After-School Program Brings LES Students To Essex Crossing Sites

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — An after-school program connected some 40 elementary school kids to the Lower East Side — and its sponsors, the developers of Essex Crossing, hope to bring it back next fall.

The program, called City Seekers, took kids to various sites in the neighborhood — from construction sites and the rooftop of an Essex Crossing building to the Tenement Museum and a trip to Trader Joe's to learn about nutrition.

For one mother of 11- and 9-year-old boys, it was a positive experience — and she hopes the program returns in the fall.

"They both loved it," Jennifer Vasquez said of her two sons, who go to P.S. 188/The Island School on the Lower East Side. "I feel like they [got] to discover what the Lower East Side has and the things that they can do."

Her boys went to the rooftop of an Essex Crossing building as well as learned about environmental issues in Manhattan's rivers, Vasquez said. A born-and-raised Lower East Sider herself, the program showed her kids, who now live in Harlem, more about the neighborhood they were born in.

"They were eager to learn about the city," said Vasquez.

The after-school program ran twice a week for eight weeks with about 40 third- through fifth-graders from The Island School, The Nathan Straus Preparatory School, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt School.

Essex Crossing, the sprawling development that has been rising in a series of mixed-use buildings over the past few years, has become emblematic of the changing neighborhood. The lots sat empty for decades after old tenements were razed in the 1960s. About half the apartments in the new buildings will be below market rate. A more recent change: the historic Essex Street Market closed and relocated to a fancy new digs across the street. The former building will eventually be torn down to make way for another tower.

With the impact the development team's work has on the neighborhood, the team felt a "responsibility to support the larger community," said Charles Bendit, co-chief of Taconic Investment Partners, an arm of the development team Delancey Street Associates.

The after-school program was aimed at bringing a learning opportunity back to neighborhood kids — with attention to its history too, said Bendit.

"You get a sense of pride when you understand how important certain neighborhoods have been to the evolution of the city," said Bendit. "The Lower East Side has been a bastion of early immigration, and from that, grew the city."

City Seekers began with talks between Bendit and the superintendent of school district 1, Carry Chan. The two of them wanted to create a program for kids to learn about future opportunities and jobs they might not know about.

"[Chan] came up with the idea of creating opportunities for third- through fifth-graders in an after school program to expose them to the neighborhood, the history of the neighborhood and the changes that were going on in the neighborhood to make them feel more at ease with those changes," Bendit said.

Bendit hopes City Seekers could expand to two or three more schools — though finalized plans wouldn't be worked out until summer, he said.

The City Seekers program "exemplifies the power of collaboration," superintendent Chan said in a statement.

"Our partnership with Essex Crossing provides unlimited opportunities for students to explore, learn about, and appreciate the Lower East Side community," Chan said. "We are so grateful for our developers, architects, and engineers who are engaging with our students and providing them with real-world learning experiences."