Alliance for Paseo Park Unveils Community Roadmap for 34th Ave Open Street
Alliance for Paseo Park is unveiling a set of community priorities, along with conceptual renderings and a holistic plan, for transforming New York City’s “gold standard”, pandemic-era Open Street into a permanent linear park in the NYC neighborhood that ranks last in public park space, Jackson Heights, Queens.
The report is the result of nearly a year of multi-lingual, multi-faceted community outreach and engagement conducted by volunteers from Alliance for Paseo Park, including: eight tabling sessions; two community visioning workshops; 12 “outreach ambassadors” holding smaller kitchen table conversations; several dozen in-person and virtual meetings with neighbors, local leaders, organizations, and businesses – and even a survey designed by local Girl Scouts specifically for children.
Jackson Heights is home to New York City’s largest and most successful Open Street, Paseo Park (formerly 34th Avenue Open Street). The City has allocated $90 million in capital funding for improvements to the 26-block long (1.3 mile) stretch, which runs along 34th Avenue from 69th Street to Junction Boulevard. The Open Street was created in 2020 in the pandemic and has been featured in news reports around the world, including on the front page of the New York Times.
“Our community is clearly calling for a pedestrian-first space, where children and our elders can be safe from speeding vehicles. What was once a cut-through street where kids were hit by speeding cars, can now be redesigned as a community front lawn, providing safe recess space for six public schools, many of which lack play yards. With this redesign we have a chance to address flooding, rising heat, and other effects of climate change.” said Dawn Siff, executive director of Alliance for Paseo Park. “Our open street is still evolving. We must work together to make it better and push the City to seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create green space from street space that could serve as a replicable model across New York City.”
“I grew up in this neighborhood without access to green space. I could only peek through the gates of the beautiful private co-op gardens. Green spaces should be for everyone, for the health of our community, that’s why we took on this challenge, as volunteers from the community, reaching out to our neighbors ourselves. This report is not meant to be prescriptive, but to point a direction forward, to help our neighbors imagine what is possible,” said Luz Maria Mercado, board chair of Alliance for Paseo Park. “We can unite to design a safe space for children, families and our elders; that puts pedestrians first; that maintains access for City services; and that helps protect people, homes, and businesses from flooding,”
The Alliance worked with WXY architecture + urban design – a leading design firm dedicated to community driven processes and meaningful engagement – to design the outreach methods, materials, and analyze the feedback. WXY’s past Queens-based community engagement projects include: the Corona Plaza street vendor redesign, the Long Island City Neighborhood Plan, and the Queensway.
The Paseo Park Community Roadmap includes conceptual renderings, a before and after, of how the open street could be transformed to a public space for the community. The report recommends the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) address the city-wide problem of speeding mopeds and e-bikes by creating space for higher speed working and commuting cyclists and vehicles on an adjacent avenue.
Recommended design improvements to Paseo Park include: widening the median to provide space for play, rest and exercise; raising the street bed so it is level with the sidewalk; raising the crosswalks for pedestrian safety.
The top priorities identified from community engagement are:
Creating a safe space for children, the elderly, and families
Creating an uninterrupted pedestrian-first space
Allowing access for city services, such as: DSNY, FDNY, NYPD and Access-a-Ride
Making uses of the avenue more clear
Creating a green, sustainable space that helps address frequent flooding and heat effects
Giving schools a safe space for recess and outdoor learning
Currently 34th Avenue plays multiple roles for the community, which are often in conflict with each other.
The report calls on NYC DOT to pilot new street designs to begin to address the global problem of street infrastructure that has not kept pace with modern transportation.
Jackson Heights, one of the City’s most diverse and densely populated districts, ranks last in park space and lacks a community center. The creation of a linear park along 34th Avenue Open Street would give the community up to 7.5 acres of park space, quadrupling the amount of public green space.
“Paseo Park is a reimagining of how our streets can serve the full spectrum of urban life,” said Claire Weisz, founding partner of WXY. “Working closely with the Jackson Heights community, we’ve helped articulate a vision that meets both hyperlocal needs and a growing global demand for equitable, climate-resilient public space. That means designing for all generations, but also confronting the realities of a changing transportation landscape. We see Paseo Park as part of a holistic corridor plan that accommodates pedestrians while creating alternate, safe routes for high-speed e-bikes and mopeds. What’s happening in Jackson Heights is a model not just for Queens, but for cities everywhere seeking to rebalance their streets to serve people first.”