Hey Gowanites (Gowanusians? Gowanese? Gowanians?), now that you’ve saved the Kentile Sign through the power of collective outrage, do you feel like continuing to kayak the filthy waterways of civic engagement? You’ve got a chance to tonight, at the third and final Bridging Gowanus meeting, an effort by the neighborhood’s elected officials to get input from the public on a plan for the area to make sure it doesn’t become another Williamsburg. That and making sure we’re not paying to bail out condo developers who are flooded with sewage ten years from now after the next superstorm.
Tonight’s meeting will take place from 6:30pm to 9pm at the Wyckoff Gardens Community Center (280 Wyckoff Street). Bridging Gowanus is an effort from the City Counil’s Brad Lander and Stephen Levin, Assemblywoman Joan Millman, State Senator Velmanette Montgomery and Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez to hear what kind of future residents of the neighborhood want. So you and your neighbors will talk about things like how much space to zone for residential and industrial purposes, how to protect the area from the inevitable next flood, the scale of allowed residential development and how and where to put amenities like parks and schools.
Essentially, you’re midwifing the area’s gentrification, but it beats the usual process which is moving to a place that you like and that’s cheap, watching rents shoot up and getting stoned and going “Developers, man. Someone should like, do something.” Given the participation of all of Gowanus’ elected officials, this is that something someone should do. Or at the very least it’s the best something you can do, short of actual socialist revolution.