We are thrilled to see more vacant storefronts filling up! Most recently, the BHA played a role in recruiting and helping Taboonette to open, and we are glad to share that the former Happy Days Diner space on Montague is being reinvented by the team from Margot in Fort Greene. The BHA showed a variety of potential spaces to the team and encouraged them to think about Brooklyn Heights. Now it seems "happy days" will be here again, albeit in a new iteration! 

 Another way we support "shopping local" is through our Neighborhood Partners program which offers exclusive discounts to BHA members and promotional opportunities for the businesses.  We are excited to have added four Neighborhood Partners to the program this year - Barry's, Wild Kind Beauty, The Watermark and Poppy's.  Please visit our local establishments this holiday season!

The BHA works hard to keep our trees and green spaces clean and healthy. Much of this work is done through partnerships, including our special public-private partnership with NYC Parks in the form of the Promenade Gardens Conservancy. The PGC enables NYC Parks Horticulturist Jessica Kulig to lead weekly volunteer gardening sessions that beautify our environment, and help keep us cool during the warner months. 

In February, we worked with NYC Parks to prune the honey locust trees on the Promenade, and in May & November we worked with Councilmember Restler's Office and Big Reuse to clean and add compost to our street tree beds. We could not do this important work without our many volunteers. Thank you!

In March, we held our annual meeting at Packer Collegiate Institute. We shared our accomplishments for the past year and honored two invaluable community partners with BHA Community Service Awards, the Friends of Hillside Dog Park (pictured here) and our outgoing PGC Horticulturist Anil Chandrakumar. We capped off the evening with a panel discussion called "Rethinking the Public Realm." Save the evening of March 4th, 2024 for our next annual meeting to be held at the First Unitarian Church on Pierrepont Street/Monroe Place.

Photo credit: Beth Eisgrau-Heller for Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Atlantic Avenue, a portion of which marks the southern border of Brooklyn Heights, has the third-highest rate of people killed or seriously injured per mile in the borough. Tragically, the most recent of these deaths occurred last April. The BHA marched with elected leaders, neighborhood organizations, and transportation and street safety  advocates to demand pedestrian safety improvements to Atlantic Avenue. The implementation of these improvements is a high priority for the BHA and we continue to meet with stakeholders on the issue. We're hopeful that 2024 will bring some meaningful changes. Stay tuned!

We support community service opportunities throughout the year, but May marks our annual Spring into Service event where we encourage the entire neighborhood to get involved in service to the community.

This year we teamed up with The Service Collective to collect and distribute food to local pantries (pictured here), partnered with CM Restler's office for a tree care event in the North Heights, and collected many books and children's supplies for the Brooklyn Book Bodega and Little Essentials. We can't wait to start organizing next year's event.  If you have ideas or want to help organize, email us!

June means the start of summer and our School's Out party at Pierrepont Playground.  We had lots of fun with crafts, snacks and Meredith Kurnov from Macaroni KID.  The BHA also runs the spring Egg Hunt at the playground, and fall Halloween parade on the Promenade, which always bring lots of smiles to everyone who joins!

We value the many partnerships we have with local organizations across the neighborhood. This year, the BHA sponsored a series of Parent Talks at our local public elementary school PS8. The series brought in experts who spoke to close to 200 parents about topics including body image and mental health, to helping kids navigate the digital world. 

Financial support from the BHA also helped to launch the Friends of Hillside Dog Park's new dog waste composting program which began in July, as well as the Poplar Street Community Garden's Pumpkin Party in October.

Our BQE advocacy certainly isn't  limited to any particular month, but in August 2023 we released an open letter co-signed by 16 organizations to the Mayor and the Governor calling for a better plan for the reconstruction of the BQE. The city's current plan is to spend over 5 billion dollars to double-down on the climate and public-health destroying infrastructure of the 1940's—while taking large parts of Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Promenade out of commission for years, and dooming all of the BQE-adjacent communities to live with the highway directly in their midst for generations to come.

More recently, we helped call attention to this boondoggle by co-signing a powerful letter from the Brooklyn Queens Expressway - Environmental Justice Coalition, which you can read about in the Brooklyn Eagle.

Did you know the BHA has a Public Realm Committee? This group focuses on many aspects of our public realm including helping new businesses move into the neighborhood, making the most of our shared public space, and supporting Montague Open Streets with funding, programming, and staffing.

In partnership with DOT and the Montague Business Improvement District, car-free Saturdays ran from May through October with a summer hiatus in August.  We were excited to enjoy the return of many popular activities as well as some new ones including the first ever Pickleball courts on Montague as well as a Halloween-themed day to wrap up the season. We are looking forward to Open Streets returning in May 2024 (including Dog Days, which was rained out last season). Stay tuned for details!

Photo credit: Brooklyn Bridge Parents

We love getting to know BHA members new and old. In 2023, we hosted New Member Meet and Greets in the spring and fall, so we could get to know you and you could get to know us! This past October, our member event was hosted at the beautiful rooftop of The Watermark.  It was a lovely evening of savory snacks, festive cocktails and warm conversation. We look forward to hosting our next event in spring 2024.  Not a member yet?  Join now and you'll be invited!

We were proud to have been honored by St. Anne & the Holy Trinity Church at their annual gala in November. 

The beautiful "Spirit and Service" award  now hangs proudly in our office and we look forward to "planting our gardens and nurturing the promise of a bright future for Brooklyn Heights," for many years to come.

We were also thrilled to receive a City Council Citation from CM Restler at the same event. The Citation recognizes the BHA as a "model civic organization with a profound impact on the dynamism of our community."

To that end, in December we kicked off a series of strategy sessions with our Board of Governors and staff to discuss the BHA's mission and priorities. With all the important work to be done, we are excited to come together as a group to ensure we are focused on our community's most important priorities in 2024 and beyond.