Dave Lutz and Imre (pronounced Eem-reh) Kovacs are two old friends – senior citizen old – who run around Red Hook like a couple of teenagers. After more than a half century of New York City life, people get tired. Not Dave and Imre. Both of them have been advocates for community gardening in public and private spaces all over New York.
These guys know everyone in Red Hook, which enabled them to pull together a gaggle of residents to help create a park out of the vacant space behind the River of God Christian Center on Wolcott Street, near Van Brunt. When the garden is complete, it will be beautiful, like the many other community gardens Dave and Imre have coaxed into existence.
Dave and Imre became friends just a couple years ago, when they got involved with the revived Red Hook Civil Association. I spoke to them in the community room of the church, where they had just held a meeting of a few of their many volunteers who are going to help them turn the church’s barren backyard into a verdant paradise.
What is the mission of a civic association?
Dave: The purpose is to be on the outside, screaming and yelling to the politicians who are on the inside, whose tendency is to want to do something and they are able to say, those guys are screaming and yelling at us, we gotta do something!”
How did you get into gardening?
Dave:I had been the executive director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, which insured most of the community gardens in the city. I got involved because I had a newspaper background and I started putting together their newsletter. Tom Fox, who ran the coalition at the time, did a study of the BQE, and I told him we could do better. We could have a greenway system all over the city. And Tom laughed and said go ahead. I put together a greenway system for New York. That involved gathering a group of people who knew urban geography very well, and looking for urban edges, not where there were 20 blocks to the mile, but connecting the out-of-the-way places. We looked at the maps for railroads, for canals, for waterfronts and cemeteries. We designed 575 miles of greenway in the city of New York. I biked it all.
So you developed this network. And what was the purpose of doing that?
Dave: It was to develop transportation alternatives, and also to locate spaces for community gardens.
After you became executive director you had a crisis.
Dave: I heard that the mayor wanted to sell all the vacant land. So I called a meeting. There were about 20 people in the room. They represented nonprofits, they represented government people who I would not expose today still without their permission. There weren’t any gardeners in the room except me. I said okay, Giuliani wants to sell all the vacant land. That means more than 500 community gardens are going to be auctioned off. And one of the government officials said if we try to stop it how are we going control the reaction? And I said, this is not about controlling the reaction. Right now we need bomb throwers! I wouldn’t say that today! But even when I said it back then there was a gasp in the room. One of my assignments ended up being to call up every elected official in the state of New York and see what kind of support we could get. This was the most rejection I have ever felt in my life. I was up against all the people who wanted to develop that land, and who had made campaign contributions to all the elected officials in the city. But in the end there was one elected official who was willing to help. That was luckily the attorney general of the state of New York.
And who was that?
Dave: Eliot Spitzer! I was trying to give him background information about what’s going on. He said, I know what’s going on, a frog talked to me. And I said, I know the frog. He said what do you want, and I said I want you to throw a lawsuit at the mayor. And he said, I haven’t got a chance in hell at winning a lawsuit against the mayor on the grounds of this case. I said when is the mayor up for re-election? I hear justice moves slowly in the state of New York! One of his lawyers called me the following week, and we started a lawsuit against the mayor and it didn’t go anywhere for almost a year. And then the new mayor came in and I got a phone call from the lawyer from the attorney general’s office and he said what should we do now? I called the mayor’s office and a meeting took place. It turned out that Bloomberg didn’t give a damn about community gardens but he did care about being embarrassed so early in his term. And he knew the gardens weren’t worth a hill of beans anyway. So we saved most of the community gardens in the city. We saved about 450 city-wide, and we lost maybe 75 to 100 that were too far along in development.
Imre, you attended Yale Divinity School and became a clergyman, and you also have a background in financial planning and advising, but eventually you took a position with the Department of City Planning. And you got into cultivating greenspaces in the city during that time.
Dave: Imre won an achievement award for one of his gardens.
Imre: It’s the one new community garden on the west side of Manhattan in the last hundred years or so. It’s on 89th Street. I was working with the Department of City Planning. Parks Department told me, we have some extra fencing, can you use it?
So you used this fencing to design a public garden on the west side of Manhattan.
Imre: Yes. It’s gorgeous. It’s twice the size of this room.
Dave: It’s kind of a hybrid. Because it has ball fields in it – It’s really both a park and a garden.
Imre: I’ve started a garden in four of the neighborhoods where I’ve lived in New York. When I moved to Carroll Gardens I started a garden in the backyard. Then the owner sold his place, so I moved three blocks away, and I met a young woman and we hung out and eventually moved in together.
We started a garden there. When we moved to Red Hook there was no space in the back, but there was a big front yard. So I built some window boxes. And I added a little this, and a little that, and eventually it took over. I grew edibles in pots.
After your life partner got sick you were her caregiver for years.
Imre: Yes. And after she died I said I’m not gonna hang around here and be depressed, let me at least go next door, (to the River of God Christian Center) because I knew those people, I had talked about the Bible and theology with the pastor, and so I went over there, and I integrated the church. It had been 100 percent black.
And you, Dave, helped to develop several community gardens in Brooklyn after your director job at the coalition ended.
Dave: After that I took a consulting job with the Housing Authority who was at that time encouraging residents to garden on some of the properties. So I was involved in backyard community gardening in Red Hook. I got involved with the Columbia Waterfront gardens after Claire Merlino, whom I had known through the Open Space Coalition, told me she had started a garden in Red Hook, and I said I’d like to help her. I’m the founder of the Summit Street community garden on Summit and Columbia Streets, and I also had a role in the creation of the Amazing Garden, the Mother Cabrini garden, and the Urban Meadow garden. I became absolutely taken over by the idea of gathering a bunch of neighbors together, breaking the chain on a lock, cleaning out the garbage, and turning the space into something beautiful.
What was in these spaces before?
Dave: They were all empty lots. Claire knew a lot more about the gardening of those spaces than I did. But from my background in urban planning I knew what the enemy was gonna throw at us. They were gonna say they’re private spaces that people have taken over, they were gonna say they don’t look so pretty, they were gonna say they’re closed to the public. I made sure that those gardens had a space for gathering, for creating community, for picnicking, as well as for growing vegetables. I tried to make them look better.
So how did you guys decide to tackle this project at the church?
Dave: We talked about the greening of Red Hook. Because we were in a civic association, we both lived in Red Hook, and we both believed in greening.
Imre: And gardening at the church lot came up in the conversation, and I was a member of the church, so I said that could be easy, let me talk to them.
Dave: It took Imre over a year to get permission.
Imre: At the same time I had been trying to get the interim Red Hook library to move right here in this room.
Dave: This space would have been a nice library instead of just a storefront like we have now.
Imre: But they read this one-page description of the new plan for the library, and in it was something about, you know, residents’ interests, and inclusion, and all that sort of stuff. And this is a church, and they didn’t want books with that kind of content.
So the library was a nix, but you got them to agree to a garden.
Dave: Yes, by working around the edges. In advocacy, that’s how you get things done.
And you got all these people here to volunteer today. I showed up here and nobody was here, and then you guys showed up, and all of a sudden a bunch of people appeared, out of the blue. I couldn’t believe it.
Quotes from gardeners:
Allison Vanhee
I was looking for a place to garden. I think gardens are really cool because they have a nice history of pushing back against speculation and claiming space for the community. Dave is really cool. He’s somehow guiding people through without being that bossy kind of leader-dude.
Maria Nieto
Dave let me know about this gardening club last year, and this was actually when I was very sick. At the time I was in a wheelchair and it was such a place of respite and beauty. So I’m very excited to be here and be healthy again. Now I can actually get down on the ground and dig in!
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