As 2024 year comes to a close, we hope you'll enjoy these highlights from another great year in Brooklyn Heights!

In order to accomplish all this, we depend on the dedication of our board and staff, the support of our elected officials, city agencies, neighborhood partners, and ALL of you who support the BHA with your membership, your financial contributions, your time and your great ideas.  Keep them all coming in 2025!

Who says garbage can't be fun?  CM Lincoln Restler and BHA Governor Koren Volk sure had the last laugh once these rat-proof CITIBINs were installed at the entrances to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Thanks to resources from the Council Member's office and NYC Parks, the rats can no longer feast on trash collected and piled up along the Promenade.

Street safety improvements have long been a top priority for the BHA. In 2015, the BHA’s successful application to the city resulted in Brooklyn Heights becoming among the first to receive the "Neighborhood Slow Zone" designation, which brought the installation of speed bumps and 20 mph speed restriction throughout the neighborhood.

Our continued street safety advocacy work this year resulted in additional stop signs and speed bumps added at intersections along Henry and Hicks streets, as well as new curb extensions and mid-block crossings along Atlantic Avenue. Stay tuned for more improvements coming next year to both Atlantic Ave and Montague Street. 

Our annual BHA meeting back in March was definitely not of the traditional sort.  But one beautiful tradition we were able to fulfill was to honor deserving members of our community with a "BHA Community Service Award."

2024's recipients were Amanda Jones, Executive Director of The Service Collective (pictured above) and The Brooklyn Heights Public Library (BPL librarian Rachel Tiemann pictures below).  We are so grateful to have these organizations in our neighborhood and will continue to promote the good work they do for Brooklynites and all New Yorkers!

Photos: Beth Eisgrau-Heller/Brooklyn Eagle

After years of working to bring together neighborhoods and communities negatively impacted by the BQE, the BHA was thrilled to be a founding member of the BQE Environmental Justice Coalition, which launched in April 2024. Our Executive Director, Lara Birnback is pictured above at the launch.  

Rather than spend billions of dollars to enshrine the highway for the next 100 years of car and truck traffic in our most densely populated neighborhoods, we continue to demand that the city immediately put in place a  short-term repair plan for the Triple Cantilever while starting a parallel process to envision a corridor-wide, community-led, long term plan. 

S'mores is all grown up now, but back in May, he was the undisputed winner of the "Most Adorable Under 50 lbs" category at the BHA Dog Show. 

The BHA Dog Show was revived after a multi-year hiatus thanks to a group of dog-loving volunteers who helped us bring back this joyful event. Over 100 dogs participated in the show, and we loved seeing so many new faces out in the community. We can't wait for round two in 2025!

The BHA also loves to bring people together in the name of service through our annual Spring Into Service event.  This year, thanks to the support of The Service Collective, CM Restler's Office and countless volunteers, we supported 5 projects across the neighborhood from building furniture for asylees, to cleaning and stocking the community fridge, to mulching Hillside Dog Park, to nourishing our trees, to collecting over 50 bags of clothes, toys and books for our nonprofit partners Little Essentials and Brooklyn Book Bodega.  Huge thanks to everyone who participated! 

Top Photo: Beth Eisgrau-Heller

Whether kids are frolicking or adults are exercising, we are big fans of prioritizing pedestrians in our public realm. 

This year, the BHA supported the Montague BID and DOT to bring Open Streets to Montague Street for four months of car-free Sunday fun. Replacing cars on the street with everything from story times to pickleball tournaments to blood drives, to musical performances and fitness classes enabled Montague Street to truly come alive. 

We especially loved having the active participation of so many of our amazing Montague Street businesses this year.

Top Photo: Beth Eisgrau-Heller; Bottom Photo: Amy Gibbs 

It's the people of Brooklyn Heights that form that fabric of our community.  Sharing their stories was a focus in 2024.  Thanks to the volunteer commitment of Brooklyn Heights residents including BHA Governor Laura Trevelyan, and BHA members Andrew Nodell and Andy McNeil, we launched two distinct web series spotlighting unique people and businesses in our neighborhood. 

My Brooklyn Heights launched over the summer, with stories of four members of our community including Joe Coffee founder, Jonathan Rubenstein (pictured above) and Laura's small business series launched just this month highlighting 3 storefronts whose longevity in the neighborhood is a true testament to their love of community.

Our goal with these series is to create a repository of living history of Brooklyn Heights. If you would like to get involved in this program for 2025 please email us.

Question: What do you get when you host 5 parties, create 6 signature events, lead 9 private group tours, and welcome over 2,000 visitors over 5 weeks? Answer: The 2024 Brooklyn Heights Designer Showhouse!

Thank you to the over 150 volunteers who helped make this all happen, but most especially to Showhouse Co-Chairs Ellen Hamilton and Erika Belsey Worth! Thank you as well to all the amazing designers and the homeowners of 182 Clinton Street. 

Thanks to the work of the Promenade Garden Conservancy, our dedicated NYC Parks gardener Jessica Kulig, CM Lincoln Restler's office and Big ReUse, our green spaces got a lot of TLC this year.  Activities included weekly gardening along the Promenade and at Cadman and Columbus parks, as well as two tree pit care events.  We love these projects because, not only do they support our local climate, but they appeal to people of all ages and abilities.  We look forward to seeing everyone out there when the weather warms up in the spring!