Good morning.

I'm Catherine White, Executive Director of the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce, and we are thrilled to be here today for the grand opening of the Lincoln Park Conservancy History and Culture Center.

Plans for this cult history and culture center started pre-COVID.

So it has been years in the making.

And with the work of Linda Tarrant Reed and Stuart Reed.

Multiple grants, fundraising, and creative efforts.

We are here today.

One special thank we want to point out at this location in New Rochelle downtown is a retail tenant improvement fund recipient, which is an amazing grant that the city of New Rochelle puts out to support our small businesses, our nonprofits, just to revitalize our downtown with the type of experiential businesses that our new tenants and our older residents all are looking for.

We have so many people here today to celebrate with Linda and Stu.

So I'm going to try to introduce everyone in order and hopefully haven't missed anyone.

So of course we'll begin, and we're very honored to have them here with us today.

We have New York State Senate Majority Leader, Andrea Stewart Cousins.

From Westchester County government, we have Westchester County legislators Judah Holstein and Terry Clements.

From the City of New Rochelle, we have so much support today, and we're always so grateful that everyone comes out to celebrate our new businesses and our grand openings.

Beginning, of course, with our mayor, Yudira Ramos Herbert.

City Manager Will Melendez.

And then we have many people from different departments.

Let's start with economic development.

We have the Commissioner, Adam Salgado.

Director of Economic Development, Kevin Jimenez.

And small business manager for the City of New Rochelle.

We have Mariana Husafai.

We also have supporting as always Buildings Commissioner Paul Vaca.

We wouldn't be here today without all of the hard work of his department.

So thanks so much, Paul, for always coming out and supporting.

And of course, we have with us today Vin Parisi, Commissioner of Parks and Rec.

They've worked with Linda and Stu on many different projects, and you know, they're the fund department.

Okay, so we have with us today also the IDA manager, manager Katrina Shivers.

Our city historian Barbara Davis.

She works very closely in enhancing and bringing forward the history of Lincoln of Lincoln Park and Lincoln Avenue, which Linda and Stu are so devoted towards, which the whole building is really in support of.

Then we have, of course, NRPD in the house.

They come all the time, but specifically, we have Commissioner Neil Reynolds with us and Captain Nicholas Zazulo.

As we are in the downtown, of course, we have NR we have the NR BID people here with us, the New Rochelle Downtown Bid, Ann Gold, Executive Director.

And Kevin Rucker, Vice President.

Showing support, we have Eugenia Shaktoff from the library, executive director.

We also have the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club Becky is with us.

Here we have Ned Morello and Noel Brown.

I think that's everyone.

And now again, we'd like to also give credit to the stars of the show, Linda Tarrant Reed and Stu Reed.

As I said, many people are thrilled to be here today, and I'd like to begin by calling to the microphone New York State Senator Andrea Stewart Cousins.

Thank you so much, Catherine, and thank you to the New Rochelle community.

You did a great job of listing everyone.

So I will not begin to do that, but of course, the uh glorious day belongs to the Reeds.

Linda Tarrant Reed, Stuart Reed.

I had the privilege of representing New Rochelle back in the day for about 10 years.

And among the amazing people that I met was uh Linda and with her, you know, partner, uh, ride or die, I call it Stuart.

And the the amount of passion they have for everything uh to do with the culture and uh and gardens and community uh is really unmatched.

And when they talked about building this monument in many ways to our history and to the history of desegregation in this very city, uh which a lot of people don't know about.

I was intrigued and was very, very happy to be able to provide uh a grant at that time in the amount of 50,000 to help this happen.

Little did I know that we would be in a point now where a I I I still I don't represent uh New Rochelle.

You you know, my good friend Senator Mayer represents part of it along with with Senator Natalia Fernandez, who represents this particular area, but obviously we're all still committed to all things I am uh all things New Rochelle.

However, I did not think we'd be at a moment where history is actually being erased, certainly black history.

So what what sounded like a great idea to give uh some context to a difficult time in the history of New York and in New Rochelle in particular, it is now I think more imperative than ever that we actually tell the story so that people understand how we got here and how precious the moments are that we can be together and continue a forward march.

This allows for that.

So I hope it's emulated.

Yonkers had a similar story.

I hope that this example will help not only this city but cities all over our state and our nation to be proud of the history, to be proud of the progress and to make sure that people understand we need not repeat a negative past.

We need to go forward.

So thank you again, Linda and thank you.

And I will add that she's Linda Linda always says that she's she's uh we we say commissioner square because I was able to appoint her to the Taconic Parks region, so she's our commissioner on the statewide park system, and of course, in terms of the reparations, who better to talk about uh reparations in New York State, but she's a commissioner for that too.