Western Queens Community Land Trust wants to tell you how to use public land
There’s a piece of public land in Astoria and a community land trust (CLT) vying to get ahold of it. The land itself is surrounded by the NYCHA Ravenswood Houses on the corner of 21st Street and 35th Avenue, and is currently owned by the city. On the land is a Department of Sanitation garage that is set to close. Now, the Western Queens Community Land Trust has begun holding visioning sessions with neighborhood residents, mostly of the surrounding public housing, in the hopes of convincing the city to use the land to benefit the community.
The Western Queens CLT (WQCLT), is a non-profit formed by a coalition of community members (neighborhood residents, small business owners, artists, activists, professors, etc.), who aspire to keep “public land in the hands of the public.” For them, that means allowing community members make decisions when it comes to spaces that would affect them if they were to get in the hands of the “big developers.”
At the visioning session in early September, more than a dozen neighborhood residents came together around the Ravenswood flagpole and talked about what they hoped to add to their community; be it “truly-affordable” housing for families or seniors, a community center, or a park.
As community and trusts become more popular citywide as a way to protect the public land from powerful developers, explaining the nitty-gritty behind CLTs gets heavy and confusing.
Here's a primer on what this CLT hopes to achieve with the land:
Public Land is up for grabs
The garage has been decommissioned and the Department of Sanitation is opening a new site further up in Astoria, said Scott Larson, one of the members of the WQCLT, at a visioning session in mid-September.
"Today, the idea is to just begin the process by taking about the existing conditions there, the needs of the Ravenswood and area community, and begin to think about what we can put there."
Members of the community come together to form 'Community Land Trust.'
"We, being a coalition of different groups, we think that the residents of Ravenswood should have a voice in what [the space] becomes," Larson explained.
"And we wanted to start that process early so that their voices are heard before any decisions were made."
Down the line, negotiations begin.
In an ideal world, the city donates or sells public land for cheap to CLT. "In terms of what the city is thinking, and it terms of process... We don’t know, and we haven’t been able to find out," Larson said.
Their main worry is that a big developer will swoop in and the city will sell the land to the highest bidder.
And finally...if successful...
CLT works together to build whatever the community wants for the space.
"A community center? A senior center? Educational programs? Open space? To give [residents] the voice to begin that process so that hopefully they can get their voices heard when the city decides what it wants to do with the site.”