A Park for the Ages

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Kathy Blaha

Mil1According to Wikipedia, Anish Kapoor’s contract to create the popular sculpture, Cloud Gate (more commonly known as the “Bean”) for Millennium Park, stated that the constructed piece should be expected to survive for 1,000 years.  Even the name for the park reflects a longevity that is visionary – and forever – as it approaches its tenth anniversary.

I recently caught up with Ed Uhlir, Executive Director for Millennium Park, Inc. (MP, Inc.), to talk with him about lessons learned at the Park and what has surprised him about its success.  “The biggest thing is that it turned out to be such a huge economic engine for the city,” he said. Uhlir recognized the importance of high quality design in creating real estate value but he’s not sure anyone would have predicted the size of the impact that Millennium Park has had.  A 2011 Texas A&M report on the impact of the park tells us,

…it is clear that Millennium Park has generated the following economic impact on the City of Chicago: $490M in total park construction; $ 2.45 Billion in new construction near the park; 70,070 direct, indirect and induced jobs created by new construction in the area; a 57% increase in new residential units near the park (3,587 units since 2005); 29% premium on park units sold with views of the park; five million annual visitors which generate $1.29B in tourism dollars; $5.9M in annual operations costs that feed the local economy; 2,126 new underground parking spaces at Millennium Park; an 11% increase in hotel rooms (751 rooms) near the park; $173.5M donated by 115 founders to specific projects within the park; and 11 fortune 500 companies that donated to the park.

How did that happen?  Ed says, “It’s the world-class art and design.  It has branded the park and added value to the image of Chicago.”  And, I would add, it represents the kind of success that results from effective leadership and a strong public/private partnership. “The private partnership enabled us with flexibility and the ability to be more selective in getting great design.”

One of the things that the Millennium Park planners did so well was to incorporate great art and design that gives the park a sense of beauty beyond its landscaping and gardens.  The challenge now is to continually position the park as cutting edge, with more creative contributors.  “We do have new ‘beans’ every couple of years,” said Ed.  The formal Boeing Galleries in the Park – two outdoor galleries designed for public exhibitions – are a home for changing shows of contemporary art.  Every two years a new show is staged, generally from an artist outside the United States.

Mil2
And Millennium Park continues to expand its brand by making connections to the properties around it.  The elegant Nichols Bridgeway leads south to the new addition of the Art Institute.  East of the Park, and across Frank Gehry’s BP Bridge over Columbus Drive, there are plans for transforming Daley Bicentennial Park into Maggie Daley Park, a thirty-acre park and children’s play space, with a better connection to the city’s lakefront.

The increase in surrounding property values and the creation of new jobs is one important gauge of the park’s success, but just as important has been the impact the park has had on tourism.  One interesting measure for this, says Ed, is Trip Advisor.  There are over 2,600 reviews for the Park on Trip Advisor, with almost all of them calling their visit “excellent” or “very good.”  Ninety-eight reviewers called their Millennium Park experience “average.”  Out of curiosity, I checked out Trip Advisor reviews for a few other signature parks around the country: New York attractions take the cake with the High Line receiving 5,300 positive reviews, and Central Park has over 12,000 reviews; Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle has 152 reviews; and Discovery Green in Houston has 60 reviews.

With park visitation up to 5 million annually, the City of Chicago is focusing on its “brand” across the country and world and is opening tourism offices with one of their pitches being, “Come visit Millennium Park.”  Foreign visitors are the fastest growing group of visitors and – though still a small number in comparison to local and regional visitors – they spend more money.

Ed believes that in addition to great art and design, great programming is what brings people to the park, which hosts over 600 free events annually.  “There are lots of opportunities in this small space and everything is free thanks to donors who sponsor many of the programs,” he says.  But there is a potential conflict between donors who made gifts and wanted everything to be free for park users, and the city which needs to balance its budget to keep the programs running.  Endowments, not just for the art but for programs, are now a key part of fundraising.

