By Madina Toure
Hundreds of Jamaica residents and leaders, elected officials and city agencies brainstormed and discussed ideas for the revitalization and improvement of Jamaica at the Jamaica Planning Initiative conference Saturday at York College.
The Mayor’s Office and Queens Borough President Melinda Katz are leading the neighborhood-based Jamaica Planning Initiative to come up with short- and long-term projects to encourage and sustain Jamaica’s growth.
Recommendations from residents and community leaders included better transportation, more collaboration between nonprofits, more job readiness programs and paid internships for youth, pedestrian safety and holding banking institutions accountable for revitalizing the area.
The conference provided residents and leaders with an update on the progress made since the “Fulfilling the Promise of Jamaica” conference in June. The initiative focuses on downtown Jamaica, the neighborhood’s civic, commercial and regional transit hub.
“We want to keep the flavor and the culture of Jamaica and we want to make sure that with the development and with the affordable housing, we don’t lose that,” Katz said in opening remarks.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Jamaica), for his part, commended residents and community leaders for their participation in the conference.
“The most precious resource, what makes Queens ‘Queens,’ what makes us that diamond of a borough is the people, because you know that the people care and when the people care, you can’t hold back a community,” Meeks said.
The initiative is a jumping off point for the upcoming Jamaica Action Plan, a strategy for economic growth and development in the area led by Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen, Katz and the community. The plan will be unveiled in the coming weeks.
Katz’s office has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars in the capital budget to fix the sewer systems, she said
Katz also announced the formation of a leadership council which will manage and assess the execution of the Jamaica Action Plan. Members of the neighborhood are being recruited to serve on the council.
City Councilman I. Daneek Miller (D-St. Albans), stressed the importance of assisting Jamaica’s youth.
“As the chair of Civil Service and Labor and the most densely populated community of municipal workers, we’re certainly addressing that,” Miller said. “But we also need to ensure that we have opportunities for our young people, that we continue to attract and retain our young minds with education, with culture and arts but most important, housing that they can afford.”
Individuals participated in workshop sessions on transportation, public space, and urban design; housing and commercial development; Jamaica identity, branding and marketing; and Jamaica jobs.
Proposed solutions that came out of the sessions included the need to manage the buses better, accessibility and congestion in subway stations, holding banking institutions accountable for revitalizing the area, more youth councils, greater need for job readiness programs and paid internships.
Jamaica resident Vanessa Sparks, 52, who lives on 111th Street and Sutphin Boulevard, worries that people living in the arteries leading into downtown Jamaica, such as Sutphin Boulevard and Merrick Boulevard, will not benefit from the revitalization of Jamaica Avenue, which includes affordable housing and new stores. She also noted the lack of crosstown buses in southeast Queens as well as the unregulated dollars cars that run along Sutphin Boulevard.
But what she really wants to see is young professionals making a difference in their communities.
“I would like to see some revitalization of some young professional people come back into the Jamaica/southeast Queens community,” Sparks said. “I want them to come with their money and ideas and their talent.”
Homeowner Nancy Bradford, 67, also a Jamaica resident, said that developers and homeowners have different priorities.“I think the concern of the developer is how are they able to afford to build whereas what was brought up by the homeowners were lack of concerns about foreclosures of the people who are homeowners,” Bradford said.
Tyrell Hankerson, 20, who lives off Merrick Boulevard, participated in the jobs workshop, said the main issues for Jamaica residents are lack of exposure for young people and lack of skills.
“Not too many people know about jobs that may be open to them and then for a lot of skills, some residents in Jamaica don’t have certain skills that meet the criteria for certain jobs so there needs to be some type of training,” he said.
The conference included presentations on the Jamaica Planning Initiative’s area of focus as well as the next steps by Cali Williams, the city Economic Development Corporation vice president, and John Young, the Queens Borough director for the Department of City Planning. Melva Miller, director of economic development at borough president’s office, also spoke. Adrienne Adams, chairwoman of Community Board 12, facilitated the conference.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtoure@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 260–4566.
