Friends of Brooklyn Community Board 8, Inc
Mission
The purpose is to maintain and improve the social welfare and quality of life within the communities encompassed throughout Brooklyn Community Board 8 which includes Crown Heights North, Prospect Heights and Weeksville. Friends of Community Board 8, Inc aims to drive the growth of all the communities it serves.
Friends of Brooklyn Community Board 8, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
About
Friends of Brooklyn Community Board 8, Inc. was established in 2007 to support the work of Brooklyn Community Board 8 and improve the quality of life in the district. Friends provides planning, advocacy, research and administrative resources to supplement the limited capacities and budget of the Community Board thus enabling the Board to properly carry out its Charter mandated responsibilities of evaluating the needs of and advocating on behalf of its communities. Through the contributions of public and private resources, Friends of Brooklyn Community Board 8, Inc. aims to spur the growth of all the communities it serves.
Why Friends?
At current levels of City funding, CB8’s District Office chronically lags in its ability to keep up with the demands of the Board’s work. Proactive planning and long-term thinking are rare privileges for an organization that is mandated to represent and advocate for the varied needs of its neighborhoods. The Board is unable, for instance, to commission independent studies to help it develop policy or adequately to assess policies proposed elsewhere by City government. With the Board’s operational budget stagnant for over 20 years, a separately funded auxiliary organization is necessary to allow the Board to do its job properly, given the number and complexity of issues CB8 faces. Friends of Brooklyn Community Board 8 is that organization.
Listed below are specific projects Friends of Brooklyn Community Board 8, Inc. has been involved with:
Zoning Study
Shop Local Franklin Avenue Initiative
Shop Local Nostrand Avenue Initiative
Nostrand Avenue Holiday Lights
Job Fair
Zoning Study
An examination of the District was completed with a detailed analysis of the different varieties of zoning areas. As the District is unevenly divided with mixed use, commercial use only, and residential use only zoning codes, the examination required that all three of these uses be assessed, with the most conducive to community growth suggested for certain areas. Historical resources were also analyzed to discover properties that should be added to the historical sites if they were omitted, and/or to expand via suggestion other locations for historical designation.
As there are a number of privately owned vacant lots in the District, these lots were examined to see which could be best used as open community space.
Finally, as far as the defunct manufacturing and commercial spaces are concerned, the main commercial corridors of the District were evaluated to determine which areas should be more closely targeted for economic revitalization and façade improvements.