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Capital Projects & Master Site Plan
As the Garden approaches its centennial year in 2010, it is undertaking an exciting Master Site Plan, an ambitious and carefully considered blueprint for the future that will support the Garden's growing audiences and provide the public with new ways to connect to the living collections.
This year, the schematic design for the new Visitor Center was completed. Integrated into the northern end of the Garden, the new Visitor Center will provide a welcoming entrance with improved admission and retail services, as well as other amenities, to help the Garden meet the needs of its expanding audience.
The Visitor Center will be BBG's first "green" building and will be part of an unfolding series of future projects, including new gardens and improvements to public entrances. Constructed to meet rigorous Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building certification standards, the Visitor Center will feature such environmental elements as a living roof, use of recycled building materials, passive solar principles, geothermal heating, and bioswales (recessed catchment zones filled with water-loving plants) that will improve storm water management and relieve the burden on the municipal sewer system. It will house an exquisite new garden shop, a much-needed orientation room for tours and classes, an information desk, a dramatic event space, a refreshment bar, and other visitor amenities.
BBG and Weiss/Manfredi Architects presented the Visitor Center schematic design to the Art Commission of the City of New York, which approved it unanimously and enthusiastically—as did the Garden's local Brooklyn Community Board 9. Construction of the project has received generous support from the City of New York. Partnering with BBG on horticultural components of the design, the New York City–based firm HM White Site Architects came on board the project as landscape architects for the Visitor Center.
The new Visitor Center will open onto the Garden’s Cherry Esplanade and will house a number of visitor amenities.
The Garden is pleased to acknowledge Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Department of Cultural Affairs, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and the New York City Council for their generous early support of the new Visitor Center. Additional support has been received from the Achelis and Bodman Foundations, Booth Ferris Foundation, Helen V. Froehlich Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, Keyspan Corporation, Kresge Foundation's Green Building Initiative, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Garden staff joined BBG master site plan coordinator Todd Rader, landscape architects from the Portico Group, and Visitor Center architects Weiss/Manfredi for a two-day charrette to conceptualize three new locations for gates at the southern end of the Garden. This process resulted in a series of drawings that will be refined during the design phases for capital improvements in the Garden's southern zone.
This year, the Garden answered a growing need for an additional venue for visitors to purchase unique, garden-focused gifts by opening a Gift Shop on the site of the former seasonal children's shop. The store opened on Forsythia Day and has proved a popular destination for thousands of BBG visitors.