The TKF Foundation, a group based in Maryland that provides funds for open spaces, just awarded $1,014,000 to the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative to convert the former Brooklyn Naval Hospital cemetery into a publicly accessible open space. The grant is one of six the Foundation has awarded across the country as part of its Open Spaces Sacred Places Program. The BGI will work with Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, which controls the site, to develop the landscape. Rogers Marvel Architects and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects are in charge of the design; here are initial renderings the firms released last year. And here’s the goal for the space itself:

When completed, visitors will be able to enter from the greenway and experience a native wildflower meadow surrounded by trees. The wildflowers and warm-season grasses have been selected by Nelson Byrd Woltz for their benefit to wildlife including, birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators. A goal of the design is to create a contrast with the built environment by enveloping visitors in nature and focusing their minds on their immediate experience of abundant and indefatigable life activity.

BGI is also planning programming at the old cemetery. They’ll work with two community partners, The Green School and Brooklyn Housing and Community Services, to research the benefits of nature for members of a city.
Now the BGI is waiting to see what the elected officials put in the 2014 capital budget to complete the funding for the project. If it is funded, they will complete design this fall and break ground in the spring. And then it should be completed by the end of next year.
Envisioning a New Park by the Navy Yard [Brownstoner]
Rendering via Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. this looks like a great park, and pretty big. It seems like people have been making jokes about building on a cemetery but that seems OK, I think most people would not mind a beautiful park full of happy people being put on top of them.