Special Announcements

The Friends and the Conservancy have worked together on various projects over the years including our two high school internships working together to remove non-native invasive water chestnut from Van Cortlandt Lake.

“The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park and the Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy have spent the last two years working to create the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, a superior stewardship organization to guide the future of Van Cortlandt Park and the implementation of the 2034 Master Plan. For years, the Friends and the Conservancy have worked independently to restore, beautify, and support free programming in Van Cortlandt Park, the crown jewel of the Bronx. Our shared interests have now led us to combine our efforts, and we are working towards announcing the launch of a single united organization in the coming months” Friends of Van Cortlandt Park and Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy

“The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park board has resoundingly endorsed this approach in several board votes over the past two years in part because of the core foundation of the project—keeping the best parts of FVCP’s programming at the same time adding a more robust focus on fundraising for park maintenance and capital projects in concert with NYC Parks.” The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park’s Board of Directors

Meet Our Interns

Since 1996, the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park have partnered with the Riverdale Neighborhood House to provide an Environmental Internship program for high school students.  This school year, we have 7 students who are conducting research projects focused on Tibbetts Brook and Van Cortlandt Lake- one group is focusing on Benthic Macroinvertebrates (for example: crayfish and dragonfly larva) and the other groups is conducting Trash Surveys. Watch this short video to Meet Our Interns!  We look forward to sharing with you the results of their research in the spring.  

Van Cortlandt Park User Survey

As 2018 draws to a close, the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park would like you to share your thoughts and experiences in the park with us.  Some of us celebrate birthdays and holidays with family and friends in the park. Others use the cross country and hiking trails to keep fit. Local public school teachers use the park as an extension of their classrooms to teach our children about science and the environment.  We want to know how often you visit the park and what your favorite activities are. Our goal is to make sure that the park meets the needs of all of our neighbors.

Please let us know what you think by clicking here to answer a short survey.

Show Your Support for Daylighting Tibbetts Brook

Water from Van Cortlandt Lake enters the Broadway sewer at a rate of 4 to 5 million gallons of water per day — and that’s on a dry day. This water is then treated – for no reason- at the Wards Island Stormwater Treatment Plant. Often when it rains, the combination of sewage, street runoff and the brook enters the combined sewer, bypassing the treatment plant and flowing directly into the Harlem River. This one Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO), WI-056, connected to the Broadway sewer makes up more than half of the CSO water entering the Harlem River. Daylighting will remove this clean water from the sewer and help to reduce CSO occurrences on the Harlem River and help with flooding issues along Broadway and other areas of the Tibbetts Brook Watershed. 

The Friends of VCP have joined forces with the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality to create a Coalition for the Daylighting of Tibbetts Brook. As of May 2018, Bronx Community Board 7, Bronx Community Board 8, The Bronx is Blooming, City as a Living Lab (CALL), Councilman Andrew Cohen, NYS Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, Congressman Eliot Engel, Fort Independence Park Neighborhood Association, Kingsbridge Business Improvement District, Kingsbridge Riverdale Van Cortlandt Development Corp., Councilman Mark Levine, NYS Senator Jeffrey Klein, The Natural Areas Conservancy, New Yorkers for Parks, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, NYC H2O, Senator Gustavo Rivera, Riverkeeper, S.W.IM. Coalition, the Trust for Public Land, Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy and Wave Hill have signed on.    If your group would like to sign on please email christina@vancortlandt.org .  Individuals may add their support by signing our online Free Tibbetts Brook petition.  Check out this short video from BronxNet to learn more about daylighting of Tibbetts Brook.

Watch this Video & Learn about the Friends

Click Here to Watch the Video Directly on YouTube.

Thank you to Next Round Productions for creating this wonderful video for us.  Very special thank you to Partnerships for Parks for helping to fund the video!

Master Plan for Van Cortlandt Park

NYC Parks recently finalized a comprehensive Van Cortlandt Park Master Plan that will guide the restoration of Van Cortlandt Park’s natural beauty and provide solutions for the needs of all neighboring communities. The Master Plan charts clear courses of action to restore and improve this unique property.  The Master Plan is intended to coordinate efforts over the next twenty years between agencies, nonprofit partners, elected officials and community groups to complete capital projects in Van Cortlandt Park.  The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park look forward to helping to implement projects in this plan over the next 20 years.

FVCP in the New York Times!

FVCP was featured in a recent New York Times article New York Parks in Less Affluent Areas Lack Big Gifts.

The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park are a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
Our EIN is 13-3843182.