High Falls Gorge will soon be turning into High Falls State Park with Governor Hochul’s announcement of the creation of a new urban state park in Rochester New York. We are so excited to see work begin with the Pont de Rennes bridge remodel and RG&E’s remediation efforts! This new park will be 40 acres in the heart of the city of Rochester. Planning has begun to make this park the best it can be for Rochester and its citizens. Check out this mockup that show what this new state park could be!
Greentopia has been advocating to create green space for all of Rochester’s citizens since its beginning. Our organization along with other non-profits, such as the Genesee Land Trust, have been fighting for this and are working to make sure this new park reflects what Rochester citizens want. To provide the planning committee with data Greentopia, Genesee Land Trust and TourBlend have created a High Falls State Park Survey. Please take a few minutes and complete this survey so that your voice can be heard in the creation of this new State Park.
Greentopia was honored at the 12th annual Community Design Center Redesigning Rochester Awards. Our organization received the Director’s Award for our dedicated work in High Falls and the State Park project.
We are honored to be recognized among our fellow award recipients, who are just as dedicated to making Rochester a better city for all, and excited to see such unique projects.
We are so excited to see High Falls become a green space for the Rochester community to enjoy. Greentopia remains dedicated to creating these spaces for our community. Check out the video to learn more about Greentopia’s hopes for High Falls.
This past month we hosted our first Yoga on the Bridge. In partnership with Breathe Yoga, Green Visions hosted a silent disco power vinyasa yoga class on the Pont De Rennes Bridge. Thankfully this year, we were lucky enough to get a beautiful sunny day for the event.
A huge thank you to Breathe Yoga Studios for leading such a beautiful class, we are so appreciative of your partnership, support, and your continued work with us.
Also, thank you to WildByrd Productions for the use of silent disco headphones for the event.
Greentopia strives to make High Falls a center for recreation for all Rochester citizens. Events like Yoga on the Bridge allow us to showcase the natural wonder that can be found in the heart of Rochester. We are so grateful to everyone who came out to support the event, thank you so much for coming out and joining us in High Falls. We hope to see you visiting again soon.
Yoga on the Bridge will be returning next year!
If you are interested in how you can get involved in events like these, sign up for our volunteer list to stay informed on the latest happenings in High Falls.
On October 17th Green Visions celebrated the completion of our 10th year! We were joined by neighbors, former participants, funders, friends, and even Mayor Malik Evans.
The occasion also marked the groundbreaking of the remodel of 188 Whitney to create the Green Visions Training and Education Center. This remodel will allow Green Visions to expand in many ways. First, we will have a home base in the heart of JOSANA, dedicated to workforce development training and assistance to the community, along with environmental education.
Second, this new space will allow Green Visions to expand its programming into the winter months. This new program will allow us to double the youths we serve each year.
Our final cause to celebrate was the installation of a new sculpture on the 188 Green Visions Campus. The “Symbol”, created from metal by Gareth Fitzgerald Barry, is intended to be an onsite representation of the Green Visions Workforce Development Program. The sculpture is an iconic manifestation composed of 22 parts, unified as a single, undulating but unbroken line flowing through space, finally forming the Green Visions logo. The 22 sections of the sculpture represent each week of the program for every participant, while the unification of these sections to form ‘The Symbol’ represents the successful completion of the program and the many stops along every person’s individual journey with Green Visions.
Being an outdoor sculpture, ‘The Symbol’ stands 10 feet tall and will be subject to the elements. It will patina and age with distinction. Its shadow will further serve to showcase the Green Visions logo on the very land on which program participants work and grow, providing an interactive sundial.
‘The Symbol’ will stand out among the surrounding foliage without overshadowing adjacent program amenities, such as the Green Visions House and Outdoor Classroom. Positioned towards the corner of the lot, ‘The Symbol’ will become incorporated into the landscape and skyline of the program site.
More of Gareth Fitzgerald Barry’s work can be found on his Instagram @garethfitzgeraldbarry.
With funding and guidance from the City of Rochester and ROC the Riverway, Hunt Engineering is close to completing the study of the Hydro Station’s structural integrity. Drones were used to glimpse inside. Repellers jumped off the edge to look at the outside. A boat was launched to look underneath.
Sensors were placed to measure vibration on top. Data is being compiled, and will be presented to the newly formed High Falls Overlook Advisory Committee that will meet before the end of the year. Community members on the Advisory Committee will be helping to inform next steps to take in the development of the building.
