We're exploring our potential role as a facilitator of relationships between private owners of vacant lots and the communities who live near those lots. We are starting with a single relationship: One Kin Farm in Bed Stuy which starts building next week and has the space to do so through the generosity of a private landowner who shares our vision of a network of decentralized community spaces operated by engaged citizens. One Kin Farm can use your financial support on IOBY: they are going to get bunnies! If you know of other landowners who are looking to activate their properties with community participation for interim use, please contact us. We would love to add them to our network!

There's this privately owned vacant-lot that people could use. How do I get started?

This is  a great opportunity for your neighborhood and the wider 596 Acres community. Two ways you could start:

1. If you'd like to be involved in the project yourself, put a sign on the fence to the lot telling your neighbors that you have permission to use it and how to reach you to start scheming for how to do so this spring.

2. If you're looking for other people to spearhead the effort (and take care of things like insurance and fundraising), we can add your lot to our interactive map to draw people to your budding project that way. Let us know the address of the lot and if you'd like to do that. We have been talking about adding a layer for private lots that people WANT community uses on and this would be a great way for us to start building that layer. Click the contact button to get in touch with us.

& we're psyched! You can read about us on the Awesome Fondation's blog!

1. 463 Tompkins Future Urban Orchard! This site is negotiating for city agency approval now; neighbors are making plans for what to do with mound of a downed house -- a terraced orchard, perhaps? Contact Beatriz at (646) 481-1708 or beatriz.beckford@gmail.com to get involved. 

2. 462 Halsey Community Gardens: This site opened with city agency approval in April 2012. Come by any day & join us for a party this Sunday!

3. Putnam & Patchen Future Community Garden! Two block associations and the neighbors have come together and are negotiating or agency approval, which is imminent. They hope to be growing something by June 2012. Contact Alison at alison.iven@gmail.com or Alexis at (646) 351-9859 to get involved. 

4. Jefferson & Broadway - A HUGE Lot that the community is just starting to think about! Contact Matt at (216) 316-3753 or mattbrill4@gmail.comto start scheming. 

5. BK Permaculture Community Compost Site. Agency approval is still tentative for a more stable use, but composting has begun. Contact Frank at (917) 757-6013 or frankaddeo@gmail.com to get involved.

At an awards ceremony presided over by Mayor Michael Bloomberg last night, 596 Acres won the award of "Best Green App" from the NYC BigApps 3.0 competition. Thanks so much to everyone who voted for us!

The official announcement is here: http://nycgov.tumblr.com/post/21324992484/nycedc-last-night-mayor-bloomberg-announced

Selected other coverage:

New York Times.

Channel Thirteen. 

Photographer Meg Wachter has been out there photographing sites in various stages for the last few days. Check out her gorgeous images:

48 Warsoff Street

348 Bergen Street

462 Halsey Street

0.329 acres have been activated by community groups who found out that vacant land in their neighborhoods was actually public land. That tiny amount is all of the Java Street Garden Collaborative, Feedback Farms/A Small Green Patch and 462 Halsey. We have a long long way to go.

GreenThumb gets no funding from New York City. Here's what we have to say about that:

"My name is Paula Segal. I am here representing a community-based project called 596 Acres. I am here today to testify for city council funding for community driven parks projects and, specifically city funding for the GreenThumb program. 

596 Acres connects communities with land resources around them to enable the formation of community-controlled public spaces where New Yorkers can work together and play together in their own neighborhoods. Our project is a data project -- we use maps and hand-made signs to identify unused public land in Brooklyn. Our pilot project, which started by labeling a dozen unused Housing Preservation and Development sites last summer and supporting community members who saw those signs in navigating the existing processes for getting access. Three of those sites are now GreenThumb gardens -- the Java Street Garden Collaborative in Greenpoint, Feedback Farms in Gowanus and 462 Halsey Community Gardens in Bedford Stuyvesant. 

GreenThumb provides materials and gardening support for gardens on public land. They provided an already-established process for these three community groups to actually open their fences and put public land to use that the people who live right near those lands could control and use for recreation and food production. Without the help and support of GreenThumb, these groups would be going it alone and would likely still be weedy, vacant lots behind fences. 

One of the things that I find myself doing a lot as a community advocate through 596 Acres is telling community members not to give up -- GreenThumb is swamped. Sometimes materials take a long time to arrive. Sometimes emails take a long time to get answered. City funding for this crucial program that is serving the needs of New Yorkers who want to work together to create community controlled spaces would increase the capacity of the program, and have the effect of increasing the capacity of all New Yorkers to affect the use of our common lands in our own communities. 

596 Acres is here today to ask the City Council to use the Parks budget process as an opportunity to add city funding to GreenThumb. Even a small amount of funding added directly from the City budget would immediately increase green space capacity in our neighborhoods, especially those where parks are scarce." 

This is a repost from the Java Street Garden Collaborative blog.

After a brief presentation at last week's CB1 meeting in front of the Parks & Waterfront Committee, given by Stella Goodall and supported by some terrific graphics and presentation materials created by Rena Mande, Amanda Rekemeyer and Phil Grimaldi of DSGN AGNC, we have pretty much been given the green light to temporarily take up residence at 59 Java Street in Greenpoint.

We were joined at the meeting by fellow group members Susan Marie Kosor and Manuel Zuniga; also in attendance was our advocate from Green Thumb, Roland Chouloute.  The main concern in discussion was the temporal nature of this particular lot which has apparently already been RFP'd (Request for Proposal) by the North Brooklyn Development Corporation for affordable housing; it seems the hold-up has been funding and which could be long- or short-term in coming.  We had the opportunity at last Thursday's meeting to meet Rich Mazur, Executive Director of NBDC, who says he would support our efforts as a temporary garden project.  He also suggested that, as we have had such an overwhelming response from potential volunteers, that we might also take a look at his Dupont Street community garden for overflow involvement.

