hey all so friday i met with a lady named Jannie from an organization called Generation Excel. they are located in the lower east side and i met her through the LPAC anti-violence grant seminars walter and i have been attending. walter has known her since february, and we met about three months ago. well little did i know that she had a strickingly similar vision for a community center in this area...so i happend to be talking with walter about NYCX (see an earlier post) and how i wanted it to be part of the community centers rec program, then he mentioned this building the Dyckman Marina...and that Jannie happened to know alot about it. so i called, we talked, i found out that she had a similar idea, and i was like,"why don't we just do this together??? there's no need for us to compete or to recreate the wheel..." so we met of friday and she took me on quite a hike around the tip of manhattan (stupid me had brought my bag and Lappy - that's our laptops name - and had to haul it around all day...good exercise though) and the tip of our city is the mountainous part...lots of hills.
so there are two locations in that area. there is the marina proper, that has been closed for about 2 years now, but before was a thrive operation, making lots of money and selling alot of drugs on the side, which makes more money. well they got shut down, obviously the feds cracked that one. and the previous owner had a restaurant running there on the waterfront.
next to the waterfront property is a nicely "in need of renovation" building that is only the shell, but has passed recently the safety testing for structural integreity. right now it's home to some street folk, but holds great potential for a nice community center. it's 3 stories and the park commission owns it and the marina. they supposedly have been dying for someone to come and do something youth oriented with these properties and the annual financial concession the property operators has to make to the commission is essentially nothing...
right beside the buildings is multiple play fields and the only natural remaining park in NYC, inwood park. they have a park center that does educational hikes, climing, environmental education. there are great areas' for games, baseball, soccer, roller hockey, and other things. in addition to that the area holds one of the best views of all the city.
SO!!! please pray for this endeavor. our biggest hope is that we can get this center up and running because we'd be able to supply jobs, training, rec programs, education, and lots of other things through the center!! this is one of my passions for this area! so i'm super excited about it. just an update my family!
Peace,
jonathan
(too bad i can only get tammy to go out in public with me when she's heavily drugged...)
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