Unveiling: Albany Hive
Comments Off on Unveiling: Albany HiveCity of Albany, Local Leaders, and Van Alen Institute Open Albany Hive, a Community-Led Redesign of Alley in West Hill
Community organizers, designers, and 400+ residents co-created new shared space with public sculptures and enhanced pathway
Press Contacts:
Nyla McKenzie-Isaac, City of Albany, nmckenzie-isaac@albanyny.gov
Alisha Kim Levin, Van Alen Institute, press@vanalen.org
Elisa Smilovitz, elisa@elisasmilovitz.com
View and download images here.
(Albany—October 10, 2024)—The City of Albany, Van Alen Institute, and Albany community leaders held a ribbon-cutting ceremony this past weekend for Albany Hive, an uplifting new shared space on a city-owned alley at Quail St and 1st St in the city’s West Hill neighborhood. Co-designed with West Hill residents, Albany Hive (“the Hive”) is a neighborhood hub buzzing with locally-led activities. Vibrant, illuminated honeycomb-like sculptures host community artwork and a newly-renovated path includes improved lighting, landscaping, access, and drainage.
Albany Hive is a collaboration between Albany 518 SNUG, Albany & Troy Lions Club, Albany Victory Gardens, Bridge Tha Gap Community Resource & Outreach, the City of Albany, Grateful Villages, Rensselaer School of Architecture, Stantec, The Urban Conga, and Van Alen Institute.
“We have transformed an underutilized alleyway in West Hill into a beacon of hope for the entire community,” said Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan. “The Hive is a place where neighbors can relax, enjoy public art, and share a sense of pride in their neighborhood. I am deeply grateful to Van Alen, the Albany Community Development Agency, and Albany’s Department of Planning for their support in bringing this new space to life.”
“Transformational change is possible when communities, designers, and city leaders come together. The Hive represents four years of incredible collaboration, and Van Alen Institute’s experience as project manager and facilitator has been profoundly meaningful,” said Andrew Brown, Interim Co-Executive Director, Van Alen Institute. “We’re deeply grateful to Mayor Sheehan, the City of Albany, and our coalition of partners and supporters for co-creating this new shared space with and for West Hill.”
“Unity and collaboration creates positive change, and The Hive is what that looks like,” Eva Bass, CEO, Bridge Tha Gap Community Resources & Outreach. “The Hive coalition came together through our differences, and if we continue to do that, we’re going to see positive, sustainable change and bring our city to where it needs to be.”
“The Hive is a light that has removed a dark cloud from this area,” said Gordon Davis, Albany 518 SNUG. “When we come together and show love and respect for each other, things like the Hive can happen. When we put our minds to something, we can change our communities.”
“From early conversations around the community’s desires and hopes of the neighborhood to the alley’s final design, the community gifted us their stories, experiences, feedback, and more to create the Hive,” said Maeghann Coleman and Ryan Swanson, The Urban Conga. “Our design studio was simply a tool for the community to create what they wanted to see.”
“The best architectural projects are those that are not only beautiful, but whose purpose is to learn more about one another and to bring people together to share in the care of their neighborhoods,” said Christianna Bennett, Assistant Professor, and Fleet Hower, Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “We hope the Hive continues to be a space where the community comes together to continue to dream about what this corner of Albany will look like in the future.”
Albany Hive is located in a city-owned alley adjacent to Albany Victory Gardens and Grateful Villages’ West Hill Farmers Market. Despite the success of these nearby community-led programs, the alley itself was in poor condition, with debris, inadequate drainage, and an overgrown tree canopy that blocked light. Through this collective effort and investment in city-owned space, the Hive now supports community development and provides much-needed green space.
Albany Hive provides a new model for designing shared spaces by following the lead of those directly impacted in every step of the process. Before putting pencil to paper, project partners held dozens of conversations with community groups and 400+ residents. In these discussions, West Hill community members compared themselves to a beehive, helping and supporting each other in the neighborhood. This formed the basis of design plans featuring community artwork, words of aspiration, and places to play and reflect. Plans were shared in multiple community engagement sessions, where residents further shaped the design.
Going forward, the Hive will host public programs and workshops responding to community needs in West Hill. Upcoming events will be posted on albanyhive.org. The project’s partners also created a long-term stewardship and maintenance plan, outlining the city and community’s continued collaboration in service of the alley.
Albany Hive is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” program, which supports activities that integrate arts, culture, and design into local efforts that strengthen communities over the long term. Additional support was provided by the Albany Community Development Agency, America Walks Grant, the Bender Family Foundation and the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Initial project planning was done in partnership with the Mayors’ Institute on City Design.
Additional information can be found at vanalen.org/project/albany-hive.
PROJECT PARTNERS
Albany 518 SNUG
Albany 518 SNUG (‘guns’ spelled backwards) is an anti-violence program aimed at reducing gun violence by providing proactive intervention for gang activity or at-risk youth. SNUG mentors and directs youth from under-resourced communities to new healthy and formative experiences that allow them to envision a different life and future.
