Jurors

Jonathan Butler, Editor, Brownstoner.com

Jonathan Butler is the founder and editor of Brownstoner.com, the leading blog about Brooklyn real estate, architecture and preservation. Launched in October 2004, the blog currently attracts about 100,000 readers a month. In April 2008, Jonathan will be launching Brooklyn Flea, the largest flea market in Brooklyn, on a 40,000-square-foot lot in Fort Greene. Prior to starting Brownstoner, Jonathan spent a decade as a journalist, venture capitalist and real estate investor. He has a BA in History from Princeton University and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business. He currently resides in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

Elizabeth Meyer, FASLA

Elizabeth Meyer is an associate professor and former Landscape Architecture Department Chair at the University of Virginia. Previously, Meyer taught at Harvard and Cornell. She is nationally recognized as an outstanding scholar and teacher, with honors and awards from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the University of Virginia. Ms. Meyer is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and a registered landscape architect who worked for EDAW and Hanna/Olin in the 1980s. Since then, she has consulted with several landscape architecture firms including Michael Vergason, Alexandria, Virginia, and Van Valkenburgh Associates, Cambridge. .

Benjamin G. Perez, AICP, Senior Professional Associate, Parsons Brinckerhoff

Senior Professional Associate with Parsons Brinckerhoff, Benjamin Perez offers over 20 years of experience in transportation planning and policy. He has led master planning efforts in the United States and abroad and completed important research assignments for the Federal Highway Administration, Transportation Research Board, the American Council of Consulting Engineers and the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. He is a national expert in the use of roadway pricing as a means to manage congestion. He has served as project manager for the first technical investigation of congestion pricing in New York City and is the author of several resource documents on tolling, pricing, and managed lanes. He is also recognized for his expertise in public-private partnerships and innovative finance and procurement techniques. As Diebold Fellow, he completed research for his book Achieving Public-Private Partnership in the Transport Sector (iUniverse Press, 2004), which provides detailed case studies of partnership projects in Portugal, Hungary, and Thailand. He has also advised the European Union on financing approaches for infrastructure projects and is a lecturer for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) seminar series on public-private partnerships for sustainable development. He holds a M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planers. He is a 20-year resident of Park Slope and Prospect Heights, the last 11 of which have been spent on Grand Army Plaza.

Milton Puryear, Founder and Trustee, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative

Milton is a co-founder and consultant to Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (BGI), dedicated to creating continuous waterfront access along fourteen miles of Brooklyn’s waterfront where there has been no public access since the early 1990s. Recognizing a window of opportunity in transitions in land use, he helped build a broad-based consensus for a greenway to connect multiple waterfront neighborhoods and new waterfront parks. He negotiated the assemblage of right-of-way from seven public agencies and more than a dozen private owners and leaseholders. He has been instrumental in securing federal funding for implementation, which has helped the greenway become a capital priority for the City of New York. He is currently co-chair of the interagency Technical Advisory Committee that coordinates agency participation in the project and is coordinating final phases of planning and commencement of design of the first 6 miles of the route. Brooklyn Greenway Initiative is also developing a stewardship entity to coordinate and supplement greenway maintenance among the numerous agencies and property owners.

Ellen Salpeter, Director, Heart of Brooklyn

Ellen F. Salpeter has almost two decades of not-for-profit experience in arts and culture. As the founding Director of Heart of Brooklyn, Ms. Salpeter is frequently asked to share strategies with other cultural clusters that recognize the power of partnership. She is also sought after to moderate panels and discussions on issues in contemporary art and culture. Ms. Salpeter has stewarded the organization through its start-up phase including major community, commercial revitalization and consumer research projects.

She has served as an adjunct professor at New York University in Arts Administration and currently serves on the boards of the Brooklyn Tourism and Visitor Center, Elizabeth Streb Ringside, The Builder’s Association, Participant, Inc, and Arttable, a national organization for professional women in the arts. Ms. Salpeter was a founding board member of Sadie Nash Leadership Project, a young women’s mentoring program based in Brooklyn and currently serves on the advisory board of Momenta Arts. Ms. Salpeter received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Georgetown University.

Ken Smith, Ken Smith Landscape Architects

Ken Smith is a landscape architect who has worked on a wide variety of national and international projects, in both private and public practice. His background and training is in landscape architecture and in the fine arts. His interests include landscape design of varying scale, with a particular emphasis on projects that explore the symbolic content and expressive power of landscape as an art form. He is committed to creating landscapes, especially parks and other public spaces, with vision and meaning as a way of improving the quality of urban life.

