A longtime staple in Peekskill at the intersection of N. Division Street and Park Street is being demolished, but from the ashes will rise a new community hub.

The Brown Plaza gazebo, for decades a hub of community gathering, celebrations, speeches and protests, has been dismantled as part of a plan to re-establish the plaza as a vibrant, refreshed, and accessible gathering space.

The city is constructing a new “Civic Hub” at the intersection of N. Division Street and Park Street, along with improvements to S. Division Street at South Street and Brown Street as part of the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) state grant. 

Phase 1 of the four-phase plan is scheduled through July 31 and focuses on revitalizing Brown Plaza. 

In a phone call, Peter Erwin, assistant director of Planning and Development,  told the Peekskill Herald the city’s vision is to welcome all of the former gazebo’s uses, as well as bring new electric service, seating, new street trees, wider curb lines, and shorter crosswalks for pedestrians.

“There is a pathway for this city to bring all of the intersections downtown into a state of good repair and make all of them safer and more comfortable for pedestrians,” he said. “This project should be seen as a part of that overall effort that we’ve been able to pursue through this series of state grants.”

The Peekskill Common Council awarded a $3.27 million construction bid to Scape-Tech Landscape Technology on Feb. 23. The company previously rebuilt a sidewalk along Main Street in 2022 and used that experience to create a construction schedule that would be the least disruptive.

“We did need to do some critical utility work, but we completed it in April and then did not commence any further activity until the Cinco de Mayo celebration could take place,” Erwin said. “And by the time Juneteenth and July 4th activities start up, we’ll be far enough along that the intersection will be cleaned up, and we’ll have a solution in place for those parades.”

Eddie Guiracocha, owner of Copy Center & Services at 1006 Park St, told the Herald in a phone call that construction has not affected his business and that construction has been running smoothly for the most part.

“From the beginning, they were very upfront, straight-up with everything, had the layout of what was planned to go on and the schedules,” Guiracocha said, adding he had a meeting with planners outside. “As of right now, they’re still working, and it looks like everything is smoothly going on.”

Phase 2 of the project will begin in August, focusing on improvements to the flagpole area on the west side of Division Street, home of Peekskill’s annual New Year’s Eve ball drop celebration.

Phase 3 will take place in September and will introduce new pedestrian seating areas in downtown Peekskill, including the removal of one traffic lane on South Division Street between South and Park Streets, to create an additional public gathering space and improve pedestrian safety.

Phase 4 will run through October and will focus on overall street revitalization efforts. The project is expected to conclude in December, in time for Peekskill’s holiday celebrations.

The work was approved and adopted as part of the Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI) that was adopted in 2021. The ideas for the projects came from the community, including an idea by Peekskill Walks to have a plaza in front of the Ford Piano building, which would reduce lane widths on South Division Street and reduce vehicle speeds.

Other ideas that came up included shorter crosswalk distances, ensuring all pedestrian signals functioned properly, making vehicle signal timing (stoplights) more efficient, adding street trees, and leaving Brown Plaza as an open, flexible and shaded plaza which can host events and speeches on certain days and be a casual meeting spot on other days.

A previous sculptural pavilion concept that would have brought a sculpture with two canopies to Brown Plaza was removed from the project after a number of community objections.

The Brown Plaza property was donated to the village of Peekskill in 1913 and dedicated as Brown Plaza in 1932, named after the Brown family’s three sisters — Phoebe, Esther, Elizabeth — and rebranded as Jan Peek Square in the 1980s. Their grandfather, Nathaniel Brown, was a Peekskill merchant and Quaker, industrialist, and landowner in the late 1700s. The city opened bids for the original gazebo in 1977, according to a city newsletter of the time.

John Curran, historian at Peekskill Museum and longtime resident of Peekskill, told the Herald he felt the original gazebo was not well-maintained, was not friendly, and never really coalesced into a community focus of any kind. He said the gazebo should have been used for more events, such as beauty pageants and festivals focused on children or jazz.

“I always thought there was something wrong with the design,” Curran said. “They could have stayed with the suggestion, the symbolism of a gazebo, but do it in a sort of different way. Add something original to it, maybe even a  walkway around it. Maybe just some little benches there.”

Erwin said the condition of the roughly 50-year-old gazebo deteriorated quickly. The glass canopy was shattered and in danger of collapsing, the light worked only intermittently, the paving surfaces had deteriorated and were non-ADA compliant, and there was old infrastructure underneath it, including an unrecorded electrical line causing issues to the structure and surface of the plaza.

“We resolved the utility conflicts underground so you won’t have water main ruptures occurring under the plaza that could heat the bricks,” Erwin said. “We also have a much more detailed and progressive tree planting strategy that uses structural soil to make sure that trees have room to grow below grade and are capped with cast-iron tree grates that keep the surface level flush.”

Erwin said that historical and interpretive signage that was previously installed around the gazebo will be re-installed around Brown Plaza as part of the reconstruction.

“I just encourage everyone to seek to use it in the same way, to come and perform or meet or to gather and remember that people make the place,” Erwin said of Brown Plaza. “And I think it’s really going to be something great when it reopens.”