A 2007 Streetfilm and the long fight for Grand Army Plaza
We came across a Streetfilm from 2007 — Reclaiming Grand Army Plaza, by Sean Clifford — and it’s a striking watch. Nearly twenty years before the redesign Mayor Mamdani backed in April 2026, neighbors were standing on the same traffic island making the same arguments: the plaza is beautiful but dead, the road is dangerous, and the people who live here should get to shape it.
The film follows the Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPco), formed in 2006, at a community planning workshop run with the Project for Public Spaces — about fifty neighbors walking the plaza and brainstorming what it could become. Two faces stand out: GAPco’s Robert Witherwax, and a young City Council Member Letitia James — now New York State Attorney General.
The roots of the campaign
Witherwax lays out how GAPco came together — a Park Slope Civic Council traffic forum, a meeting at the Montauk Club, a walk-through of the plaza, and the start of a working relationship with the city:
“We made some suggestions to DOT; they’ve responded. We’re in a great dialogue with DOT and with Parks, and this was the next step.”
“We’ve started to take ownership of the plaza, and that’s very important. I mean, we live here. We can’t just sit around and whine and moan about it. You’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to do the fixes yourself.”
The film even captures Danish urbanist Jan Gehl visiting to sketch “wild, wacky, out-of-the-box ideas” for the space — the kind of big-picture thinking the current redesign finally puts on the table.
A young Letitia James
The closing voice belongs to then–Council Member Letitia James, reflecting on the workshop:
“It was just refreshing to be in a room with like-minded people for a change… this is our community. This is our background. And so I’m proud to be associated with GAPco.”
The same case, twenty years on
What’s remarkable isn’t how much has changed — it’s how little the argument has. The 2024 DOT outreach found 86% of 1,624 respondents chose a unified pedestrian plaza; the 2007 workshop reached the same conclusion with fifty people and a roll of butcher paper. The difference now is that the plan has a mayor behind it, a funded design phase, and a path toward construction.
The case has been made, patiently, for two decades. The job now is making sure it actually gets built.
Video: Streetfilms — “Reclaiming Grand Army Plaza,” by Sean Clifford, 2007. Original Streetsblog post →
The next decisions get made in design-review commissions and at OMB — not in another public survey. Keep the pressure on:
- Sign the petition → — every name strengthens the case that this is the design Brooklyn wants built, on schedule.
- Join the TA #SaferGrandArmy campaign — secondary CTA from our partners at Transportation Alternatives.