Recycling and Manufacturing at the Brooklyn Navy Yard | BCAP at Home

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A tour at IceStone with 7 people looking at and handling samples of counter tops in a factory space

PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Join this free family program with Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Cultural Adventures Program.

This interactive virtual tour will stream live to the factory floor of IceStone in the Brooklyn Navy Yard! We’ll meet IceStone’s Marketing Director Ashon McCollin and he will show us how people, machines, and processes come together at their factory to transform 100% recycled glass into countertops. This program will be hosted by Turnstile Tours in partnership with the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92, IceStone, and the Brooklyn Cultural Adventures Program.

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Staying Afloat During COVID-19: Three Stories from the Brooklyn Waterfront

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

The Brooklyn waterfront is blessed with many cultural institutions, but three of the most unique are led by three dynamic cultural entrepreneurs. The Brooklyn waterfront is richer because of Andrew Gustafson, Carolina Salguero, and David Sharps, who lead Turnstile Tours, PortSide NewYork, and the Waterfront Museum, respectively. Join the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center for a virtual Breakfast Talk with these entrepreneurs as they speak about how they have been navigating their institutions through the pandemic. After each explains their unique mission, they will tell us what they did to carry on during COVID, how they did it, and which of the changes they have made will be carried into post-pandemic Brooklyn.

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Keeping NYC Waterways Clean: Stormwater Management | Episode 54

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Ever wonder why you shouldn’t go to the beach after it rains? Or why you shouldn’t take a shower during a rainstorm? Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) are one of New York City’s most persistent and pervasive environmental challenges. Learn how our city’s water system works, how it handles stormwater and sewage, and why, unfortunately, the latter winds up in our waterways thanks to the former. Join Doug Chapman, a LEED-certified professional with experience designing green roofs, as we look at strategies for tackling CSOs, using the infrastructure of the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a case study.

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Brooklyn Grange: Rooftop Farming with Anastasia Cole Plakias | Virtual Program

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Aerial view of a rooftop farm with Manhattan skyline in the distance

PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Founded in 2010, Brooklyn Grange is a global leader in rooftop farming and intensive green roof systems. Brooklyn Grange co-founder Anastasia Cole Plakias will join us to share how this mission-driven business has evolved to produce over 80,000 pounds of produce annually support natural ecosystems through green infrastructure, and educate the public about how New York City can be a cleaner, safer, and healthier place to live and work.

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Gabs: Supporting local small businesses in New York

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Gabs Photography, January 11, 2018

by Gabriela Hengeveld

When we were invited to visit New York for a story about the Bronx we got in touch with Turnstile Tours an organization providing tours to visit and eat at different Food Trucks. The organization found a way of entertaining tourist whilst at the same time having a positive social impact. Supporting local Food Truck businesses, mostly run by newly arrived Immigrants. They not only help the entrepreneurs with customers but also providing them with legal advise through a specific NGO so they can better set up their businesses.

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The Bridge: The Brooklyn Tour Guides Who Know All the Secrets

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Tower of Brooklyn Bridge graphic

The Bridge, July 12, 2017

by Emily Nonko

As Brooklyn’s tourism industry heats up, double-decker buses have crossed the river in herds, whirling visitors around Grand Army Plaza and other dramatic sights. But to paraphrase the song from Hamilton, what’d they miss? Lots, according to Brooklyn-based Turnstile Tours, which has made a name for itself with a completely different approach: depth. On a Turnstile Tour of the cavernous Brooklyn Army Terminal, for example, you’ll find out that the massive base was once used as a storage warehouse for alcohol seized during Prohibition. Millions of gallons of booze were dumped into the harbor!

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Naval Cemetery Landscape Opens to Public at Brooklyn Navy Yard

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Our friends at the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI) achieved a great milestone Friday when they officially opened the Naval Cemetery Landscape at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The beautifully designed 1.7-acre green space is publicly accessible along the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, a landscaped bicycle and pedestrian path that, when completed, will run 27 miles from Greenpoint to Jamaica Bay. One of 130 green spaces funded by TKF Foundation’s Open Spaces Sacred Places program, the Naval Cemetery Landscape serves as a remembrance of the site’s rich and poignant history as a once-forgotten military cemetery, while creating a new and vibrant ecological sanctuary where we can all take a moment to escape urban clutter and reflect in nature.>> Continue reading

Well Made, Well Done: Inside Industry with Bien Hecho

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We recently had the opportunity to visit a unique business in the Brooklyn Navy Yard that will be a featured tenant on our Inside Industry Tour series, Bien Hecho, a woodworking outfit that specializes in making furniture, millwork, cabinetry, and other custom carpentry from reclaimed and sustainably-sourced wood. Founder John Randall sat down with us to talk about their business making beautiful work, and the Bien Hecho Academy.

Bien Hecho was founded by John nine years ago. Inspired by his travels to Spanish-speaking countries, and his efforts to master the language as an adult, John strives to live up to both meanings of his company’s name – create well-made (hecho bien) projects, and do a job well done (bien hecho). Located inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Building 3, their workshop is filled with wood and machinery that you won’t find in most of the other shops clustered in this part of the building. With a small team of just two full-time staff and a few part-timers, the company has nevertheless taken on some big and beautiful projects.>> Continue reading

Isabelle Garbani’s “Post-War Blues” Brightens Brooklyn Army Terminal

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If you walk the length of the atrium of the Brooklyn Army Terminal’s Building B during this weekend’s Open House New York, you will encounter a remarkable piece of art – Isabelle Garbani’s “Post-War Blues.”

Made up of more than 5,000 hand-crocheted and knitted flowers, the installation cascades from the train car parked on the atrium’s tracks, which once carried freight trains filled with war materiel into the Terminal’s warehouses and onto waiting ships along the Brooklyn waterfront.>> Continue reading

Noah Chesnin of NY Aquarium Joins Brooklyn Waterfront Tour August 22

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We are now three weeks in to our Brooklyn Waterfront Past & Present Tour series, and our guest speakers so far have been spectacular. Nate Kensinger was able to recall how almost every inch of the Brooklyn, Greenpoint, and Newtown Creek waterfronts have changed over the 10 years that he has been photographing, filming, and researching New York City’s industrial edges. Emily Manley helped us understand why the Gowanus Canal is so troubled, and how the state, federal, and local regulatory agencies work together to clean up the site, and hopefully there are now a few more readers of the New York Environment Report.

For week three, we are again heading north up the East River and the Newtown Creek with Noah Chesnin, Policy Program Manager for the New York Seascape Program at Coney Island’s New York Aquarium, who will share with us his work in conservation, education, and policy connected to the marine wildlife and habitats of the greater New York region.>> Continue reading