SKY FARM: A NEW CHAPTER FOR THE LIC ROOF
Leadership of Variety Boys and Girls Club, along with local elected officials and Brooklyn Grange Team members, inaugurate Sky Farm and celebrate the passing of the torch
As of July 31, 2023, Brooklyn Grange is gratified to be passing the torch of tenancy of our LIC farm to The Variety Boys and Girls Club of Queens!
Back in 2022 we made the difficult decision to stop operating the Northern Boulevard location of our business, where we built our first ever farm in 2010. When we did so, however, we committed to continue exploring how to leverage that green roof as an asset to the community and ecosystem. After all, this is the community where we planted the seeds of what Brooklyn Grange would later grow into, and we owe much of our success to the early relationships we forged with local businesses, organizations, and families in that neighborhood. We also recognize that Astoria has some of the worst air quality in NYC, and the particular stretch where our farm is located is a corridor that lacks sufficient green space–let alone opportunities for residents to engage meaningfully with nature, or grow food. And, of course, like much of New York City and the country beyond, residents of Western Queens are impacted by a food economy that systematically disenfranchises access to fresh, healthy foods along socioeconomic and racial lines.
These factors all weighed heavily as we explored, over the last 18 months, how to honor the legacy of this space, and chart a course for its future worthy of the community in which it sits. We believe that this collaboration with Variety Boys & Girls Club of Queens will do just that! This 65-year old organization’s existing programs reach 4,000 (!!!) youth in the Western Queens community each year; by acquiring the lease for the roof of 37-18 Northern Blvd, Boys & Girls Club can leverage the farm towards more equitable environmental education opportunities in the neighborhood and even get some fresh, healthy foods onto the plates of those youth and their families. Meanwhile, our Design/Build/Maintenance team's expert Farm Operations specialists will manage the space, bringing Brooklyn Grange’s decade and a half of horticultural experience tending to this type of intensive, biodiverse green roof, as well as unique operational and placemaking acumen of engaging our fellow New Yorkers with urban farming on rooftops. This partnership will ensure that the asset now known as Sky Farm LIC will be protected and stewarded as the critical environmental resource it is in a neighborhood that deserves and needs green infrastructure to help combat both combined sewage overflow, and some of the worst air quality in New York City.
Brooklyn Grange’s success has been made possible through the strength of the ecosystems in which it participates. We’ve long believed that the best way to achieve our mission and business objectives is to identify and forge partnerships with other entities whose goals, strengths, and challenges complement ours. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work in community with Virtual Boys and Girls Club to the mutual benefit of an enduring local ecosystem. This lease transfer represents the end of one season for the LIC rooftop farm, and with it, the dawning of another, and we are so proud and honored to be passing the torch to these worthy partners in food and green space equity!
Read the full release here: https://lnkd.in/eYcwYuuB