The Man Who Creates Nature Preserves Right Down Broadway

Your first association with the word “mall” might be shopping destinations in the suburbs, but the word was originally derived in the 16th century from the Italian pallamaglio (or French paillemaille), which means “ball-mallot.” It evolved into pall-mall, a croquet-esque British game that was played on long stretches of greenway. And thus we arrive upon our usage for this year’s Westside Spirit Thanks You award recipient Andrew Genn, the executive director of the Broadway Mall Association (BMA).

He is the man who helped transform the Malls, which were historically grassy pedestrian promenades but had fallen into disrepair and disarray and consisted of a thick covering of weedy ivy, and were mostly ignored and neglected. His job, and what has become his passion, is reviving them as living, thriving greenways in the middle of this bustling city.

The BMA maintains the 5-1/2-mile median strip on the boulevard between 70th and 168th streets. The association is a tight operation, with just two co-workers snuggled into a cozy office space in the Rutgers Building at 73d and Broadway. It has operated as a stand-alone 501(c)non-profit since 1987.

Most of the time, Genn is out in the trenches working in coordination with contracted landscapers as well as city agencies to create urban oases in Malls.

He focuses on hardy, urban plants native to the region. In certain stretches between 84th and 164th streets they have created “test Malls” to see which plants can thrive under these very difficult growing conditions, choosing species that Genn states have a “very different look and feel” to create “different ecosystems” that can support both native wildlife and enhance the aesthetics of the neighborhood.

Because the neighborhood and community are what it’s all about; Genn recently organized a “field trip” of sorts for 30 8th-graders from Booker T. Washington Middle School to help weed and clear detritus and trash from a new planting zone at West 72nd Street that is just beginning to sprout this year’s daffodils, planted last fall in coordination with the block association, amid rock-cordoned raised beds that with will harbor native plants.

Genn is a born (in Manhattan) and bred (grew up in Fresh Meadows, Queens) New Yorker, and now resides on the Upper West Side, within the jurisdiction of the BMA. Even while living in Queens, his goal all along had been to “return to his roots” in Manhattan, preferably the UWS, where he harbored distinct memories of reading Richard Scarry books as a child that described that very neighborhood. Genn likes to use a lot of plant analogies, like the “roots” return and how discovering an Urban and Regional Studies major at Cornell University “planted a seed” that grew into his current position.

After graduating from Cornell, he obtained a graduate degree in 1999 at CUNY in Public Policy. In 1996 he married his wife, Rita, who is the head of their neighborhood block association. It was his mother, however, who was the instrumental influence in his shift from his job as Senior VP for Transportation at the NYC Economic Development Corporation to the BMA. She maintained a Victory Garden at their home in Queens, so Genn’s apple fell not far from the tree. His wife’s active participation in the block association also swayed the move, putting them both in the epicenter of civic and community engagement.

Forging that connection between nature, the community, and the environment is Genn’s favorite part about his job, much like the original intent of the Malls themselves, to connect the verdancy of Central Park from tip to tip along Broadway with the little urban “parklets” nestled between the two-way flow of traffic, and life, in a city where nature is often forgotten.

They say the ultimate goal is a job you love so much that it doesn’t feel like work, and such is the case for Genn. “I get to plant an urban jungle, support public art programming . . . and make connections with neighborhood folks who all want the same thing —clean, healthy streets, interesting programming, and fun winter lighting.”