seven and we're here today with barbara adler of the is back on the committee board she was off for a while who is also the executive director of the columbus avenue bed welcome barbara thank you thank you so much for having me supplants or tell us about your property owners who recognize that they need to do something to save the district and the reason it was in such dire straits during that period of time is that the city of new york determined that they needed to do what they called a lot lying to a lot line reconstruction projects of all of columbus avenue and by that i mean from the facade on one side as street to the facade only other side of the street they removed the streets the sidewalks the cur in in in small increments and create a way to cross the street with these bridges that they were had built it was impossible and it was there were no sidewalks so surely if you had a stroller or even if you were just a normal person it was not pleasant to be walking down the avenue so the merchants got together the community board asked me to be to be on that force and represent the board on a so i had a very  background of both the as an illustrator and he really came out of left field for me but i hadn't i was working as a freelance illustrator while my kids were growing up i played for the job and because of my  the st columbus avenue map which i hand drew and gave to everybody who was at my interview and you know when you're five a one c three you go through a very lengthy sitting city process complete transparency and there were forty interviews from various people and i went back time and time and anyway finally got the job and it was for very little bit of money they had no money and they asked me if i could work out of my apartment which i did for the st time year i was completely by myself and it wasn't until after that that one of my board members stepped up and offered us an office at a very low fee spaces to help us write a vision for what columbus avenue you could become and it's interesting that vision is still that booklet that we made to still on our web side today and  and and it has really come true because in the twenty years that have passed we have expanded all of our tree guards which weren't even mayor twenty years ago st we installed them and now we're expanding all of them the idea was to green the avenue make it as beautiful as many as we had been columbus avenue was completely within the historic district so it's low rise it's very pleasant stroll along and now especially twenty years later the trees are all mature and it's just it's lovely to walk along and also we advocated for the st bike lane we thought we were getting  seven there was one block on the columbus avenue bed that really was like a blighted area and that between seventy six and seventy seven from the west side of the street there's a chain link fence that is it is a school yard and the school yard goes completely through the block we decided that we were going to try to develop that lock and that if we were able to raise the money thanks to our taste of the upper west side of venice over but we had to save our pennies for about five years before we were able to do that and then we were able to get d o t to design the project for us but then we were on our own we wanted it to be a completely sustainable block and we wanted to go from a block that had nothing where people just sort of race by because there was nothing to see there were no trees there was no nothing there to block where people would linger and today it's really become a go to places where people meet it has a lot of seating it has in ground solar lighting it has a big billet solar trash basket which in those days was quite new  and it has a bio swale and tell us what is a mighty oak bios well it is a water retention natural project which is used in areas where they have flooding issues and if there a lot of flooding in that era we had a problem with the drain the storm drains on the in that corner and we thought well you know as long as we're doing this that would be wonderful to put into bios well because we're cross the street from the museum of natural history we actually do the plaque the plaque describes how a virus will works how it's completely natural it looks like a regular trip if you didn't know better you would think it was just a tree pit but it goes deep down into the ground and there's various levels of material that make up the bio swales so it goes from soil where you plant your plants to various kinds of rocks large ones small there are any now in manhattan in the time of that we built this which was about eleven years ago there were none we were there for us st area manhattan the never asked for a while and they thought we were a little crazy but we love it and love it  days i have to say the photographs are not very good but hopefully the next edition which i hope to have soon will be a lot better and it was written for us by andrew  programs for them we do we sometimes have merchant breakfasts when we have issues that we want to talk to the merchants about sometimes having to do with safety or other things that we think it might be interested in we will have a breakfast and then viber chance to come or we've started having these these manager get togethers in the evening like around six o'clock from six to eight o'clock and people get together and one shop hosts it and they've been very successful you know when there's wine cheese and the very welcoming inviting people really seem to like them a lot and they share common concerns you know and it's a way forward to be a night and once you pay the fee to get in wine and spirits and as much as you feel like eating everything is totally included and we have entertainment and it's a real neighborhood event people who will love it and can put up a big tent that oh yes we use that schoolyard to do it it's the size of the tents size of the football field it's the only space that we have in the entire columbus avenue area that would accommodate and event that large where it could be in a covered area we don't have any large covered space so we make it work there and it goes it's pretty remarkable to theodore roosevelt park which is across the street around the museum of natural history and the reason is that they had a terrible rap problem there i mean unfortunately rats are part of our our city living and we have been everywhere and it works i think they have noted that the the rat population theodore roosevelt part because gone from very high to down to