Representatives on the committee include the Genesee Brewery, Greentopia, Genesee River Alliance, Pike Company, RG&E, Visit Rochester, Ibero American Development Corporation, and the High Falls Business Improvement District.
Please take a moment to read this update and support our Annual Campaign. Every dollar counts towards helping Greentopia continue its exciting work and brings us closer to a more vibrant, sustainable and equitable community.
On September 4th Congressman Joe Morelle came to visit our High Falls viewing dock and take a tour of Hydro Station 4, the first hydroelectric station in Rochester now owned by Greentopia! Congressman Morrell received the full tour of our facilities from Greentopia’s Executive Board Chair Lisa Baron. Erik Frisch from the City updated Congressman Morelle on the ROC the Riverway project in HIgh Falls and Ben Gustafson from Hunt Engineering shared the latest findings of the structural study being done on Hydro Station 4.
The Roc the Riverway initiative seeks to capitalize on the riverfront property and adjacent natural space of the city of Rochester, places such as the High Falls and the beautiful gorge. By investing in these places such as the High Falls and the beautiful gorge, Rochester will be able to generate space for economic development, family recreation, environmental protection, and education about the natural assets of the city of Rochester. These green spaces are a part of Rochester that so far has been an untapped resource.
We were so happy to share the High Falls and our vision with Representative Morelli, Thank you for the visit Congressman!
This past week Greentopia hosted a cocktail party to thank our Green Visions program partner Lucas Green House. The event took place on our viewing platform with a beautiful view of the high falls gorge.
In attendance was the Lucas Green House staff and recently former-owner Susan Palomaki. The party was to celebrate Susan, a huge partner of the program, and her retirement after 15 years of owning and working the Lucas Green House. Lucas Green House has partnered with our Green Visions program for the past 5 years. They have helped us by providing a space to start our flowers and giving the program extra flowers as well, in order to make our gardens more beautiful. Our Green Visions Program is always looking for partners with local businesses such as Lucas Green House. If interested reach out to morgan@greentopia.org.
Our viewing platform cocktail parties are available to all! They include a tour of the high falls gorge from the Pont de Renne Bridge by the director of the Greentopia board Lisa Baron. With wine, cheese, and a beautiful view it is a great place to bring friends, coworkers, or anyone else! For more information reach out to Lisa Baron at lisa@greentopia.org.
Thanks to you all our Dinner Off the Bridge event was a HUGE success!
146 delicious dinners prepared by The Cub Room’s amazing staff were sold.
A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support our event! All of the proceeds were given to the Green Visions program, employing local youth to maintain our community flower gardens!
A special thanks to The Cub Room for hosting as well, along with Laughing Gull Chocolates, Java’s Cafe, Century Wine & Liquors, and Black Button Distilling for their additions to our meals.
BetheGoodRoc envisions a future where frontline and healthcare workers at any time of a crisis are provided with simple comforts to help make the situation more bearable and maintain a level of normalcy for workers and their families. We do this through the community.
What Can You Do?
As a community, we can pool our resources to support this cause. You can’t deliver a home-cooked meal to a hospital worker, but BetheGoodRoc can!
Greentopia and Be the Good Roc have teamed together to raise donations that will be used to buy meals from local restaurants that go directly to our hospital support staff.
BetheGoodRoc has already coordinated 400 meals from Chicken Out and delivered them to RGH Cardiac ECU.
There’s certainly more to come from this great organization, and Greentopia looks forward to working with them on this needed project.
Now in its sixth year, the Green Visions program has installed an 800 square foot shipping container at the Green Visions Campus at 174 Whitney Street in the JOSANA neighborhood. The container has been completely retrofitted by Ikoniq, a Canandaigua-based company that creates top-of-the-line carts, kiosks, and containers for many of the country’s largest stadiums, concert halls, and amusement parks. The Green Visions’ container was designed to be used as a complete floral design workspace – with flower cooling room and tool room – and received financial support from the Allyn’s Creek Garden Club, the Rochester Garden Club, The John C. Wegman Foundation, Kathleen Holt and Steve Lurie, and the August Family Foundation.
“The Green Visions shipping container is a huge step forward in helping to manage the program’s consistent flower bouquet production and delivery. It is a first for the City of Rochester and serves as a model of alternative programming space for other grassroots neighborhood programs.” Says Lisa Baron, Board Chair of Greentopia.
