Sixty years to the week when Major League Baseball owners voted to allow the New York Giants to leave for San Francisco, Pernod Ricard USA is teamed up with the national environmental nonprofit EarthShare and its member group, New York Restoration Project (NYRP), to become a catalyst for change in the upper Manhattan neighborhood where the iconic Polo Grounds stadium once stood.
Hundreds of employees from the company’s Manhattan and Westchester offices today participated in a variety of community improvement projects aimed at restoring five acres of high quality green open space for the roughly 7,000 local residents who live in nearby public housing projects.
Today’s volunteer effort is part of Pernod Ricard’s annual “Responsib’all Day,” in which 18,000 global employees work with local communities to create “convivial, shared spaces.” The project builds on Pernod Ricard’s work last year restoring a northern section of Highbridge Park where people can now stroll, hike, and picnic. EarthShare, a national consortium of environmental groups, has worked with Pernod Ricard USA to produce seven additional Responsib’all Day projects to help communities in need across the U.S.
Following the New York Giants’ move to San Francisco in 1957, The Polo Grounds was demolished in 1964 to make way for two public housing projects now known as Polo Grounds Towers and Rangel Houses.
The adjacent five-acre section of Highbridge Park is the only green open space within a five-minute walking distance for all the projects’ nearly 7,000 residents. The overgrown invasive vegetation and mounds of trash in this section of the park have made it inaccessible to the community.