Save the date: Join us from noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, November 12, to learn more about Six Lakes, peek at the site, and tell your legislators you care about the movement to conserve Six Lakes and open it to the public! Starting location is to be determined, so watch for another email soon with complete details and a registration link.

We'll begin with a welcome from Senator Martin Looney, followed by a 3-mile guided tour of the perimeter of the Six Lakes property (also known as Olin Powder Farm), since owner Olin Corporation is currently refusing access onto the site itself. Along the way, you'll travel the rail trail, sidewalks, and a brief stretch along Treadwell Street and learn about some features of the property, its history, and what's happening now. If 3 miles is too long a trek for you, you're welcome to do the walk as an out-and-back and turn around at any point.

The 3-mile tour will end at 2 p.m., followed by networking, fall snacks, and a letter-writing campaign to elected officials until 3 p.m. Come for both the walk and letter-writing, or choose just one. Registration and location details coming soon!

Ducks and butterflies, native bayberry and sumac, and sand dunes coexist with the nearby elevated A Train, buffering a neighborhood in the Rockaways from the Atlantic Ocean. Once a thriving early 20th-century beach community, this strip of land was abandoned after World War II. Invasive plants overtook its streets and lots; humans dumped their trash. No one wanted to walk through the overgrown, unsafe wilderness to reach the ocean on the other side.

Today, Arverne East Nature Preserve is a regenerating 35-acre band of native plants, wetlands, and sand, ribboned with paved paths and a short boardwalk--a space through which neighbors are happy to travel to get to the beach boardwalk, sea breezes, and the mighty ocean. 

Landscape architect Laura Starr and NYC Parks Rockaway Administrator Eric Peterson gave a tour of Arverne East and shared its story with SLPC steering committee members Elizabeth Hayes, Justin Farmer, Sue McDonald, and Kathy Czepiel earlier this month. Later, SLPCers also stopped at nearby Shirley Chisholm State Park to take a walk around and talk about what they were learning that might apply to Six Lakes.

One takeaway? The importance of community engagement and how Starr's firm went about learning what people living next to the preserve actually wanted. One result at Arverne East was the addition of walkway lighting to meet residents' safety concerns. Starr later followed up on a Zoom call with the SLPC to talk in more detail about the process of soliciting community input.

Another takeaway was the lesson of persistence. Efforts to create Arverne East Nature Preserve stretched through the administrations of five New York City mayors and various city agencies before the project finally landed in the hands of the New York City Parks Department, part of a larger mixed-use development project that's still in progress. In addition to the nature preserve, an urban farm and a wildflower nursery are also part of the plan.

"I had so much fun seeing other projects and learning how they came to fruition," said Justin Farmer, a member of the SLPC steering committee, representing the Newhall neighborhood. "It was great to be in community with coalition members, and this field trip gave us hope as well as information that our vision for Six Lakes will someday become a reality."