On June 7, at the headquarters of Immigrant Movement International, the NYC Department of Transportation conducted its first public workshop surrounding the proposed pedestrianization of Corona Plaza.

The event was attended by nearly 50 community members, and a host of familiar faces in the ongoing narrative to transform Corona Plaza, including city councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, Seth Bornstein and Ricardi Calixte of Queens Economic Development Corporation, and the four SPQ MFA students.

The evening began with a short presentation by Vaidila Kungys, NYC Plaza Program Director, who contextualized the opportunity with Corona Plaza by highlighting its centrality and access to public transportation, its great retail, and the relatively low vehicle traffic of the small street which is proposed to be pedestrianized.

You can see Vaidila’s short presentation below.

Aftter Vaidila’s presentation, participants were broken out into 5 groups; each group was given a large diagram of Corona Plaza and instructed to imagine what their ideal plaza would be. There was a DOT facilitator at each table whose goal was to encourage participation and make sure everyone’s opinion was voiced. The goal of each group was not necessarily to create consensus among the group’s participants in terms of the vision for Corona Plaza, but rather to allow each individual to have a say and a chance to record their ideas on the large diagram. It is clear that DOT uses these diagrams as official records of their public workshops.

These are some snapshots of the evening that give you a sense of how the groups engaged with the activity:

The third part of the evening was a presentation by a representative from each group summing up the ideas raised in the group activity. The most important themes were: green space, lighting, waste management, children’s activities, seating, event staging, and community art.

Here is a short video showing a selection of the presentations by workshop participants, including Seth Aylmer, SPQ MFA student:

To conclude the evening, Vaidila suggested following the Corona Plaza Facebook page to see their distillation of the workshop and for other updates regarding the Plaza’s timeline.

You can find the updates here: facebook.com/coronaplaza

Update: DOT presented a proposal to make a pedestrian plaza at Corona Plaza to Queens Community Board 4, which supports the plan. To view the presentation, feel free to download the PDF directly from this link:http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-06-07-corona-plaza.pdf