MP, Inc. currently has $25 million in restricted and unrestricted endowments (not including a $10 million pledge for the outdoor concert pavilion).  Their goal is to double that.  “The private-public partnership is important to making the park work and endowment money helps assure that the partnership continues into the future.”

Half of the board of MP, Inc. is original to when work on the park began in 1996.  Some of them feel like they have accomplished what they set out to do and are ready to move on.  Now, younger family members of original donors are joining the board as membership diversifies from those who built it to those who are committed to enhancing it.  Program endowments – such as the one from McDonalds to manage the Cycle Center and present free morning exercise programs, or Boeing’s endowment of the outdoor art gallery – are increasingly important to keeping the park successful through high quality programs.

When the park opened, The Financial Times described Millennium Park as “…a genuinely 21st-century interactive park [that] could trigger a new way of thinking about public outdoor spaces.”  These days Millennium Park is as much a venue for driving economic impact in the city as it is a respite from the tall, dark skyscrapers that surround it.  Keeping the park vibrant will require the same kind of focus on excellence that made it a success.  Like a museum, the Park will have to manage its art and attractions to keep them fresh – and cutting edge – in order to keep people coming and driving its economic impact.  And that will take new and committed public-private partnerships for managing the park for the next 1,000 years that Cloud Gate shines.

KBlahaKathy Blaha writes about parks and other urban green spaces, and the role of public-private partnerships in their development and management. When she’s not writing for the blog, she consults on advancing park projects and sustainable land use solutions.

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Innovative Governance

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Kathy Blaha

“There should be more than one way to run a park.”  
                                                                –Adrian Benepe

So went the thinking behind the creation of Central Park Conservancy as recounted by Adrian Benepe, former New York City Parks Commissioner and now Director of Urban Parks for the Trust for Public Land.  Adrian was here in Miami this week, touring the city, talking with park advocates, and looking for ways that the national organization and its cadre of urban park experts could add value to Miami and Miami-Dade County parks.

Miami1Adrian talked about the challenges cities face in continuing to be the sole steward for their parks in the face of huge budget challenges, and a list of pressing needs longer than your arm.  Why not, he argued, find new models that not only bring more resources into the equation but also add more value?

His words ring true for cities across the country who increasingly see parks as part of their strategy for economic development while struggling to find new models for developing and operating them – or, as editor and columnist for Fortune magazine, Geoff Colvin sees it, “…developing the most crucial competency for every company today, innovating the business model.”  Substitute the word ‘parks’ for ‘company’ and all his ideas are relevant to our work.

In a recent interview with Urban Land magazine, Colvin extrapolates his ideas about business model innovation for real estate:

It’s a big story in commercial real estate, as the buildings tend to last a long time. But the buildings may last longer than the business model. In an awful lot of businesses, the model lasted for decades, if not a century. It just doesn’t anymore. The ability to envision different business models for a given property is going to be extremely valuable.

And, a source of competitive advantage.  The most important element of business model innovation for parks right now is around governance.   How can cities and their bureaucracies give way to more decentralized, resourceful decision-making?  Park visitors want so much more from their experience than one public agency can manage, even if they had all the financial resources to do so.  A better way is to find a structure that gives all the stakeholders the freedom to express their ideas – through social media to formal advisory roles to a full-fledged partnership stake.

The stakes here are high – as in the case of the High Line development, which has helped to trigger the construction of 40 new buildings, 12,000 new jobs and $200 million of new tax revenue (predicted to hit $900 million by 2020), not to mention the tourism dollars generated from nearly 5 million annual visitors.  Millennium Park, the subject of my next post, has generated $2.4 billion in new real estate construction in the last ten years according to a Texas A&M study.  If, as Adrian says, parks are becoming the linchpin for economic development strategies for cities, then we need to rethink our motivation for P3s as being about much more than a default option for governments due to a lack of money.

HighLine2The value of a conservancy as a private partner to park agencies is about constituency and constancy.  According to Adrian, in addition to Central Park Conservancy and Prospect Park Alliance, there are 200 ‘friends of the parks’ groups in New York City, as well as a set of city-wide park advocates – all working together to bolster parks.

