The Eventbrite link for tickets is here
Help Make La Plaza Shine! Save the date for our après ski winter fundraiser in the garden on December 9th from 7pm to 9pm.
About this event:
Join us for our winter fundraiser, featuring Neapolitan pizza made on the spot with the freshest ingredients by the folks from In Crust We Trust, seasonal drink offerings and s’mores from the Wayland, hot chocolate, tarot card readings, a live performance MC’d by Robert Galinsky, live music by Eric Hoffman+Ken Hatfield, and a chance to win amazing prizes in our raffle, including dinners from many local restaurants.
You will be kept warm, fed and entertained in our lovely garden under the stars in NYC’s East Village.
We are a group of volunteer community gardeners at La Plaza Cultural Community Garden along with some friends, raising money to install solar panels to power the garden so we can get off-grid. The pavilion will also serve as a four-season classroom offering workshops to the community.
The La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez community garden will be constructing an outdoor solar pavilion that would serve as a teaching and function space as well as an example and experiment in urban sustainability and permaculture. We intend to hold meetings and teach workshops within the space as well as have it open to anyone who is visiting the garden. The structure itself will be critical in permaculture instruction since it will serve as a working example.
Our organization is a volunteer-run non-profit registered under ‘New 600 BC East 9th Street Block and Neighborhood Association’ but doing business as La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez. As a licensed GreenThumb community garden we are concerned with the stewardship and management of the garden space as well engagement with our local community. We rely on our members to do all of our own fundraising, organizing, and administration in addition to the labor that goes into maintaining the garden space. We provide plot space to allow members to grow their own vegetables and flowers while we also function as a local outdoor space that is open to all members of the public.
We have worked with timber frame specialist Greg Katz and architect Andrea Warchaizer to design the structure. We have also partnered with local architect Paul Castrucci who has helped us prepare for the DoB filing and will be the architect listed on the submission. We selected the site of the project in order to maximize sun exposure to the panels while also limiting the impact of the structure on the existing functional space of the Garden. After doing some shade studies and consulting with the membership we selected the current location.
The structure will have a clerestory roof, with the upper plane holding a solar panel and the lower a green roof. The solar panels will furnish the power needs of the garden while being grid-independent. In addition to running the tools and water pumps of the garden we also need electricity for the various events, we host throughout the year. We provide the neighborhood with a venue for small local gatherings as well as hosting free public theater and music. This serves the community directly and helps to raise money for the garden.
We are acutely aware that in many ways our neighborhood sits directly on the front lines of climate change. During Sandy, reliable access to power was far from guaranteed in the neighborhood. This solar infrastructure will help to increase local resilience by providing a sustainably grid-independent power source in a public place. This goes hand-in-hand with objects of the Gardens Rising project and those of OneNYC.
The project is funded through a $30,000 grant provided by Tripadvisor.
The Eventbrite link for tickets is here
