A South Bronx Park is a Hive of Activity—for Bees and for New Yorkers Training for Green Jobs

The buzz of bees at Concrete Plant Park in the South Bronx is a hint to some grand ambitions for job opportunities in this once abandoned industrial site.

For nearly 50 years, the massive silos near the Bronx River were home to a bustling private concrete enterprise. Abandoned in the 1980s, the seven-acre site rotted into a dumping ground, littered with thousands of old tattered tires. 

It was revived, more than a decade later, as a testament to the power of grassroots organizations. The Youth Ministries of Peace and Justice, the pivotal nonprofit Bronx River Alliance and students from Fanny Lou Hamer Freedom High worked together to demand the prime river property become something better.

Community leaders pressed hard, and the city eventually spent millions of dollars to acquire the wasteland in 2000. Within the decade, the Concrete Plant Park evolved as a surprise oasis, with walking and bike paths, a canoe launch, wetland plantings, all built around material found on the site. Its old concrete blocks and silos were kept, in part as historical markers and in part as evidence of sustainable renovation in a now pivotal link in the Bronx River Greenway.