In the past, groups have been granted "temporary" access to vacant public land only to be asked some time later to vacate under very similar circumstances.  Once groups get entrenched and gain the support and attachment of the surrounding neighborhood, it can be very hard for everyone involved to simply move on.  We already knew we'd be up against this and rather than try to dig our heels in against the inevitable decided to embrace it, giving birth to the vision of a "roving garden group".

Ours is not the only vacant lot in this predicament of having laid in waste for years waiting for something to happen and in the meanwhile becoming a blight on the surrounding area, collecting trash, overgrown weeds and generally bringing down the quality of life to that particular block.  Our vision is to create a template for creating a productive active space for all in a short amount of time and then being able to easily and quickly move on to the next such project when the time comes.

We are past the halfway mark in our fundraising campaign going with ioby.org and we encourage you to consider giving, however small an amount, and to share it to help us meet our goal ...so we can effectively break ground and get going this spring!

This past Saturday, 596 Acres had the honor and privilege of presenting our tactics to the awesome youth of Flip the Table: the NYC Youth Food Council.

In the words of the Council's organizers, Flip the Table "is training future leaders in the sustainable food movement, lending a problem-solution framework around which youth can mobilize and envision change. We do this by connecting fifteen Brooklyn-based youth within a network of urban farms, non-profit organizations and institutions while raising awareness about local, regional, and systemic issues surrounding food systems." We are so impressed and urge you to support them on IOBY if you can.

Saturday's presentation was to a packed room at Pratt Institute -- the youth love this program so much that they bring their friends to check it out and on this particular Saturday, the wonderful folks from the vast geography of the NYC food justice movement who are serving as Flip the Table mentors were in attendance as well.

We got a sweet note from one of the attendees after: "i just wanted to thank you again for coming in and talking with us. i really appreciated what you shared and the work you are doing. its really exciting and hopeful to see and imagine the possibilities of getting our hands in the dirt in our own communities, taking agency in our own lives, and having rich foods be available to more than just the wealthy."

Thanks, Flip the Table, for making an opportunity to share our work with a concentration of the awesomest justice-fighter in the City. What a day!*

*We were also at the Center for Architecture that same day, on a really impressive panel addressing freedom of assembly and the design of public space. Watch the video if you were enjoying Saturday morning elsewhere (Paula Z. Segal gives opening remarks at 1:02 and participates in a conversation that begins right after with the rest of the panelists).

Take the Acres with you

We've been working on making our map work better on smart phones. Now iPhone users can pinch the map to zoom in or out, and the map generally looks better. You can also add an app-like bookmark by going to 596acres.org on your phone, clicking on the icon at the bottom of the screen in the middle (on older iPhones this is a +, newer ones have a box with an arrow shooting out of it), then selecting "Add to Home Screen." Now 596 Acres will look and act more like an app on your phone.

Groundtruthing just got way, way, way easier. Take a walk in your neighborhood. Tell us about the vacant public lots in your life.

Thank you to everyone who came out last night. So great to meet so many of you in person, even better to watch you meet each other. We are brewing an awesome concoction for spring!

Next Meeting: Sunday, February 12 at 5pm. 

Location TBD. Pie flavors will be unknown until arrival.

On the agenda:maps for all 5 boroughs, tools for groundtruthing, who needs fences?, national day of action for empty lots #F27, a seed saving library & whatever you want to talk about.

We also decided that we will start sending out a regular Friday email blast with news from the Acres and anyone else in our community with news to share. Got news? Send it to 596acres@gmail.com by Wednesday at 8pm. Want to make sure you are getting all the news? Sign up for the newsletter!

Thank you so much to everyone who came out to support 596 Acres at F.E.A.S.T. last night, and to everyone who learned about us and decided to cast their vote our way. You rocked it. We won. New, more accurate data, new broadsheets and a new set of fence signs are on their way for spring. If you want to help us spend this bounty in the best way for connecting communities with public land, join us. You can start by joining us at our first borough-wide general assembly today at 5:30pm at The Commons.

It's time to demystify those dots on the map! This January -- we turn to you to tell us what is happening in your neighborhoods. Some of the "vacant lots" on our map -- which is really the NYC Planning map -- aren't really vacant at all.

Some are community gardens & parks. Some have other uses. And some are absolutely perfect community greenspaces for us to dream about in 2012. We want to know what's what! Before we print our next publication. We invite you to take a walk in the next few weeks, and think about springtime coming, a structured way. We need your help looking at every dot in Brooklyn in real life.

Can you commit to checking out the ones in your neighborhood? And uploading photos or notes to the pages for those lots? That would be great! We have a goal of getting this done by January 15. If you have any questions -- email 596acres@gmail.com.

‎462 Halsey Community Garden has gotten permission to use a lot on Halsey Street that has been vacant for over 20 years. Now they need a little financial support. Please donate to their ioby project.

Here are some lots around which communities are congealing (join them! contact info after each link):

Bed Stuy - 776 Myrtle Avenue (Garden On Myrtle)

Bed Stuy - 462 Halsey Street (462 Community Garden)

Bed Stuy/Wallabout Village - 913 Kent Ave (Myrtle Village Green)

DUMBO/Vinegar Hill - Waterfront site

Gowanus - 487 4th Avenue (A Small Green Patch)

Greenpoint - 61 Franklin Street

Greenpoint - 59 Java Street  (Java Street Community Garden Coalition)