Stalled Bellerose Reading Garden Project Is Back Underway

BELLEROSE, QUEENS — Plans to build a reading garden next to Queens' Bellerose playground are finally moving forward, five years after city lawmakers first announced the project, officials said Thursday.

The garden space, which is next to the P.S. 133 schoolyard, has been closed to the public for years. In 2014, then-State Sen. Tony Avella announced $250,000 in funding to turn the space into a reading garden, but the project stalled.

"This reading garden has been long sought after by the community, and in fact should have been part of a comprehensive renovation of the PS 133 recreation area," State Sen. John Liu said in a statement. "However, lack of collaboration in past years had resulted in this component of the overall renovation being excluded."

The reading garden project will complement a larger renovation of the Bellerose playground and P.S. 133 schoolyard, which began in 2016.

Construction for those renovations is expected to wrap up in spring 2020, according to a spokesperson for Liu.

"This garden will be a place in our community where students and families can come, snuggle up under a tree, and foster a love of reading," P.S. 133 principal Nicole Colón said in a statement. "We hope this Reading Garden will allow our students to immerse themselves in the magical pages of great authors and maybe even be inspired to, one day, tell their own stories and become authors."

Locals can weigh in on the reading garden's design at a public scoping meeting on Friday, Jan. 10 at P.S. 133.