This project also serves as another example of the amazing collaboration found between Rochester organizations committed to the revitalization of the JOSANA neighborhood. This year, the Green Visions program is providing landscape maintenance for 19 Habitat for Humanity properties. In return, Habitat for Humanity and Rochester Youth Build provided the materials and installed a driveway for the shipping container. All of these neighborhood developments are guided by the vision and leadership of Charles Settlement House Neighborhood Association and its JOSANA Master Plan. For the last six years, the Green Visions program has been working not just in the neighborhood, but more importantly with the neighborhood.
It’s time to launch the High Falls Eco-District! So no, that’s nothing like sailing a Frisbee over the edge of the Genesee River ravine in Greentopia’s backyard. It’s the formal process required to begin certification of the EcoDistrict north of downtown. The planning stage, which involved lots of meetings with stakeholders and then registering that plan, is over. Now the plan has to be shared with the public and adopted by individual stakeholders’ pledges toward green practices. This is all working toward certification by the international organization, EcoDistricts.org
Harkening back to Greentopia’s early days, the launch will be marked with a public EcoFair Oct. 7, from noon to 5 p.m., coinciding with Rochester’s annual Genesee River Romance event. This fair will be held on and near the Ponte du Rennes Bridge, that pedestrian pathway that has the best view of the river gorge and the river’s High Falls.
EcoDistrict Manager Rachel Walsh said the event will feature:
A gardening project
A fair filled with information tables and vendors
The opportunity to recycle electronics
A collaborate chalk mural
Goats (Yes, goats. They’re the star of cute Internet videos, but also a sustainable way to remove brush
A food truck (Maybe wash your hands between eating lunch and petting a goat.)
Other nearby events that day include Zagster bike tours of the area and tours of Monroe Community College’s new campus at Kodak Tower.
Next steps for the EcoDistrict include stakeholders making and signing commitments that will spell out how they will undertake sustainable efforts to take “equity, resilience and climate protection seriously,” Walsh said. It’s expected to take about three years to gather these written commitments, and then Rochester’s EcoDistrict will join dozens around the world.
“We won’t wait for certification to start projects,” Walsh said. The short list is a walking trail, solar power installation, a pollinator pathway andother programming. Come visit our fair on Oct. 7 and see what it’s all about.
It’s been an unusual summer for Green Visions, Greentopia’s job development program. A super-soaked spring and summer, along with some red-tape tangles, delayed the start of the season. Manager Morgan Barry said the Green Visions garden wasn’t tilled until late May, when it’s usually under cultivation by the first week in May. So some plants, notably a major crop of zinnias, are coming in a month late and all at once.
Rather than trying to conduct business as usual in an unusual situation, the program is experimenting a bit. Green Visions is still a job development program for young people 16-22 in the Northwest quadrant of Rochester, one of the poorest sections of a city where half the kids live in poverty. But with expertise growing in the staff and the job-skills participants, the site in the JOSANA Neighborhood can also offer more. A cut-your-own-bouquet event scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 19, for instance. Visitors can walk away with their own cut flowers, or can rely on the expertise of managers Morgan Barry and Tiani Jennings to make a beautiful arrangement.
Other developments:
Greentopia purchased additional land adjacent to the main garden lot (797 Smith St.)
A learn-to-drive program is being added to the program later in the growing season, adding another key skill young people need to to secure regular employment.
A grant from the Developmentally Disabled Giving Circle at Rochester Area Community Foundation is allowing students who’ve aged out of Edison Technical High School’s program for disabled students to continue working – and, more importantly, getting paid – in the Green Visions program. (Most of the 16 program participants are from the neighborhood, but a couple spots are set aside for developmentally disabled disabled youngsters, who have an even harder time gaining job skills and employment.)
“It’s bringing back graduates and keeping their momentum going,” Barry said.
One such graduate is Frank Graham, 22, who returned this summer to work with Green Visions for a second year. He listed planting, watering, fertilizing, working hard and getting along with people as some of the things he’s learned.
“I’m a workaholic. It’s good, though,” Graham said. At home, his mother doesn’t like him to leave the house. Working with Greentopia gets him out into the sunlight. “It’s better than being in my room, cooped up,” he said.
Ideally, Green Visions graduates will take what they’ve learned over 20 weeks in the growing season and apply it to year-round jobs. Angela Tye, 22, has her sights set on a job in a garden department at a place like Home Depot or Wal-Mart. “I know what to do now. I know what the flowers need, what the plants need,” she said.
