After the previous judge recused himself, the Boardwalk Community Garden has a new judge and a new court date! Please help us PACK THE COURT and show Judge Peter Paul Sweeney how important this case is to the future of community gardens in NYC.
December 15, 2014
Brooklyn State Supreme Court
360 Adams Street
(near Brooklyn Borough Hall)
RALLY: 10:30am
COURT: 12:15pm
Before, After, Today |
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For Immediate Release
Contact Aziz Dehkan, Executive Director of NYCCGC, at aziz@nyccgc.org or 973.222.5413
Nearly a year after the Boardwalk Community Garden was bulldozed to make way for a $53 million City-funded amphitheater of questionable public value, the parkland on which the garden sat remains vacant and fenced-in. The public continues to be denied access to one of the few open green spaces in the community.
Though the community challenged the validity of the project in court—noting serious environmental concerns with the project and the fact that it is to be illegally built on public parkland—the Courts have for over six months refused to issue a ruling, leaving the Coney Island West community in limbo. Most recently, Kings County Supreme Court Judge Mark Partnow, who was assigned the case in April, recused himself from the case, and a new judge, Peter Paul Sweeney, was recently assigned. Now Judge Sweeney is to rehear the case on December 15.
Judge Partnow’s recusal is itself quite vexing. Judges generally remove themselves from cases at the beginning of the process, not months into the proceedings. Moreover, they’ll often indicate why they are stepping down. Yet in this case, in which local residents are challenging a project supported by Marty Markowitz and most of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, the petitioners were given no reason as to why their challenge has languished for so many months.
In truth, the City has ignored the Coney West community from the beginning. Not only did the local Community Board originally express disapproval of this project, and not only did individual members of the community repeatedly express concerns—about infrastructure, flooding, and the City’s general reluctance to involve the community in the development process—but the City approved the project on the final day of the Bloomberg Administration and secretly bulldozed the garden several days later in the middle of the night, destroying thousands of dollars of community property as well as a garden that locals had tended for years and personally rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy.
Since then, neither the City nor the developer have offered any real concessions to (or demonstrated any willingness to work with) the local community. Today, nearly a year after the project was approved and the land bulldozed, all the community wants is a fair hearing on the merits of their case.
Background
See our past posts about this case here.
