April 4, 2021

Greetings Neighbors and Friends of Glendale, Ridgewood and Cypress Hills!

We are asking for your support in our efforts in creating a community garden and beautifying a large, neglected and truly unique piece of land in the heart of our little corner of New York City. Located at Cypress Hills St and Central Ave, this sun-drenched triangular plot of land next to Glendale's Stop & Shop has remained vacant since 2002.

As you likely know, the section of Western Queens where we live has a woefully inadequate amount of natural, open space. We are hoping to create a much-needed meaningful public space that will vastly improve the daily lives of Queens residents. We envision this as space for neighbors to gather, connect, and of course, enjoy nature's beauty in the city.

We need your voices, the voices of our community, to indicate to the owner that there is deep interest in using this land for a community garden! Please feel free to share and distribute widely.

Your Friends at Cypress Central Community Garden

CONTACT
IG: @cypresscentralgarden
Email: cypresscentralgarden@gmail.com


**** Update on Cypress Central Garden, August 6, 2021 *****

We were locked out without notice on Tuesday, July 27.  We are still trying to see if we can come to an agreement about using the space and getting it unlocked.  Until we determine next steps, open hours will be on hold.  We will continue to water the plants through the fence, as best we can.

Some background: On March 1, a small group met to discuss starting a community garden at the corner of Cypress Hills St. and Central Avenue, next to the Stop & Shop. Due to the lack of accessible green space in Glendale, and the desire to provide an outdoor space for the community during COVID, we felt it would benefit the neighborhood.  We discovered that Stop & Shop owned the land after research.

We’ve made numerous attempts to contact Stop & Shop at the corporate level, with no success. We’ve been in touch with multiple local officials to get our garden legitimized.  We have also been in contact with multiple land trust groups, as well as making connections with other community gardens, and food outreach groups.  One of our main goals is to help address food insecurity issues in the community.  

After two months of site clean-ups, petitioning and organizing, we decided to start the garden in May.   We have been working to beautify and steward a site that was formerly a vacant, trash-strewn lot, and connecting with a wide range of our community members here in Glendale.  

We were making good headway with a contact at the office of Donovan Richard, the Queens Borough President.  We were told that Stop & Shop was interested in sponsoring the garden and the group, but not specifically at this site, as they had some issues regarding liability.  We addressed these issues and were expecting to be moving forward. However, we have had no response from the QBP in over a month.  

We are working on an action plan and will be sharing it with you all shortly.  In the meantime, please share our Instagram post about the lockout, and encourage your friends and neighbors to sign this petition!

Thank you,
CCG