Educated at Iowa State University and Harvard University Graduate School of Design, his practice is based in New York City. He is active as an educator and serves as a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Elizabeth Streb, Streb Laboratory for Action Mechanics (S.L.A.M.)

Elizabeth Streb in 1997 was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award. She holds a B.S. in Modern Dance from SUNY Brockport from which she has received an honorary doctorate of fine arts as well. Streb holds an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island College and is currently the Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at New York University’s Draper Program, working toward a Master of Arts in time and space. Elizabeth Streb is the recipient of numerous other awards and fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987; a Brandeis Creative Arts Award in 1991; two New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessie Awards), in 1988 and 1999 for her “sustained investigation of movement;” and over 20 years of on-going support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Once called the Evel Knievel of dance, Elizabeth Streb’s choreography, which she calls “PopAction,” intertwines the disciplines of dance, athletics, boxing, rodeo, the circus, and Hollywood stunt-work. In 2003 Streb established S.L.A.M. in Brooklyn, NY. S.L.A.M.’s door is literally open for the community to come in and watch rehearsals, take classes and learn to fly.

Michael Van Valkenburgh, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (Chair)

As lead principal of MVVA Inc., with offices in New York City and Cambridge, Van Valkenburgh has designed a wide range of project types including public parks (e.g., Teardrop Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City); Van Valkenburgh was a Design Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and won the civic landscapes (e.g., the redesign of the north end of Union Square Park and Green Market); and institutional landscapes (Master Plan for the Landscape of Princeton University and Bailey Plaza at Cornell). He has been the recipient of several ASLA design awards including the President’s Top Design Award from the ASLA for his Alumnae Valley Restoration in 2006.  In addition, Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award in 2005. Van Valkenburgh has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design since 1982. He teaches landscape architecture studios as the Charles Eliot Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture. He served as program director from 1987-89 and for a term as chairman of the department from 1991-96.

He received a BS in landscape architecture from Cornell University and an MLA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yale University Press will publish a book on the work of MVVA in 2008, edited by Anita Berrizbeitia.

Alex Washburn, Department of City Planning

Alexandros E. Washburn, AIA, is the Chief Urban Designer of the City of New York, Department of City Planning. His approach to urban design combines both architecture and landscape architecture in a fusion of ecology and urbanism.

He is a professional architect whose firm, W Architecture and Landscape Architecture, practices worldwide. He has an undergraduate major in biology from UNC Chapel Hill and a Masters of Architecture from Harvard University.

He began his design career in Washington, DC. After licensing, he joined the personal staff of the legendary advocate of architecture, US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, with oversight of environment and public works. The Senator put him in charge of an effort to rebuild New York’s Pennsylvania Station, and in 1996, he founded the Pennsylvania Station Redevelopment Corporation, now known as the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, in honor of the late senator. After achieving full funding and approvals for the project as the corporation’s president, he returned to architecture in 2001 to form W, and won national awards in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. He has taught the Design of Infrastructure course at Princeton University and in 2007 was the senior visiting critic at the Columbia University Urban Design Program. In 2006, he was asked to join the Bloomberg administration as Chief Urban Designer at the Department of City Planning.

Alex lives with his family in Red Hook, Brooklyn and is currently writing a book, The Nature of Urban Design.

Rob Witherwax, Coordinator, Grand Army Plaza Coalition

Shortly after moving to Brooklyn in 2000, Robert Witherwax assumed a lead role advocating for the renovation of the Eastern Parkway Median. He built consensus among local residents, elected officials, and the area’s cultural institutions for a design balancing a restoration of Frederick Law Olmsted’s original vision with forward-looking elements such as a dedicated bike lane, traffic calming measures, and improved pedestrian access and safety. The renovation, funded by Mayor Bloomberg in 2005, is currently in the design phase. Since 2004, Witherwax has co-chaired Community Board 8’s Parks and Recreation Committee, working with the Prospect Heights and Crown Heights communities to improve local parks.

In 2006, Witherwax became Coordinator of the Grand Army Plaza Coalition (GAPCo), a forum where Grand Army Plaza’s stakeholders have come together to re-envision the Plaza. As coordinator, Witherwax is primarily responsible for organizing the coalition’s efforts, supporting its membership, and communicating its message. He lives with his wife and two children in Prospect Heights, and navigates Grand Army Plaza frequently by car, bike, and foot.