REZONING
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Congratulations to Dr. Marcello Sarrica
seen here proudly standing by his Official Winners Banner.
2019
SARRICA PHYSICAL THERAPY & WELLNESS
474 BAY RIDGE PARKWAY
BROOKLYN NY 11209
347 560 6920 • WWW.SARRICAPT.COM
Dr. Marcello Sarrica is a Board Certified
Orthopedic Clinical Specialist and Certified
Orthopedic Manual Therapist who heads
Sarrica Physical Therapy in Bay Ridge.
Sarrica’s background in exercise physiology,
strength and conditioning and personal
training has allowed him to work with
individuals of all ages. In his spare time, the
award-winning physical therapist — enjoys
spending time with his family, playing
baseball and softball, doing weight training
and taking long walks with his family.
WINNER
BEST PHYSICAL THERAPIST
Marcello Sarrica
today, we don’t want to just
put signs on a poster, we want
questions and answers,” said
Karen Blondel, a member of
community group the Gowanus
Neighborhood Coalition
for Justice, who lives in a
nearby Red Hook public-housing
complex.
City planners on Jan. 30
dropped more details about the
scheme to rezone swathes of the
historically industrial neighborhood
in order to pack more
residents into bigger buildings
there, roughly seven months
after revealing a fi rst draft of
the plan that Mayor DeBlasio
initially fl oated back in 2016.
And locals on Feb. 6 expected
those offi cials to lead
a presentation about the dramatic
changes they’re proposing
— which include allowing
buildings as high as 30 stories
along parts of the fetid Gowanus
Canal, and structures as
tall as 17 stories along a stretch
of Fourth Avenue.
But instead, leaders of the
Department of City Planning
and other agencies stood behind
booths around the packed
PS 32 auditorium, forcing folks
to stand in line in order to
seek out the information they
thought would be provided to
them, another attendee said.
“I would like to know why
this is the format today. The
least we could have is a presentation,
and I don’t see a lot
of things that we requested in
this draft,” said Gowanusaur
Helena Whitaker.
The frustrations with the
format quickly escalated, with
Blondel and other members of
the Gowanus Neighborhood
Coalition for Justice bursting
out into chants of “Gowanus rezoning
is incomplete, City Hall
take a seat,” and “Before you
rezone, fi x our homes.”
The group then demanded
the city planners answer their
questions, including why the
rezoning proposal excludes the
neighborhood’s crumbling public
housing complexes, whose
residents make up a quarter of
the community.
“After two years of community
engagement in this
process, the city of New York
continues to exclude any commitment
to fi x the environmentally
unsafe conditions in local
public housing, and provide equity
and environmental justice
to the long-standing residents
of Gowanus that currently
comprise more than 25 percent
of the residents in the neighborhood,”
Blondel said.
Two city-planning offi cials
eventually conceded to the locals’
loud demands, addressing
the crowd and assuring that
Gowanusaurs are part of the
plan for their neighborhood.
The agency reps said residents
will get more opportunities
to discuss the scheme at
two upcoming meetings, a yetto
be-scheduled session with
the Coalition for Justice, and
a presentation of the proposal
to Community Board 6’s Land
Use Committee on Feb. 28.
a cost of $7,000 and would be
kept at Park Slope’s Old Stone
House museum, would offer
equipment including leafblowers,
chainsaws, and other
tools to adult supervisors of
pint-sized gardeners within
School District 15, which encompasses
Park Slope as well
as Fort Greene, Boerum Hill,
Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill,
Gowanus, Red Hook, Kensington,
and Sunset Park.
Price said the demand for
school gardens in the area
only grew after she formed
the advocacy group Garden
Train in 2017, which raises
awareness of District 15’s
existing educational farms
through local events.
And tiny constituents
could be the block that sways
the upcoming budgeting vote
in the community tool shed’s
favor, which is why the mom
and her fellow green thumbs
will spend the upcoming
weeks educating youngsters
in the way of the vote — a
grass-roots campaign she
hopes will get their parents to
the polls, too.
“It’s been proven that 100
percent of adults get all the
feels when they see kids in
the garden learning, believing
in science, and caring for
the environment,” she said.
Students and teachers at
schools where gardens already
exist would be able to
expand their growing patches
with such a facility, according
to Price, who said the community
tools would go a long way
toward creating more gardens
at learning houses that
currently lack them.
“There are many schools
that want gardens, and the
lending library is something
garden leaders can point to,
and say there’s infrastructure
that can helps us,” she said.
FULL HOUSE: Locals wandered around the room during the meeting
as other activists and public-housing residents broke out in chants demanding
answers from the city. Photo by Julianne Cuba VEGGING OUT: A youngster
shows off some produce from a
Red Hook school garden within
District 15. Some Park Slopers are
mobilizing eligible kids in the district
to vote to fund a community
tool shed that would serve other
school gardens. Kathy Park Price
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