A South Bronx Park is a Hive of Activity—for Bees and for New Yorkers Training for Green Jobs
A concrete plant reimagined as a garden along the Bronx River offers training for workers to meet NYC’s promise of more 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.
Today, the Concrete Plant Park is spurring another hope: Its green space has become an incubator of sorts to train workers for the city’s green job expansion.
In 2023, Mayor Eric Adams proposed creating in the city nearly 400,000 new green jobs by 2040. Concrete Plant Park is where the nonprofit Home of Prosperity Empowerment, better known as HOPE, has begun to offer hands-on training through a work development program known as Intervine.
Intervine is an intensive three-month program, designed to equip participants from impoverished neighborhoods with skills for careers in green infrastructure and maintenance.
“We’re not just doing good for the environment. We’re creating paid work and valuable job experience,” said Renee Ruhl, Intervine program director. “This is really a social enterprise, because social impact and economic opportunity go hand-in-hand.”
A Micro Oasis Blooms
At Concrete Plant Park, a pollinator garden that was established in 2017 is a naturally buzzy learning center for Intervine trainees.
Plants such as the Anise Hyssop and Butterfly Weed bloom with ready supplies of pollen and nectar, the stuff that attracts bees, butterflies, wasps and beetles, all essential to plant fertilization.
The garden is also just a fun spot in the borough. The Bronx River Alliance, which works closely with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and HOPE, hosts a range of activities including a pollinator scavenger hunt that encourages visitors to wander and observe how pollen moves, on the wings of insects, from one flower or plant to another.
About 88 percent of crop plants require some level of animal pollination to produce common fruits and vegetables, according to nonprofit EarthWatch Institute.
Training Green Stewards
Intervine’s curriculum is a blend of classroom learning and hands-on, in-the-field work.
Participants study basic horticulture, learn to identify some native plants and gain some skill in different green infrastructure techniques, including rainwater harvesting and green roofing.
Rainwater harvesting involves capturing rain that falls on rooftops and storing it in barrels or underground tanks. This collected water is used for non-drinking purposes like water gardening or cleaning, which reduces stormwater runoff and lowers the demand for water systems in cities like New York. It’s a practical, low-cost way to conserve water and support sustainable landscaping.
Green roofing is the practice of growing vegetation on top of buildings, sort of like the grass roof of the Barclays center. These living roofs are built with layers of waterproofing, soil and low-maintenance plants that can survive harsh rooftop conditions. Green roofs help cool buildings, absorb rainwater and can reduce air pollution. At the same time, they are a cool way to bring green spaces into urban environments and expand the lifespan of city rooftops.
”We make sure to cater to the participants’ interests,” Ruhl said. “When they’re genuinely engaged, the learning goes deeper and prepares them better for a career in this field.”
The program emphasizes community engagement so that residents in the neighborhood know the park workers, volunteers as well as paid, and feel connected to their mission, she said.
Such outreach creates a sense of shared ownership and ensures that the work being done isn’t just a project, Ruhl said, but a truly “valued community asset.”
Tracey Capers, HOPE’s executive director, said trainees quickly find their days involve more than knowing the green stuff. HOPE aims for its graduates to find secure dependable work. The nonprofit wants to help break a cycle of unemployment and need among its neighbors.
“It’s not just about getting a job,” Capers said. “It’s about keeping a job, navigating a job, and understanding that there are always going to be ebbs and flows.”
“The Job I Love”
Rodney Santiago, a 2022 graduate of the Intervine program, is one example. Before HOPE, Santiago worked at Western Beef Supermarket, a chain in New York, as a frozen food manager. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, he, like others, found work disappeared. He found out about HOPE’s training program by chance in 2022 when he saw an ad about it on his wife’s cell phone.
He had hoped to find work in the construction industry, but Intervine was an unexpected possibility that he wanted to try and ended up loving.
He found he liked the work and after training, he interned with the city parks department on Governors Island. He then was hired as a seasonal gardener with the Bronx River Alliance, creating rain gardens along the Bronx River.
Today, Santiago is a compost educator coordinator—teaching children about the beauty of composting at Big ReUse, a sustainability-focused nonprofit center in Gowanus, Brooklyn, that provides climate-focused community programs across the borough.
“All of the knowledge I got from HOPE helped me get the job I love,” Santiago said. “It’s almost like doing magic—and I get to teach the composters of the next generation.”
And there still seem to be plenty of green jobs now in the city—even as job openings have fallen in the last couple years. A March 2025 report by the Center for an Urban Future, a New York think tank, found that the number of green job postings dropped from 19,476 in 2022 to 15,501 in 2023.
Capers of HOPE said she prepares her trainees to be competitive for whatever openings the city may have. In-park training allows the community to participate and sees people working to adapt to changing times, she said.
“This is the opportunity for the students that we serve, who may come from environmentally or economically challenged backgrounds,” Capers said. “The green sector lowers barriers to entry and there are always going to be opportunities [with HOPE] to advance long term.”
Staying Ahead of the Curve
HOPE and Intervine planners aren’t just reacting to the market. Administrators are always looking for partnerships. Recently, Intervine has reached out to the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes, a community housing development corporation, to expand employment opportunities. “We want to know if [program members] can coat roofs, do landscaping, and even bring the residents in the building along for the journey,” Capers said.
Ruhl said she is sure that small efforts can lead to big community impacts. Just look at the riches of Concrete Park now. It is a green haven.
“We of course want to continue the program and the momentum behind it, because green jobs are more important now than ever,” Ruhl said. “Creating an opportunity for stable jobs has had such a big impact on the city’s residents.”
Cover photo: Rodney Santiago, a compost educator coordinator, leads a team of HOPE members through Concrete Plant Park in the South Bronx. Credit: HOPE
