After years of planning, Community Board 10 is finally settled into its new, modern office.
The board is now located at 8119 Fifth Avenue, leaving behind the dark, cramped office at 86th Street and Gatling Place that it has occupied since the 1970s.
“The office itself is completely modernized,” reported Josephine Beckmann, the board’s district manager, who said that, a week after the big move, the board was about three quarters of the way unpacked.
“It’s airy, clean and beautiful,” Beckmann said of the new office space. “It feels a lot more professional.”
Beckmann also said that the new office had, “A conference room that’s probably able to hold a nice size meeting of about 35 people, so we can probably do a lot more of our smaller committee meetings right here.”
Another benefit that area residents are likely to appreciate is location. The office is also “centrally located in the district,” noted Beckmann. “We now have storefront access on Fifth Avenue, near both the R line and the bus line.”
Moving forward, Beckmann said, the board is looking for historic Bay Ridge photos and other neighborhood memorabilia to hang on its walls. “We are going to try to get some framed art with Bay Ridge history here,” she remarked.
On a more practical note, the board office will also have an entire wall devoted to community notifications and pamphlets, Beckmann said.
It’s taken a long time to get to this point. The board began the process of looking for new office space back in 2005, eager to leave behind the less than ideal space in a city-owned building that is under the auspices of the Department of Sanitation (DOS). In fact, DOS had a local headquarters in the building until the new garage was built at 51st Street and First Avenue. There have been previous efforts at relocation; those, however, had proved fruitless.
The board can be reached at 718-745-6827, via email at communitybd10@nyc.rr.com, or through its website, www.bkcb10.org.
