Lower East Siders Concerned After Rumors Swirl MTA Could Ruin Community Garden

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — A group of Lower East Side activists are keeping their eye on the MTA after rumors swirled they would lose a chunk of the M'Finda Kalunga Community Garden in Sara Roosevelt Park to the MTA's plan to build a fan plant for the M line.

The parks committee of the Lower East Side's community board heard from a committee Thursday night that was deeply concerned the MTA would dig a hole through part of the garden along Forsyth Street. They were worried the MTA would ruin the garden's beloved turtle pond and hen coop in order to build the M line's updated fan plant.

Patch reached out to the MTA Thursday afternoon to confirm the rumors, and the MTA sent back a plan specifically mentioning the fact that the project wouldn't touch the garden, or the turtle pond.

The MTA spokesperson detailed a plan to build a new ventilation plant for the M line underneath Forsyth Street between Delancey and Rivington streets.

The plan called the new fan plant "a critical life safety project" since the current M line fan plant was built in 1962 and is too small and one-directional to be useful anymore. The plan did not specify when the MTA would begin construction or when it expected to be finished.

"The project design will have the least possible impact on the Sara Roosevelt Park and its ecology in view of its historic importance to the City and to the Public," the plan stated. It went on to establish that it would not touch the park:

It is to be stated clearly that based on the latest design, there will be absolutely minimal or virtually no impact on:

• The area presently occupied and used by the Park.

• The existing Park fencing along the Forsyth Street.

• The existing Pond located within the Park that has fish and turtles.

• Entrance to the Park including public access

• The Ecology and the Environment.

Some trees (up to 6) on the sidewalk along Forsyth Street are likely to be impacted but NYCT will work with Parks Department to mitigate the effect. All required planting /replanting will be done strictly following the applicable Parks Department Guidelines. The sidewalk would be disturbed during construction but will be fully restored to original or better condition in consultation with NYC DOT and Parks Department.

Bob Humber, head gardener of M'Finda Kalunga, had first raised the concerns to the community when he overheard a meeting last week where MTA representatives were talking about potentially digging a hole through part of the garden.

Humber has tended the garden, which is now in the backyard of the BRC senior home, since the 1970s, when prostitutes and drug addicts would frequent the patch of land, he told Patch. He saw the garden through the 1980s and '90s as it became safer, in the early 2000s as the area around it gentrified, and in the past few years, he's seen as global money was dumped into the lots around the garden that are now considered to be some of the hottest real estate properties in the world.

Hubbard takes a 4-year-old child who lives in the neighborhood to the turtle pond every week and gives her a quarter each time she feeds the turtles, he said.

Last week, Hubbard beamed when the child's mother told him she bought her daughter a piggy bank where she could store all the quarters he had given her.

Photo Credit: Sarah Kaufman/Patch