Albany & Troy Lions Club
The Albany Host Lions Club and the Troy Lions Club were both founded in 1925. The two clubs joined forces in July, 2006 to become the Albany & Troy Lions Club, which currently has 46 members – men and women who volunteer their time to perform a variety of community service activities. The group is one of approximately 45,000 clubs in Lions Clubs International, the world’s largest service club organization.
Albany Victory Gardens
Albany Victory Gardens (AVG) is a project to upcycle vacant lots in low-income communities, transforming them into vibrant farmland that supports urban agriculture and circular economy training. The project began with the purchase of five vacant lots at the core of West Hill and quickly expanded to 20 lots for farming, training, and as their market space. The garden looks to provide trainings and resources to involved community members, turning a still-expanding swath of land into a network of individually-owned plots and a space for community organizing.
Bridge Tha Gap Community Resource & Outreach
Bridge Tha Gap is a community outreach program with the mission to fill the gaps in our community. We aim to supply support to families and individuals that have a need. We at Bridge Tha Gap believe that the unity within the community is the key to reviving our community as a whole. Please come together with me to lift those up who have fallen into the gaps of life. Let’s do this together so that we can thrive as a strong united community.
Grateful Villages
Grateful Villages is a non-profit charitable organization focused on the design and implementation of community programs to help spur development, sustainability and empowerment at the local level, with lasting global effects. We believe the answers we seek for our community cannot be found in the focus of any one institution but in the very tenets of community itself. Families don’t need houses, they need homes. We live in an environment of shared effect and our equity is woven in the fabric of our community.
Rensselaer School of Architecture
Situated within one of the premier technological research universities in the US, the School of Architecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute works in collaboration with leading scientists, engineers, technologists, artists and entrepreneurs.
Stantec
The Stantec community unites approximately 22,000 employees working in over 350 locations across six continents. We collaborate across disciplines and industries to bring buildings, energy and resource, environmental, and infrastructure projects to life. Our work—engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics, from initial project concept and planning through design, construction, and commissioning—begins at the intersection of community, creativity, and client relationships.
The Urban Conga
The Urban Conga is an award-winning multidisciplinary design studio based in Brooklyn, NY led by Ryan Swanson and Maeghann Coleman. The studio is focused on sparking community interaction and social activity through open-ended play. To achieve this, they utilize play methodologies as a critical tool implemented not just in the work itself but within the community-driven design process in which the work is created. Focusing on working with communities to create inclusive multiscale spatial opportunities that transform once-overlooked or underutilized situations into stimulating creative outlets that evoke our innate drive to discover, explore, and empathize with others. Their work encourages people to think about the value of play beyond the playground and how creating more play everywhere can dramatically impact our daily lives.
About Van Alen Institute
Van Alen Institute helps create equitable cities through community-led inclusive design. We partner with leaders of historically disinvested communities to support their immediate needs and long-term visions with our network, knowledge, and resources. We shape diverse interdisciplinary teams, build cross-sector public/private coalitions, and invest our own funds to support neighborhood priorities. By centering community in everything we do, our inclusive design method responds to the urgent need for social justice in citymaking. For 130 years, our purposeful community engagement, convening capacity, and global network have produced profound transformations in the public realm of New York City and beyond. With an interdisciplinary approach to design, the Van Alen team has backgrounds in architecture, arts and culture, community organizing, preservation, and public policy. See all work at vanalen.org.
PROJECT SUPPORTERS
Albany Community Development Agency
The Albany Community Development Agency (ACDA) revitalizes Albany neighborhoods and homes in a variety of ways, through its management of funds received primarily through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
America Walks
America Walks is a national non-profit organization dedicated to providing communities and advocates the resources to advance safe, accessible, and enjoyable places to walk and be physically active for all. The organization provides its diverse network of over 30,000 advocates and hundreds of local, state, and national organizations, with the tools, resources, and experts needed to build capacity, gain experiences, and successfully promote walking and walkability. Learn more at americawalks.org
Bender Family Foundation
The Bender Family Foundation was established in 1997 and works to foster, preserve and fund the arts, culture, education, history and environment of New York State’s Capital Region. Learn more at cfgcr.org/bender.
Mayors’ Institute on City Design
With a belief in the power of city design to transform communities, the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) educates mayors to be the chief urban designers of their cities. MICD is a leadership initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors. Since 1986, we’ve offered collaborative learning programs and resources to mayors in order to make a purposeful, positive impact on America. Detailed information about MICD programming is available at micd.org.
National Endowment for the Arts
Established by Congress in 1965, the National Endowment for the Arts is an independent federal agency that is the largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide and a catalyst of public and private support for the arts. By advancing equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, the NEA fosters and sustains an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit arts.gov.
New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) fosters and advances the full breadth of New York State’s arts, culture, and creativity for all. Albany Hive is made possible by NYSCA with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. To learn more, visit arts.ny.gov.