Arverne East Wins Queens Borough President’s Award

The Arverne East Nature Preserve and Welcome Center were selected as recipients of the Queens Borough President’s award and recognized at the Queens & Bronx Building Association’s Annual Holiday & Building Awards Gala.

We are thrilled to celebrate our 26+ year collaboration with Warrie Price, Piet Oudolf, WXY, BKSK, Quennell Rothschild and everyone else who helped transform the Battery into one of New York’s most visible and cherished open spaces. Most recently, our collaboration with BKSK on the Playscape won a 2023 award for Best Urban Landscape from the Municipal Art Society.

Read Gardenista’s in-depth interview with Warrie Price, President and Founder of the Battery Conservancy here.

L+M Development Partners, the Bluestone Organization and Triangle Equities have closed on $30.3 million in financing for the first phase of Arverne East, an ambitious, socially and economically transformative project that will revitalize a vacant 116-acre oceanfront site in the Arverne and Edgemere neighborhoods in Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula and set a new standard for resilient and energy efficient development in coastal areas. The project’s first phase, a 35-acre nature preserve between Beach 44th Street and Beach 56th Place, is designed to restore and promote native ecology.

Read a detailed description of our project here.

The City of Roswell kicked off the implementation of its much-lauded River Parks Master Plan with a groundbreaking for the first phase of Ace Sand. Mayor Kurt Wilson, members of the City Council, City staff, and community members gathered to celebrate the start of this transformational project. The Ace Sand site is the first of four riverfront parks that Starr Whitehouse is designing for the City of Roswell to implement the River Parks Master Plan. Built entirely in the floodplain, the Ace Sand site combines floodable landscapes with elevated assets and experiential green infrastructure to reconnect the Atlanta region with the cultural and ecological history of the Chattahoochee River.

The Battery Playscape received a 2023 MASterworks Award for Best Urban Landscape, recognized as “a new or revitalized open space that contributes to livability and resilience.” Credit goes to all of our collaborators on this project: BKSK Architects, The Battery Conservancy, and NYC Parks.

The park is open for play! Part of a new residential development by the Durst Organization, Queens Plaza Park is a tightly-programmed pocket park built directly over subway lines and adjacent to the LIRR transit hub. Each area of the park is defined by a use and character, fitting together like puzzle pieces to make maximal use of a tight urban footprint.

Construction is complete on Vital Brookdale, a 160-unit affordable and supportive housing development in Brownsville. The complex is the first of ten affordable developments to debut as part of Vital Brooklyn—a $1.4 billion program that supports investment in new public open spaces, quality affordable housing, economic empowerment, and community-based violence prevention. Designed to Passive House standards, the complex features outdoor amenities including a second-floor terrace, and landscaped front and rear courtyards with dog runs, play areas for children, and outdoor seating. Building design by Dattner Architects.

Construction has begun on a $4M transformation of Anderson Plaza and Anderson Street in downtown New Rochelle that is expected to be a bellwether for the city’s continued evolution as an inclusive, forward-thinking walkable city.

Fast Company profiles The Battery PlayScape’s combination of resilience, ecology, and play.

The Battery Playscape was officially unveiled with a ribbon cutting on December 16th, 2021. Guided by the premise that an early appreciation for ecological diversity fosters environmental consciousness in adulthood, the Playscape creates an immersive play experience for children and their caretakers to play and learn together.