This neighborhood in Queens has a brilliant plan to turn a busy street into a park

4 days ago

One of the most positive legacies of the COVID-19 pandemic stretches across 26 blocks in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. The 34th Avenue Open Street emerged out of a New York City-sanctioned program in the early days of the pandemic that allowed neighborhood groups to temporarily close streets to car traffic and use the space for outdoor recreation and other purposes. In Jackson Heights, one of the early epicenters of the pandemic, the open street that emerged from this program became a kind of lifeline for the neighborhood. Now, after running strong for more than five years, a plan is taking shape to make the project on 34th Avenue, now known as Paseo Park, permanent.
The concept for the park was commissioned by the Alliance for Paseo Park, a volunteer group that has overseen the open street since the beginning, when it was little more than metal barriers at the end of each block. The group hired the architecture and urban design firm WXY to envision a more formal park space along the 1.3-mile length that includes a mix of recreational areas, seating and meandering zones, multiuse playspace for the 10 schools on and near the street, dense landscaping, paths for cyclists and pedestrians, as well as required emergency vehicle access areas. And because New York Mayor Eric Adams's administration allocated $89 million in funding in 2022 to permanently build out the 34th Avenue Open Street, there's a good chance this design concept will take shape. It could be a model for other neighborhoods in New York—and other cities—for how to thoughtfully turn streets into neighborhood amenities.
'There's so many streets that are doing one thing, serving cars and parking,' says Rob Daurio, a senior associate and director of urban sustainability at WXY who led the 34th Avenue design project. 'This is a big opportunity to really think ambitiously about how to provide more significant public space.'
The need is acute. A report from New York City's Independent Budget Office found that Jackson Heights has as little as two square feet of park space per resident. 'It's one of the lowest amounts of park space in the city,' says Daurio. The creation of the open street during the pandemic 'did start to serve this really important and meaningful role for the community,' he says.
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WXY worked directly with the Alliance for Paseo Park on deep community outreach to learn what neighbors and users of the space wanted from a permanent version of 34th Avenue's open street. The main priority was to ensure that the linear park would be safe and pedestrian first, provide room for the schools in the area, and use its planting to combat the effects of climate change. WXY interpreted those priorities in a range of active, passive, and school-centric areas. 'We tried to come up with not just one solution, but a range of different block typologies that really did respond to the needs of the individuals in those particular areas,' Daurio says.
The design concept is based on two main typologies that can define each of the 26 blocks in the park. WXY calls them the Super-Median and the Super-Sidewalk, and they essentially stretch out either the existing median in the street's center or the sidewalks on its edges to create more usable public space. 'Neither the sidewalk nor the median are big enough to actually take on a more significant use,' Daurio says. 'But if you just widen them to enough space that you're still allowing for your emergency access lanes and drive lanes, either of those options are viable to really create a more significant open space.'
These designs also balance the need for the street to remain a viable path for transportation—just not for most cars. In the years since 34th Avenue became an open street, it has become a highway for cyclists and, to the chagrin of some residents, delivery drivers on fast-moving electric bikes, mopeds, and other alternative forms of mobility. It's particularly a problem for the youngest users of the space. According to a survey of children that was conducted by a local Girl Scout troop, 66% of children said that the thing they wanted most to change about the open street was for there to be fewer cars and mopeds on the street.
WXY integrated these concerns into their design by looking beyond the edges of 34th Avenue, proposing streetscape changes on another nearby arterial street, Northern Boulevard, which could be redesigned to handle more of the cross-neighborhood non-car traffic that has dominated 34th Avenue. 'It's a little bit of a Swiss Army knife of a street right now, where it's a park, and it's also a place for school drop-offs and a route for delivery people,' Daurio says. 'We're thinking about other opportunities to help take the burden off of 34th Avenue for doing everything.'
Luz Maria Mercado, board chair of the Alliance for Paseo Park, says people in the neighborhood are enthusiastic about the design concepts. 'Our neighbors see their feedback represented in ideas like creating a front yard for the six public schools that line Paseo Park, the addition of green space, and the flexibility of different design types for different blocks with different needs,' she says.
Right now the design is still just a concept, and one that, despite official support from the Alliance for Paseo Park, is subject to input from the broader community. Claire Weisz, founding principal of WXY, says permanently closing any street to traffic, even one that's had such a long and successful pilot stage, is going to be a challenge. 'It's not without its controversies, because, well, people love cars,' she says. This design concept is a hopeful wager that people will realize they love public space even more.
'We're trying to do something that's never been done before in New York City, but is being done around the world,' Mercado says. 'It is hard, but it is not impossible.'
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