Dear Residents,
During the summer, we shared some exciting news about the future of Spring Creek Towers. We promised to keep you updated as that work begins. Today, we want to provide you with the first of those updates and some additional exciting updates about progress at Spring Creek Towers.
Permanent Backup Power: The backup generators are installed and operational. We still have some final work to do to get our permit updated to allow us to use the generators for extended periods of time, but we now have 8MW of backup power that will serve our community. This will help us better maintain the existing equipment we have, avoid certain outages that we have experienced in the past and recover from other outages much faster than has ever previously been possible.
Boiler Decentralization: We are at the final stages of the boiler decentralization project. You have likely seen the white boiler boxes that are now installed at each garage. These boxes contain state of the art, energy efficient boilers that will significantly improve the reliability of the heat and hot water that serves your buildings. We are now waiting for DOB to inspect the equipment. Once DOB inspects, we then need National Grid to connect the boilers to new gas service and then we can work to finish the commissioning work and put our new boilers online. We expect to be putting new boilers online one at a time throughout the course of the winter.
New Appliances /New Hallways/New Lobbies: We have designs and have begun to “mock-up” each of these spaces. We will do a test of each so we can see what works and what can be improved before we roll out the upgrades across the entire community. We will finalize the designs before the year ends and will begin ordering inventory. Obtaining inventory has been challenging in today’s environment, but we will be ready to start installation in 2022 as soon as we have inventory in hand.
Replace Building Frontages/Upgrade Landscaping/Upgrade Playgrounds/Create New Outdoor Areas: We are interviewing architects to support this work. We expect to select the architects over the next six weeks. Once selected, the architects will begin their design work with the expectation that the physical work will likely begin in mid-2022 . In the meantime, we are currently in the process of refinishing and re-striping the sports courts around Spring Creek Towers.
Security Upgrades: By the end of this year, we will have installed over 30 additional cameras across the Property. We continue to assess and will share with you additional upgrades over the next several months.
Supportive Services: We are committed to developing new and innovative resources to support education, health, wellness and economic mobility for our community. We expect these new initiatives will directly and meaningfully impact the lives of our residents and we are excited to “think big” about how to best serve this community. To this end we are pleased to announce that Nanda Prabhakar has joined us to lead this effort as the new Executive Director of the Spring Creek Recreational Fund, an existing non-profit organization we are expanding and relaunching to lead these initiatives. Please join us in welcoming Nanda.
Nanda is a licensed social worker who comes to us with a 20+ year track record of successfully delivering supportive services and programming to communities like Spring Creek Towers. Most recently, she served as Senior Vice President of Program Operations at the Mission Society of New York City where she oversaw the full portfolio of afterschool, workforce development, counseling and post-secondary readiness programs. Prior to Mission Society, Nanda worked at the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in the office of Youth and Congregations in Partnership. In that role she worked directly with youth across Brooklyn, including some who lived in Spring Creek Towers.
Over the next several months, Nanda will be learning about our community and brainstorming collaboratively about how we can best meet this mission. She will be meeting with residents, community members, local leaders and other non-profit organizations that do similar work around New York City. She will be listening, learning and synthesizing the feedback she receives in order to develop new and innovative programming that is best suited for our community.
There will be opportunities for residents to meet Nanda in the coming months and we encourage you to share your thoughtful feedback with her when you have that opportunity. In the meantime, if there are specific thoughts you would like to share with Nanda, you can email [email protected] or send her a letter at the management office. Please understand that we are committed to reading all of your feedback, but we will not be responding individually.
In addition to these exciting announcements, we are also very proud to announce that Spring Creek Towers has been awarded a 2 Star Community Rating with Fitwel, the world’s leading certification system committed to building health for all. Spring Creek Towers is the first recipient of this certification in New York State, the largest community by occupancy and the first affordable housing development in the world to earn this rating. We were awarded this certification based on a number of design and operational strategies at Spring Creek Towers that support the physical, mental and social health of our residents. These strategies include access to open space, community programming and maintenance practices, among others. Taken together, these initiatives help to promote a healthier lifestyle for our residents. While we are certainly proud to be leaders in this space, we know there is still more to do. We remain committed to working on your behalf.
We appreciate that these last 18 months have been particularly challenging for our community and our larger city and appreciate your continued support. We are very happy to share these exciting updates with you and are committed to remaining focused on this work and driving continuous improvement in our community.
Sincerely,
Andrew MacArthur
