How open is open space?

The Brunswick Street Community Garden means a lot to downtown Jersey City resident Barbara Landes.
“It’s a wonderful place to be,” said Landes in an interview last week. “It is a beautiful oasis of green in the inner city.”
The garden, two lots on Brunswick Street adjacent to the Sixth Street Embankment that total one-tenth of an acre, is one of two community gardens in Jersey City that the City Council had planned to include in the city’s Recreation Open Space Inventory (ROSI) at its April 22 meeting.
The other one is the Riverview Community Garden, a half-acre lot on Ogden Avenue located next to Riverview-Fisk Park in the Jersey City Heights.

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“It is a beautiful oasis of green in the inner city.” – Barbara Landes
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The land on which the Brunswick Street and Ogden Avenue gardens are located is owned by the city, but rented out to the groups who maintain them.
Putting the gardens into the ROSI is seen by the city as a rosy situation because it protects the gardens as parkland for public recreation, and qualifies them for preservation grants from the state’s Green Acres Program.

Public has qualms

However, the council pulled the ordinance from their agenda by an 8-1 vote when Landes, along with fellow Brunswick Street gardeners Laura Gosa and Michaela Harkins, came to the meeting with qualms about the ordinance.
Their concern was that the Brunswick gardens, if included in the ROSI, would have to be open to the public, changing how the land currently functions. Right now, according to Landes, about 60 people pay $15 a year, which gives them a key to open the gates of the garden and to have access to a plot of land where they can plant everything from tomatoes to fig trees.
Gosa said at the meeting that her group supported the ordinance, but just wanted to be “in full understanding” of what their lease with the city will look like if the gardens are placed in the ROSI.
Councilman Steve Fulop concurred with the Brunswick Street gardeners’ concern, and asked that those lots be pulled from the ordinance until “we sort through the issues.”
There were no representatives from the Riverview Community Garden at the council meeting. Pamela Windo, a manager of the Riverview Community Garden for the past three years, said last week that she would be traveling out of the country at the time of the council meeting. She declined to comment on the ordinance until she had more information.
City Council President Mariano Vega suggested the council approve the ordinance, since the goal is to be able to apply for state grants to protect the gardens as open space forever. After approving it, he said, the city could then try to get state officials to agree to preserve the gardens as gardens rather than letting them become parks.
City Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis said if the state is not amenable to that, the ordinance, if approved, would then be vetoed by Mayor Jerramiah Healy.
The City Council has until their next meeting on May 20 to study the ordinance further and decide whether to vote on it again.

Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonrreporter.com.