Architect proposes a Sunken Forest for the Rockaways

[hrmjustin]

Dana Rubinstein


The architects behind a "double dune" system envisioned for parts of the Rockaways are pushing an even more ambitious proposal for the barrier peninsula: a sunken Forest.

"It's more for animals than for people, but the part for the people is primarily resiliency against flooding and sea surges," said Walter Meyer, who runs Local Office Landscape Architecture with his wife, Jennifer Bolstad.

Last Wednesday, Meyer, Bolstad and the developers they are working with presented their Sunken Forest-like proposal to the public at a charter school in Far Rockaway, part of a larger bid to win community and government backing for a mixed-use development called Arverne East.

Arverne East, in turn, is the latest in a multi-phase plan to build a new neighborhood on more than 300 city-controlled acres between Beach 32nd and Beach 84th streets in the Rockaways. That partially complete neighborhood is already home to than 1,000 families, but the Arverne East portion has been hampered by, among other things, the real estate crash.


http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2014/05/8546254/architect-proposes-sunken-forest-rockaways