What Matters to Park Slope?

So, what matters to the people of Park Slope?

There are many assumptions about the priorities of those who live here. According to the stereotypes, we like our babies, our organic food and our progressive politics. And we really like arguing about our bike lanes. But what is really on the minds of the locals and what do they think needs fixing to make this a better place for all?

In the spirit of an unscientific survey I consulted an interesting assortment of neighborhood leaders and locals.

Eric McClure, who runs Park Slope Neighbors, a local advocacy group that supports the Prospect Park West bike lane, is concerned about the cost of housing and neighborhood diversity.

“People can't touch a halfway decent house for under $2 million, ‘mid-priced’ apartments and good rentals are in short supply, and there really is no lower end of the market anymore.  That is causing Park Slope to become increasingly less diverse, and diversity is a big part of the reason that we gentrifiers (speaking for myself) moved here in the first place,” he wrote to me.

For McClure education is also a big priority. He believes that the Brooklyn Millennium situation has been a real eye-opener.

“Of course people would love to have a great high school in the neighborhood.  On the other hand, the community's lack of engagement and effort in trying to improve the schools that already existed in the John Jay building is a major issue.”

It is McClure’s hope that the advent of Millennium Brooklyn can serve as a catalyst for making all the schools better.

Speaking of schools, Nancy McDermott, a journalist who writes the Park Slope Parents blog and lives in the neighborhood with her husband and two young sons, thinks that a big pre-k for the district “where everybody gets a spot and is ideally located" would be a win-win for local parents. She thinks this would also create space in our already over crowded elementary schools.

Daniel Meeter, the minister of Old First Dutch Reformed Church on Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, writes a blog called Old First (oldfirst.blogspot.com) where he posts his weekly sermons and thought provoking pieces on civic issues. A resident of Kensington, he is member of the Park Slope Civic Council, and is currently chair of a committee to improve communication between the John Jay High School Complex and the Park Slope neighborhood.

Like McClure, for Rev. Meeter, housing affordability and availability are also important issues. He also cited the need for health care and other benefits for the "service class" (i.e. nannies, food service, etc.).

Gilly Youner, who lives in Park Slope with her husband and teenage son, believes that educational infrastructure is a primary concern. A vice president of the Park Slope Civic Council, senior associate architect at Kutnicki Bernstein Architects and a long-time member of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn, she is passionate about land use issues and the re-zoning of Fourth Avenue, as well as land marking and the preservation of historic streets in Park Slope and elsewhere.

For Youner, affordability and diversity are key when it comes to housing because that’s the only way to maintain a “diversely ethnic, creative, wide age-range community with sky-high housing costs,” she wrote.

Andy Bachman, the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, writes insightful essays on secular, moral and religious issues on his blog, Water Over Rocks (andybachman.com). He is concerned about the lack of affordable child-care for the neighborhood’s burgeoning population. He also believes there should be adequate low and middle income housing for those being squeezed by gentrification.

Finally, he wrote, “there needs to be a true community-wide response to helping nannies and caregivers take advantage of their residencies in the United States with educational and vocational job training programs.”

Quite a few residents voiced concern about vacant storefronts piling up on Seventh and Fifth avenues.

Dan Myers, who runs the blog Here’s Park Slope and writes theColumn here on Park Slope Patch, wrote: “Landlords seem to be squatting on these properties for some reason, and end up driving out some of the most established mom and pop shops in favor of businesses that pay higher rent, which are usually chains. The downside is that the owners of these businesses that come in tend to have no real idea of what the neighborhood needs more of.”

For Ezra Goldstein, the new owner of the Community Bookstore (and a member of the Park Slope Civic Council) the number of vacant storefronts is also distressing.

“One suspects they reflect rents that are too high for the market to bear. Vacant storefronts diminish our community's vitality. The vacant storefronts are reflective of a related issue: the need for the protections of a historic district to be extended to ALL our commercial strips as quickly as possible, to preserve the small-footprint shop spaces conducive to locally owned businesses, and discouraging to national chains,” he said.

Goldstein also cites what he calls the  “chronic dearth of public space in Park Slope and calls for more places “where people can sit, schmooze, drink coffee, and make music.”

For Peter Loffredo, a holistic psychotherapist, writer and blogger, traffic is his big headache.

“I take my kids to school in the morning, and pick them up in the afternoon, and the traffic congestion on Seventh and Eighth avenues during school rush hours is as bad as mid-town Manhattan. You can't park anywhere between Ninth Street and Union Street and there are cops and meter people skulking around to catch you daring to double-park for 30 seconds to go to an ATM machine. Did we really need a two-way bike lane on Prospect Park West?”

But for Eric McClure, the existence of the same bike lane increases Park Slope’s quality of life.

“It's shocking to me that this is even an issue in supposedly progressive Park Slope, but it is what it is.”            

But sometimes it’s the smaller stuff that people want to change.

Michele Madigan Somerville, a poet who lives in Park Slope with her husband and three teenagers, and writes frequently on the Huffington Post about educational and religious issues, had this to say: “The North Slope needs a good Greek diner, all the Slope cafes need better laptop governance and a consignment shop for big kids for skates and boots.”