Karp Strategies Turns Three

A GROWING TEAM + OFFICE + CEO

Karp Strategies is thrilled to celebrate its third birthday!  2018 has been a year marked with unprecedented team growth, support from partners old and new, and as always, the opportunity to work with our incredible clients as they shape the city.   

What better way to tell the story of our explosive growth than by taking a bird’s eye view of our offices throughout the years as they’ve shifted to accommodate new team members and bigger ideas?  

In May and June, we welcomed Tania Marinos (Analyst) and Joseph Sutkowi (Consultant) to the Karp Strategies team. In July, we were joined by Alex Moscovitz (Graduate Associate) and Stephanie Granade (Executive Assistant) and are hiring for three new additions to our dynamic urban planning consultancy.

Thinking Boldly with the Long Island City Partnership

Photo Credit: Long Island City Partnership

Cornell President Martha Pollock, opened the 2018 Long Island City Partnership (LICP) Summit by touting the benefits of the Cornell Tech campus - just a short ferry ride away from the restaurants, entrepreneurial space, and studios of Long Island City. She was impressed with the scale of thinking it took to shape both Long Island City and to develop the new Cornell Tech campus. Pollock tied that to a change instituted at the school: students work on teams to complete yearly capstone projects for companies like Apple and Google, and the companies typically propose that students solve specific problems by instituting specific solutions. This year, Cornell Tech forced a change, urging companies to pose broad questions to student teams to inspire new, creative, and broad-based thinking. The start of Apple and Google’s new questions began, “How might we…?”

“How might we…” also became a theme of the LICP Summit day, stretching across different panels and speakers who sought to encourage the audience to engage in the entrepreneurial thinking that helps Cornell Tech, Long Island City, and our city as a whole to thrive. James Patchett, head of the NYC Economic Development Corporation, spoke about Sunnyside Yards and the way the visioning group behind early master plan stages is charged with figuring out “what this could be.” Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York, discussed the importance of strong narratives to shape “what could be.” Specifically, Wilde talked about the need for a comprehensive strategy to unite city agency efforts in Long Island City in order to form “a rounded story of education, workforce, and jobs,” just like the Brooklyn Navy Yard has done in recent years.

On another panel, NYC Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, Small Business Services Commissioner Gregg Bishop, NYC Transit President Andy Byford, and NYC School Construction Authority’s Lorraine Grillo spoke about the need to create plans that span mayoral administrations. Department of City Planning Director Marisa Lago and developers from Tishman Speyer and Innovo Group discussed the challenges and potential changes to industrial zoning in the neighborhood. In both conversations, officials talked about pushing the envelope beyond the standard bureaucratic processes to make lasting change in the city by rethinking industry and breaking free of the mayoral cycle.

As the day progressed, LICP President Liz Lusskin, her board members, and city and industry leaders expressed palpable and inspiring pride in the neighborhood’s growth and in looking proactively towards the future. Karp Strategies was excited to be present at the event, and looks forward to being engaged in Long Island City in the long term. More immediately, we left the Summit with a pressing desire to partner with our clients to ask, “How might we….”

Philly's New Park Is Off the Rails

Photo credits: Rail Park Facebook page

In mid-June, I had the pleasure of being one of the first people to experience the incredible first phase of the Rail Park in Philadelphia, PA. There is a movement afoot around the globe to recapture now-derelict infrastructure and transform it into public space: the Rail Park does just this. Intended to be a full three miles of adapted Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company track when completed, Phase 1 is ¼ mile long, running alongside Noble Street and up onto the Viaduct. Late morning, dozens of visitors of all ages streamed in from both ends to explore.

Photo credit: Friends of the Rail Park

Having worked with the High Line Network, and having had the privilege to visit or work with many transformative projects ranging from the Bentway to the Lowline to the Atlanta BeltLine, I notice that each of these projects faces incredible challenges in the physical landscape it inherits, with questions around how to design a space with and for its host communities, and a consistent need for operating financing. The very nature of these projects is that they are not knocking down existing infrastructure to build something new, but rather, that they are using the essence of what exists to see what is possible for a public space.

The Rail Park follows this trend. Designed by Studio Bryan Hanes and Urban Engineers, it celebrates industrial history from the moment you step into the park. A welcoming display portrays industry and the railroads. The space uses steel and wood in its design; both beautiful and industrial, it pays homage to the neighborhood’s surrounding uses, including fabulous steel swings that invite every visitor to relax, play, and observe. As you walk up the first stretch of the Rail Park and take in the incredible views, you can see into the surrounding industrial buzz: countertop manufacturers, power lines, forklifts, and empty factories. You can also see evidence of a changing neighborhood, with new breweries and shops opening nearby. Some articles point to questions around gentrification concerns, and highlight community engagement conversations around green gentrification and how adaptive reuse projects can cause serious concern in areas that surround them. While at the park last Saturday, I heard local conversations about both how incredible the design was and open conversation about what the park may do to change the community.

The Rail Park is raising funds to build out its future phases. Until then, we eagerly await activities and programming in this Phase I, and look forward to updates on community conversations. Congratulations to the Philly Rail Park on this amazing accomplishment!

- Rebecca Karp (June 2018)