In the spirit of giving, affordable housing developer Tredway partnered with City Harvest, New York City’s first and largest food rescue organization, to distribute more than 500 turkeys and 7,000 pounds of fresh produce — including sweet potatoes, peppers and lemons — to families in need at the Sea Park Apartment Community, a three-tower complex in Coney Island, on Nov. 25. The towers are known as Sea Park North, Sea Park East, and Sea Park West.
The Thanksgiving distribution was part of City Harvest and Tredway’s ongoing monthly food program, which provides food-insecure New Yorkers with fresh, nutritious produce. The partnership serves more than 500 households with an average of 5,000 pounds of food each month.
Tredway founder and CEO Will Blodgett told Brooklyn Paper that as an affordable housing developer, his focus is on “healthy” housing, including ensuring tenants have access to nutritious food — not only for the more than 2,000 Sea Park residents living across 816 rent-stabilized apartments, but also at Tredway’s other affordable housing communities. In addition to the Coney Island event, Tredway is hosting turkey distributions at several of its other properties in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Newark, New Jersey, this holiday season.
“Everybody meets over food, and, right now, people are struggling, and I want to make sure that there isn’t anybody who lives in the buildings that we own who’s going to go hungry on Thanksgiving,” Blodgett said. “It kills me to think that maybe these little kids are going hungry on Thanksgiving. You know, I can sleep well at night in this business, knowing that I’m helping people, and [the distribution event], that’s just a part of that.”
Besides volunteers from Tredway and City Harvest, New York Giants offensive lineman Joshua Ezeudu, who wears No. 75, helped distribute the Thanksgiving staples.
Ezeudu, who grew up in Georgia, told Brooklyn Paper that his parents instilled in him the value of helping others.
“The only reason why humans are on this earth is to really help each other. I don’t really view [helping others] as anything big at all, because that’s just what we’re supposed to do,” he said, noting that he loves putting a smile on kids’ faces. “Now that I’m older, I see myself in them. They love all the small details in life that, as we grow older, tend to forget. We have to lead them so they can be better than us.”
Pedro Urbaez, associate director of Program Operations at City Harvest, said the need for food was significant even before the SNAP benefits crisis and inflation. According to the organization, average monthly visits to NYC food pantries and soup kitchens are up 85% compared with 2019. This year, City Harvest expects to rescue and deliver more than 86 million pounds of food that would otherwise go to waste.
“Our job at City Harvest is to make sure that we bring nutritious food and try to help as many people as we can during these very trying times,” Urbaez told Brooklyn Paper, emphasizing that partnerships with companies like Tredway are essential to support food-insecure New Yorkers. “It allows us as City Harvest to continue building relationships with people like Tredway to make sure that folks all across the city have food on their table.”
Joshua Lawrence Abada, vice president of Investment at Tredway, told Brooklyn Paper that the company could not ask for a better partner than City Harvest. While Tredway supplied the turkeys — Blodgett even ordered more after initial stock ran out — City Harvest provided the produce.
“Up and down the chain, [City Harvest has been] extremely communicative, extremely flexible, extremely creative, and always focused on the impact, which is exactly what we look for in a partner,” Abada said, giving a special shoutout to Urbaez and Kenyatta Skyles, director of Business Partnerships at City Harvest.
“Six months ago, when we first took [Urbaez] here, we walked around all of our different communities in Coney Island and tried to envision what a food distribution could look like together. And six months later, to have this kind of line and this type of impact, really, really awesome. It could not have happened without Pedro,” Abada added. “Obviously, [it] takes a village.”
