On Thursday, July 21st, Restoration hosted a tour of the community for LISC’s annual Neighborhood Tour. This year’s theme, Green and Healthy Communities, allowed Restoration to feature its Weatherization Assistance Program, one of the organization’s longest running and most successful programs, and its Environmental and Sustainability program, one of Restoration’s newest initiatives. A group of 60, drawing from national and local foundations, LISC Board members and staff visited New York City’s first participating block in Retrofit Bed Stuy Block by Block, newly installed solar panels on a local affordable housing development, made possible by Restoration’s WAP, as well as an urban agriculture program that Restoration plans to launch in the fall with a local public school, complete with after school programming that will teach 40 middle school children about gardening, healthy diet and lifestyle behaviors, food preparation, and environmental stewardship. Other tour highlights featured the Bradford, a mixed use development currently under construction on 2 formally vacant sites along the Fulton Gateway Business Improvement District (BID). The finished project will house 105 rental units, 21 of which will be reserved for families earning no greater than 30% of the Area Median Income (AMI) and is expected to achieve LEED Silver certification. Guests also toured the BID and learned about the ongoing Bedford-Stuyvesant Streetscape project, a 10 million dollar capital improvement project. The Project will transform Central Brooklyn’s anchor business destination into a more attractive urban space and seeks to increase pedestrian, bicycle, and transit uses, while providing business owners and residents with space to live, work, and shop. Specific streetscape improvements will include newly constructed sidewalks, reconstructed curbs, new public plazas, extensive street tree plantings, supplemental street lighting, and the installation of heavy duty street furniture and trash receptacles.
