By Helen Klein
Snazzy new signs and stylish lampposts are just two features of the streetscape improvement project designed to reinvent the Junction. The project, which is being developed under the auspices of the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), has yet to go before the Art Commission for its okay. Community Board 14, which includes the Junction in its catchment area, has expressed support for the streetscape project as it was presented to them. Among the highlights of the preliminary plan presented to the CB 14 Transportation Committee are granite curbs, gray-tinted sidewalks and a sidewalk bump-out at Hillel Place – with a raised crosswalk – to make it easier for pedestrians to navigate the busy intersection. Across Flatbush Avenue, at the triangular corner occupied by HSBC, the plan proposes decorative paving inset with steel striping that are meant to hark back to the trolley tracks of yore. In addition, trees will be added in certain locations and decorative tree guards with Flatbush-Nostrand design medallions will be installed around existing trees throughout the project area, which includes Flatbush Avenue between Avenue H and Farragut Road; Nostrand Avenue, from Glenwood Road to Avenue H; and Hillel Place. Slatted benches and new trash receptacles will also be placed in different parts of the project area. Signage is designed to give an identity to the bustling intersection and shopping area, with the words Flatbush and Nostrand crossing each other in a stylized X above the words, “The Junction.” Other signs are meant to assist newcomers, with arrows pointing the way to various highlights of the area, including Brooklyn College, transportation and shopping. There will also be one historic interpretive sign, near HSBC, that will provide a variety of information about the area’s past. “The idea is to unify the area and to revitalize the commercial area to make it attractive for Brooklyn College students and shoppers,” explained Sandy Tomas, vice president of the capital projects division of EDC. “It’s at the end of two subway lines and the beginning of bus lines, so it’s a bustling area.” The design reflects local input, said Lori Raphael, the executive director of the year-old Junction Business Improvement District (BID), which, she said, “worked in collaboration with EDC on design issues. “We are gratified that they allowed the community to give the input necessary to ensure that the improvements are tailored to the needs of our neighborhood and create a sense of place, as the BID works toward having the neighborhood rediscover the Junction as a commercial shopping strip,” Raphael noted. The project could be a lynchpin in a newly energized Junction, suggested Alvin Berk, the chairperson of CB 14. “Streetscape improvements, in my view, do a couple of things,” he told this paper. “Beyond just improving the aesthetics and livability of the area with benches and trees, they also provide branding, which is useful to merchants.” In addition, said Berk, streetscape improvements, “Represent an investment that merchants interpret as a signal to do their own investing, and can lead to a bigger overall upgrade of a commercial strip. They are certainly a signal of energy and activity that will lead to greater community interest, and works to the benefit of the economy.” The $4.5 million project has been a long time in coming. It originated in the late 1990s, the brainchild of then-City Councilmember Lloyd Henry, who allocated funding for it. While designs were done at the time, they were never implemented because the city required that an organization be in place to maintain some of the improvements that were made. However, the funding for the project was kept in place by Henry’s successor, City Councilmember Kendall Stewart, who also added to the original amount of the allocation. The formation of the BID, which commenced operations a year ago, fulfilled the city requirements that had previously been unmet, allowing the EDC to push the latent project onto the front burner. EDC “hopes to designate a contractor by the end of the year, and start construction in spring, 2009,” according to Tomas, who said that construction is expected to take about a year. EDC will be making a conceptual presentation to the Art Commission in mid-May, and will return to that group two more times, with preliminary and final designs, before the project can move forward.
