We're thrilled to announce the official opening of our new Queens Landing Boathouse and Environmental Center, which will have a ribbon cutting on Wednesday, October 25 at 11am!
Located in the southern Gotham Point building next to the Hunter's Point South Park boat launch, this new location will allow us to expand our educational and recreational offerings in the neighborhood. We've already hosted several environmental programs in the space through our Nature Journaling classes, and our partner Newtown Creek Alliance has been hosting field trips for school kids that start in the space before heading into the park. The North Brooklyn Community Boathouse is also now running their training kayak trips from the space.
We've already got a ton of fun new activities and features planned for the new space. NCA is bringing in a Creek Critters program next Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3 to 5:30 where people can stop by to check out some of the animals that live in the creek while learning about the ecosystem and challenges at the site. We'll be hosting our first public paddle event with NBCB on October 28 from 10:00 to 2:30, where people with any level of boating experience, including complete beginners, can get out on to the water. We're in the process of setting up fish tanks for oysters, crabs, fish, and shrimp from Newtown Creek to be displayed, and are working on bringing in a hydroponic and aquaponic display with New York Sun Works in addition to planning some winter programs for the space
We're extremely grateful to our partners at Gotham Organization for providing the space and partnering with us to bring community boating and environmental programming to the community, to our elected officials for their continued support, particularly Council Member Julie Won for providing Council Discretionary Funding for environmental education in addition to her assistance at our other programs, to our annual sponsors Weill Cornell and Gotham Point and our environmental education supporters TF Cornerstone and the NYC Green Fund for providing the funding needed to allow us to open the space, and to Milbank for their incredible pro-bono representation through this process.
We're looking forward to working with members of the community and local schools and organizations to bring people to the space. If you'd like to stay up to date on all our offerings at the space, visit our website. If you have a group you'd like to bring out for environmental education programs, please email info@hunterspointparks.org.
