a local development corporation. “This is great for the community.” The park is usually packed, and White hopes that everyone from community groups to teenagers will take advantage of the pavilion. Justin Tan, 10, was among the students from the nearby Church of the Transfiguration School who attended the ceremony. “It’s cool,” he said of the pavilion. “It’ll be a good opportunity for us.” The pavilion is near the historic Five Points intersection, marking one of New York’s most well-known 19th-century neighborhoods. The area was the setting for the movie “Gangs of New York.”
One of the gold-lamé-clad performers from the ceremony strolled through the pavilion’s enclosed ground-floor space. The $4.1 million pavilion renovation required a variety of organizations to chip in. Gerson, a longtime advocate of the project, designated $720,000 out of his discretionary city funds. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation provided $1.5 million and the federal government gave $1 million. Rounding out the funding, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave $641,000 and former Borough President C. Virginia Fields gave $250,000. The pavilion marks the final stage of Columbus Park’s renovations, which started with the playground on the south side and also included basketball courts and artificial turf playing fields. Looking back on the project, Paul Gong, founder and president of Friends of Columbus Park, has mixed feelings. “It’s a great day for the neighborhood to finally have the pavilion opened,” he said. “They did a nice job.” However, Gong wanted the community to have more input. In particular, he wanted the open-air pavilion to be enclosed so it can be used year-round. And while the public bathrooms are convenient, Gong worries that the Parks Department won’t put money into maintaining them. “Our fear is that in five years it will look like crap again,” he said. Now, Gong said, it’s up to the community to remain active and keep advocating for the pavilion. “If you constantly have activity at the pavilion, it will be supported,” he said. “People will have a stake in it, chip in, keep it clean and get funding for it.” Another park pavilion, in Union Square, is the focus of a battle between the community and the Parks Department and Union Square Partnership business improvement district. Parks and the BID want to put a seasonal private-concession restaurant in the pavilion as part of a renovation project for Union Square’s north end. But a coalition of community members, politicians and the Village Independent Democrats political club, arguing that there is already a plethora of restaurants in the area, oppose a restaurant, and want the pavilion restored for community use. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why is the Pavilion SO IMPORTANT?
The Pavilion is so important because of WHAT IT CAN BECOME? Many of us can only imagine the Pavilion being used by the community. It’s been closed for so long. Our vision is to have the Pavilion available for community use. Allowing us to all share in the benefit of having a building in the park in the heart of NY Chinatown. Providing an open place for public town meetings, year round structured activity, a centralized place to gather and disperse community & public information and providing a cornerstone for tourist and visitors to come visit. The Pavilion will force NY Chinatown to work together. Encouraging community organizations to become partners in providing family members open space and recreational activity. Providing a great benefit to NY Chinatown. Our kids & seniors have no place to go: There are just not enough youth/recreational facilities for our neighborhood kids & seniors. Because NY Chinatown does not have a “Youth/Community Center”, neighborhood parks and schools have long been used as places where kids and seniors congregate to meet, play, and organize. Our After School programs are constantly being cut, renting of school gyms for recreational sports are costly and our parks cannot be used during the Winter season and bad weather. A Vision for the Pavilion Columbus Park Pavilion: Can be transformed into a community center, which can serve youth, seniors and the general public. Can be used by social service agencies, neighborhood schools, youth & senior organizations, city agencies, cultural groups, etc.. Such a center will make a big difference in the quality of life in our community and our parks. It can become the headquarters for the public use of Columbus Park.
Activities such as: Ø Movies, Shows and Performances Ø Educational Workshops on such topics as: 1. Chinese in America
2. History of NY Chinatown, Columbus Park, Little Italy, our neighborhood 3. Chinese Medicine, Herbs 4. Cultural Dance, Art, Martial arts 5. Asian Myths & Stories, Holidays 6. Languages & Dialects 7. Religion 8. Business Development 9. Immigration, Housing, Vocational 10. Employment 11. Neighborhood Social issues 12. City & neighborhood Politics
Ø Information Center 1. Employment Opportunities 2. School Admissions (HS & College) 3. Small Business Tips 4. Neighborhood Activities
Ø Youth & Senior Activities 1. Chess/Ping Pong Recreation &Tournaments 2. Recreational Card Playing 3. Food/Social/Health/Business Fairs 4. Indoor Carnival activities 5. Educational Classes & Workshops 6. Indoor Exercise activities 7. Organized Neighborhood Team Sport Clinics & Tourneys 8. Organized Dance Classes and Shows Ø Regular Town Hall Meetings on issues that effect our community
We need your help to Accomplish Our Vision for the Pavilion! Our Success Depends on the following: Ø Enclose the upper loggia of the Pavilion Ø Provide Heating and Air-Conditioning to the upper loggia Ø Have the pavilion accessible for community use day, evening and weekend hours Ø Allow for co-management (Community & NYC Parks) of the Pavilion Ø Have a Pavilion that is ACTIVE, CLEAN, MAINTAINED, & OPEN by making it available for community use. Ø Get Funding to market Columbus Park as a valued community resource, run park activities and keeping the park maintained, healthy, active for all. Columbus Park: Columbus Park is the number one park serving the NY Chinatown community. Activities range from seniors exercising, to kids playing basketball and soccer. Workers from around the neighborhood use the park to play football and baseball. Our churches use the park daily for outdoor activity. Social Service agencies use the park to hold events to distribute important information to our community. Groups use the park to have carnivals for kids, sporting tournaments and to promote better business. No one will dispute that Columbus Park is one of the most active parks in NYC. Your support & involvement in Columbus Park is IMPORTANT: Current NYC Parks personnel are not bi-lingual they cannot communicate properly with our neighborhood residents that use the park. Often there is miss-communication and sometimes confrontations, signage are only in English and our residents often do not understand the rules of the park. Friends of Columbus Park can provide the NYC Parks Department & the City of NY an organization that can bridge that communication gap and also provide the needed understanding necessary for a healthy park environment.
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