Goodbye Prospect Heights Patch!

Update, August 20: It turns out that Prospect Heights Patch and the rest of the New York City sites will remain open for the time being. The sites will be split up among the remaining Patch editors so that each oversees a cluster of sites. 

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August 16, 2013

For the past 2 years and 9 months I edited Prospect Heights Patch. On Friday morning I was laid off along with hundreds of others at Patch. In New York City, four of Patch's seven editors were laid off.

While I am sad end my coverage of the area, I am grateful for the years I spent reporting on such a great neighborhood. 

I loved covering Prospect and Crown Heights. The issues facing this community are fascinating: gentrification, development, historic preservation, income inequality. But its the people I will miss the most. 

I've met so many who fiercely love Prospect and Crown Heights and give so much of their time to protect it.

I am in awe of all the wonderful things going on in the neighborhood. The longtime residents and newbies who have come together to make improvements or prevent harm to the area.

The people who plant wondrous gardens in window boxes and kooky planters and tree pits and tiny front yards that turn Prospect Heights into a wonderland each summer.

Those who organize street clean-ups, and volunteer at community gardens and install Free Libraries, and host events such as Crown Heights Kids Day on Franklin Avenue each summer.

There are so many people who are huge fonts of knowledge about the neighborhood's complex issues, such as development at Atlantic Yards, and they have always been so very generous and patient in helping me understand.

I want to thank the people who took the time to e-mail me when they noticed an error on the site, when writing a public comment, or doing nothing at all, would have been so much faster for them.

I want to thank all the people who have rallied around the site with Facebook likes, story shares and kind comments. Those comments always made my week.

I always felt like the community was rooting for the site, and that buoyed me every day. 

Although I will no longer have the pleasure of covering the neighborhood as my job, I will be around enjoying all it has to offer.

Please stay in touch. I can be reached at amy.clark.reports@gmail.com or on twitter @amysaraclark.