In the fall of 2014, Joanna Delson, Executive Vice President of CIVITAS Citizens, Inc., Marina Ortiz, President of East Harlem Preservation (EHP), and Connie Lee, the then-President of the Marcus Garvey Park Alliance, met at a CIVITAS co-sponsored session at the National Academy of Design, titled Historic Preservation and the Park Avenue Historic District. Here they discovered a shared interest in historic preservation in East Harlem.