Rockaway nonprofit urges Parks to unlock vacant lot for farming

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The Rockaway Youth Task Force wants to expand its thriving community garden into a city-owned lot next door. The city has not yet granted them the access to cultivate the patch of land. Photo courtesy of Rockaway Youth Task Force.

The Rockaway Youth Task Force wants to expand its thriving community garden into a city-owned lot next door. The city has not yet granted them the access to cultivate the patch of land. Photo courtesy of Rockaway Youth Task Force.

By David Brand

A Rockaway Peninsula social service organization that wants to expand its thriving garden into a vacant municipal lot nearby says its getting stiff-armed by the city, despite the Parks Department’s commitment to funding farms run by local nonprofits.

The Rockaway Youth Task Force took over a half-acre patch of Rockaway Community Park in 2014, two years after the land was ravaged by Superstorm Sandy. The organization turned the Arverne plot into a thriving community garden and wants to expand to an adjacent Parks Department lot with funding from the city’s five-year-old Community Parks Initiative. 

But the Parks Department has yet to offer them the land to grow food for local residents in what  RYTF Director Operations Tamera Jacobs called “a federally labeled food desert.”

“The community recognizes the impact that we have and over 3,000 residents have supported us in this effort to expand the farm and allow us to have a great impact in the community where we live,” Jacobs said. 

The city launched the CPI in 2014 with a pledge to invest $130 million “to re-create 35 parks in communities with greatest need,” including Rockaway Community Park. The program has expanded to include 67 parks and 45 have already opened. So far, however, the city has not directed CPI money to Rockaway Community Park.  

Councilmember Donovan Richards and Assemblymember Michele Titus have written letters of support on behalf of the RYTF, but the Parks Department has not yet granted them the additional space.

“Through a series of expansions, the community garden has become a half-acre, self-sustaining Urban Farm with raised beds, rainwater harvest systems, solar panels, a greenhouse, a chicken coop, and a small compost operation,” Richards wrote in his letter to the Parks Department.

Parks Department spokesperson Meghan Lalor said the agency has opened the application process to various organizations and residents who are also interested in the parcel.

“Many local residents have expressed interest in forming a community garden on this site, and GreenThumb is working closely with all of them toward that goal,” Lalor said. 

She said the city has already upgraded Far Rockaway areas sites like Conch Playground, Grassmere Playground and Almeda Playground in recent years.

“Through the Community Parks Initiative, we are tackling inequities in the park system by making targeted investments in under resourced parks that are located in densely populated and growing neighborhoods with higher-than-average concentrations of poverty,” she said.