New York : Sheridan Expressway
The most significant achievement of my career with the greatest impact was my leadership of the planning, analysis and design efforts of the Sheridan Expressway Hunts Point and Land Use transportation study. The project focused on the removal of the Sheridan Expressway which runs through a small section of the southern Bronx. This highway stub separated a large lower income BIPOC population from open space and waterfront that community advocates spent years making accessible to community members.
The project was one I had been an advocate for while launching community development and planning efforts at a small environmental justice organization in the neighborhood before joining the NYC Department of City Planning to manage the TIGER study to consider the community’s proposal.
The project became a three year, highly political, public engagement effort; closer to negotiating a settlement than what is typical. With more than 50 stakeholders and every level of government deeply engaged and taking sides, I was able to lead the team toward a design for a new roadway that reconnected communities, created additional land for development, established a new front door to the waterfront and open space, removed thousands of trucks from surface streets and more importantly received support from all of the stakeholders. The secret was in the process. We used the planning and design process as a tool to achieve consensus. The design process specifically was used as a tool to empower, inspire and challenge. The winning formula included a deep understanding of and trust building with community as well as power dynamics within government.
The result of the project was a beautifully designed new neighborhood street in place of a highway. One that now includes crossings for pedestrians between new housing and waterfront activities, ball and soccer fields and a newly constructed environmental learning center that houses a local non profit that maintains several of the areas waterfront parks.
The greatest impact of the project has been in the hearts and minds of the more than 200,000 community members who carried the vision of these changes forward over more than two decades and now have the skills developed to envision new projects, engage effectively and meaningfully with civil society and government entities. New relationships and even organizations have grown out of this effort with city officials reconsidering a zoning effort that did not align with community priorities and instead launching a youth participatory action group to help guide broader neighborhood planning.
In addition to the impact on the people of the neighborhood The new Sheridan is part of a larger $1.8 billion redevelopment of the neighborhood, including rebuilt highways, refurbished transit, and infrastructure redesign that has reduced the number of trucks driving through the neighborhood each day. With childhood asthma hospitalization rates being of the highest in the nation removing trucks from local streets has an exponential impact that includes fewer absences in school for those children.
Reimagining the Sheridan Expressway has had significant positive impacts on the Bronx River Greenway, one of the community’s priority project in development for over a decade. The new design adds 1600 linear feet of publicly accessible waterfront and over 2 acres of added open space in and direct access to waterfront parks. Thousands of new units of affordable housing have been constructed bringing much needed investment to a previously industrial corridor.
