BLOG ENTRY FOR TISHMAN SPEYER TO START THINGS OFF

Hello out there,

I grew up in Stuy Town and live here still with my own family. We’ve been in our apartment overlooking the oval for 23 years now. It was heart wrenching for me to watch the so called landscaping proceed as dozens of beautiful old and stately flowering trees, including dogwoods, were killed, cut down , uprooted and replaced with immature stick trees packed in at lease four per square yard.. They will not survive. Half will be dead in a year. Tishman Speyer has given us, unintentionally, a supremely apt metaphor for what is happening to Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. Disappearing are the firmly rooted families, around for decades, replaced by students packed four and five to an apartment – also gone in a year.

As I walk home every day, I cannot bear to look at the spots where these trees stood only to see a barren landscape of mud, crowded in stick trees and hideous ornamental cabbage.

I am heartbroken over what is essentially the death of my hometown. Despite all of the problems, I still love it here. I want to stay. I believe Tishman Speyer can turn things around and fix the destruction they wrought here. I don’t think it is too late. There are still some of those lovely flowering trees left standing and the stately old sycamores and oaks are still alive and well in the oval. Some families are still here and kids still play outside. Some of my long time neighbors are still around, and I can still count on a friendly conversation with one of the seniors in my building. I can still sit outside by playground 12 on a spring day, with my dad, as we watch my son play.

Please Speyer family, why not be remembered as the company that saved Stuy Town and PCV and the solid middle class community that still exists here, albeit greatly diminished. You have the resources – be heroes, be rock stars…. Save Stuy Town!!!!