Seventeen Community Groups Awarded Grants For Inwood Park Projects

INWOOD, NY — Seventeen community groups were awarded grants for projects benefitting three Inwood parks as part of the inaugural recipient class of the Partnerships for Parks Inwood Parks Grant program launched by the City Parks Foundation.

The grant recipients were awarded a total of $89,650 — with amounts ranging from $1,000-$10,000 per group — for parks projects at Inwood Hill, Muscota Marsh, and Isham parks. The Inwood Parks Grant program was launched in August, and will award $300,000 to community groups over the span of three years.

Some of the proposals to receive funding a native plant restoration initiative for the Inwood Hill Park Shorakapok Preserve, improvements to the pathways in Bruce’s Garden at Isham Park, biodiversity walks and educational field trips exploring Muscota Marsh and full-size youth soccer goals for Dyckman Fields, according to the City Parks Foundation.

The funding for the Inwood Parks Grant program will be pledged by Columbia University in an effort to fulfill an obligation more than five years in the making. In 2011 Columbia struck a deal with the city — known as the Baker Field Agreement — allowing Columbia to expand its Inwood athletic complex out-of-scale with neighborhood zoning regulations. In turn, Columbia had to fulfill certain obligations to the Inwood community, including a $300,000 investment within three years to support neighborhood parkland.

Originally Columbia was supposed to make a $300,000 investment pledged directly to the parks department, or another organization mutually chosen by Columbia and a chosen representative of Inwood, according to the Baker Field Agreement.

According to the 2011 agreement "the department and the organization will determine how to best use the funds."

A neighborhood conservancy group named Conservancy North argued for years that it is the "organization" unnamed in the 2011 agreement, because the group and its lawyers were involved in negotiating the terms of the agreement. While not a direct investment — Conservancy North was one of the 17 groups to be awarded a grant in the first round of the Inwood Parks Grant program.

Here's a full list of Inwood Parks Grant recipients:

• Recycleday Morning
• The Tibet Fund
• Uptown Soccer Academy
• Muscota New School Parent Association
• East Winds Inc.
• Inwood Sprouts
• P.S. 98 Shorakapok Elementary School
• Inwood Owners Coalition
• Eagle and Condor Community Center
• Literacy Inc.
• Inwood Art Works
• Friends of Inwood Hill Park
• Conservancy North
• The Hudson Cliffs Baseball League
• Moving Forward Unidos
• Isham Park Restoration
• Harlem River Community Rowing

More grant money will by distributed in yearly cycles until the full $300,000 is allocated. Future application deadlines will be held March 1, 2017, Aug. 1, 2017 and March 1, 2018. All projects must be complete by Dec. 1, 2019, according to the City Parks Foundation. All grant applications will be reviewed by a panel that includes staff from the City Parks Foundation and the Parks Department.

Photo by Kristine Paulus via Flickr/Creative Commons