about five percent of what they had started we have had a few rats in our treatment some columbus avenue and they wreak havoc not only with a tree pit but needless to say people really don't like them when they see them and so we think many people know but maybe some people don't know that when you have an open trash basket you are inviting rats to feed on up so there they make perfect sense because you have to pull something down or you can use a foot lever to open it we put your trash into it and and because there's solar compact in they hold about seven times as much as a regular trash basket so they're easy to open and tend to and very st beds in the city nice to use them and and we still use them we love the guys that we have been the guys who work at the doe fund you know cleaning the streets at the same time are learning another trade and they're grateful for these jobs and they're they're grateful to have had joe fun to you know take them then they empty our our big bellies for us watch to see when the light changes from traditional holiday snowflakes they are large they are fifteen feet by fifteen feet wow that's what they are doing well to hold on you know that but i think they're very large and they hang in the intersections each age intersect within the columbus avenue bed and also we put them on nd street people seem to really like them we encourage the merchants on columbus avenue to  do something special where there windows little white lights that they can keep on at night to try to light their area as much as they possibly can and over the years we've had holiday strolls another things like that and your special part of the clue seventy bed that we're not responsible for but you know keeping the area clean with no graffiti with no trash with tree lined low ri and ninety eight thousand eight hundred dollars now that's just a goes to the lincoln square bed which is contiguous to us with their budget there's just under three million dollars crown so it's a difference between having an area where there's a lot of deep pockets and a lot of large time warner center and having a low rise area where you're dealing with a lot of small property owners and merchant know we do there's a new york city bid association there's seventy six beds right now in the city and there are in all five boroughs and you are member of what columbus was like way back when i do i i grew up in the the shops were much more practical we didn't have cosmetic shops so we didn't have clothing shops on columbus avenue or little or no we had dry cleaner than we had grocery stores lots of small grocery stores and y store we places really interesting started moving in and my favorite shops in the old days was the shop cool mythology which sold just amazing little things like great gift items and  engaged in now and that is the oral history project for columbus avenue because columbus avenue was really the st urban renewal project in the city thanks to a group of very forward thinking people that they bought up the properties on columbus avenue that were at the time  gas and they began to renovate them and they began to rent them to two shops that were different and then the landlords knew each other they got together all so they determined that they wanted columbus avenue to have a rd and sophisticated walk that it where they were and they wanted it and it was known as the cutting edge street in the city a lot of people tried out interesting shop very much entrepreneurs the silver palate that's what i was trying to think i guess the silver palate which went on to have a lot of big line is buying their products now in every supermarket but at the time the woman who owns silver phenomenon with everything from hot for just the us to fresh food that you could buy to take home to eat that night was something totally unique and we had a lot of unique places like that let me ask you a question if i syria for ten or so i'd be sent to the corner and then i turned i didn't have to cross the street and there be all these little mom and pop stores and i can walk in and say my mother wants a woman and they doubt me and even if i did have the right change they would give me the woman the little boy chair and you know pick up three slices of baloney or whatever no bias and then i'd have to walk back home but my mother knew i was safe because i couldn't get lost because i was just around the corner  you accomplish or all of us accomplished together well you know the board is a remarkable organization mean you know there's there's one there's had there how many and and isn't really looked after with great care and detail and that was always very impressive to me in the in the old days and and i can see that you know there's a new wonderful new people on the board now i've i only just started but i met i've met a number of them including you thank you know and i've heard some wonderful things you know but i'm i'm really i i i have been to land use i will go to preservation possibly transportation i was once co chair of transportation for a number of years so but i well we're always trying to think of ways to engage our merchants more on columbus avenue we're always trying to think of ways that we can improve the  we're you know we've least twenty two times in the last twenty years and it's popular contact us our website address is columbus avenue b id dot org newsletter right on our website and it's very informative about things going on in the neighborhood tell us all more about the oral history project we hired an oral historian from columbia university her name is she's spectacular she's really she's been great and we are seeking people who have had a relationship with columbus avenue for one reason or another for many many years going back to it leaks the least seventy's or or beyond and we have found people that's really found people we just she just interviewed a playwright who has lived on columbus way back when and know exactly what the whole project is going to the new york historical society we already have an agreement with them it will be available to anybody who wants to listen to it and eventually be and they'd be so the interviews will be available for anyone to listen to but eventually it will be transcribed and it will be shortened so that you know it's more accessible to more people so when we think it's something very unique it sounds very eerie and also because it was part of the urban renewal project the landlord suit been interviewed have a very interesting take on everything that happened on columbus