Medgar Evers College moves ahead with green campus

20-year-old plan to cost $15M and take two years to complete

Rendering of Medgar Evers' green quad
Rendering of Medgar Evers' green quad

Medgar Evers College is forging ahead with a 20-year-old, $15 million plan to transform a Crown Heights street between the two buildings it currently occupies into a green campus.

The plan, which calls for the narrowing of the road by Crown Street between Bedford and Franklin avenues, would create a campus quad along with a central lawn area for students to attend class, lectures and concerts, officials with the CUNY school told the New York Daily News. The project will take the entire street and replace it with three acres of trees, plants, nooks and classroom seating areas.

Proposed more than 20 years ago, the plan pursued now is a pared-down version of the initial proposal that wound up hamstrung by a lack of funds and opposition from local residents who feared the onslaught of traffic and parking problems. The community board’s land-use committee initially approved the plan, but the broader board later gave it the thumbs down.

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The project, funded by funds saved up over several years, will likely take two years to complete, college officials told the Daily News. [NYDN]Julie Strickland