“Love your Park” were the three simple words greeting about 40 local residents arriving for an envisioning forum at University Heights Presbyterian Church on June 10. Each resident was armed with concrete plans for the revitalization of the historic Aqueduct Walk, stretching from West Tremont Avenue to Kingsbridge Road and Aqueduct Avenue.

The evening was organized by Carlos Acosta, Pilar Maschi, and Ted Enoch from Partnership for Parks, a public-private partnership between the city Parks Foundation and the city Parks Department. The group supports and champions neighborhood volunteers and equips them with the tools to advocate and care for their neighborhood parks and green spaces.

“Some parks get a lot of money and attention,” Enoch said. “But when people get involved in their park and when people know that those people are committed, parks can transform and amazing things can happen, and parks can become the backbone of the community.”

He encouraged those present to imagine success. “We have programs and small grants to support the community,” he said, as ideas including coffee mornings, walking groups, community gardening, dog-walking, and arts projects involving youth groups flowed from residents.

Dr. Jim Fairbanks is a member of the Aqueduct Walk Group, which works to beautify the Aqueduct. “I don’t think the Highline has anything on us,” he said of the Manhattan tourist attraction. “It’s [the Aqueduct], a Roman aqueduct and it brought the 41-mile water down to Manhattan, the first water in the Bronx and Manhattan, because by the mid-19th century all the wells were poisoned so it’s a grand, grand beautiful thing.”

Fairbanks previously led a successful campaign to re-open the Highbridge at a cost of $65 million, years after funding to the Bronx had been cut during what he describes as leaner times.

He said he hopes folks from the New York Botanical Garden can help design the walk and get the resources together to beautify it. “You look at all the cultures in the South Bronx. Could you imagine the diversity in the community?” he said. “Gardens and the flowers and plants from people’s home countries? Ah, that would be special.”

Acosta is confident that some of the group’s ideas can be materialized in the next couple of months, and not four years from now. “We don’t have big needs now as far as funding,” he said. “In the future, we will have bigger needs for more park staff, for events that require paying artists. That’s something that we want to empower these people to be able to ask for.”

Maschi was skeptical of transforming the park into a tourist attraction. “Displacement is real,” she said. “I don’t want to do it for the other people who are not here yet. I want to do it for the people who are here now.”

She said parks are for kids and teenagers and she is liaising with local schools in an effort to get them more involved. Her other target group are the homeless, including drug users who frequent the park. “I want them in the leadership too. They have just as much of a right to be in these rooms as anyone else –  homeowner or not, homeless or not,” she said, confirming that she, herself, is someone who once lived that life.

“Yes, they occupy the park. That is their home and I feel that they are entitled to that. Just like we did back in the day – we saw land, we claimed it, and we lived on it. That’s what we do when we have nowhere to go.”