It may be that we have to start thinking about the business model for parks as a system of interconnected activities and stakeholders; a system that demands flexibility and creativity in determining how a park does business in order to stay vibrant and relevant to its users.  Public agencies can’t have a monopoly on how they runs parks and continue to do it competitively and successfully; they will need to tap into partnerships, external resources and new programs to keep parks vital.

Colvin, in his interview with Urban Land magazine goes on to say,

The problem in doing [business model innovation] is primarily a cultural problem—people just having personal difficulty changing their view of what they do, what the company does. Anytime you change things, you threaten existing interests. Conceptually, making these changes is easy. Even technologically, it’s easy. It’s the human element that makes it difficult.

In Miami, we are challenged with bridging the gap between the city’s now well-established donors and advocates for arts and culture with a small but increasingly vocal group who care about the city’s parks.  Our parks, together with our extensive waterfront are our outdoor living room and another element of our urban culture.  Many of us see a need for a whole new way of thinking about our parks as the city and region experiences another real estate boom – before it becomes too expensive to do so.

Why not?  The weather here is fine, people are outside more than in most cities, and downtown Miami as well as Miami Beach are dense enough now to make bicycling an easy and convenient way to travel.  Why not green our paths and waterfronts and make it easier and more pleasant for residents and visitors to get around this beautiful place – and do it in a way that builds on our economic engine and strengthens peoples’ connection to the city?

Adrian reminded us that with Mayors Bloomberg (New York City) and Nutter (Philadelphia) leaving their jobs as two of the most high profile green mayors in recent history, there is a void in a national mayoral voice making the case for the value of investing in city parks. Who might step in and continue to lead us with innovative governance and business models for running our parks and enlivening our city life?

KBlahaKathy Blaha writes about parks and other urban green spaces, and the role of public-private partnerships in their development and management. When she’s not writing for the blog, she consults on advancing park projects and sustainable land use solutions.

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Belle Isle Conservancy: One Step at a Time

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Kathy Blaha

Belle Isle, the 985 acre island and city park in the Detroit River – and the crown jewel of Detroit’s park system – is in trouble. It has a backlog of cleanup, restoration, and environmental challenges that would make any park conservancy director’s head swim, including a half-dozen historic structures in need of repair, overgrown walking paths, shoreline erosion, invasive species, and padlocked restrooms.

Belle Isle 1But Michele Hodges, Belle Isle Conservancy’s new and very first President, who began work in January of this year, sees it differently – as do its many online fans that see through the deterioration to its great views of the Detroit skyline, beautiful architectural assets and Olmsted-designed promenades that lead to the water’s edge.  It’s those fans who convinced Michele to take the job.  “Belle Isle has an amazing amount of public support and goodwill.  My job is to harness that,” she said.

Belle Isle 2It’s not like the Conservancy has to begin from scratch. Belle Isle has a long history of private partners supporting the park, starting with the Friends of Belle Isle which was founded in 1972. Joining the effort in 1988, the Belle Isle Botanical Society began raising money for projects to improve the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory. In 2004, the Belle Isle Women’s Committee was created and its first project was to upgrade Sunset Point.

The Belle Isle Conservancy was formed in the fall of 2011, through a merger of four existing nonprofits – Friends of Belle Isle, Belle Isle Botanical Society, Belle Isle Women’s Committee and Friends of the Belle Isle Aquarium.

Belle Isle 3“It was the quality of leadership that brought these organizations together, with stakeholders who had worked on behalf of the park for more than 40 years,” said Michele.   By 2009 these leaders knew their future was in working as one team in order to be a stronger advocate for the park.  They secured foundation funding, brought in a consultant and worked for almost two years in aligning their missions and looking forward.

“Community engagement with the stakeholders from the start was important to the merger but it has also laid the foundation for moving forward – now people are already engaged with the park,” she added.

The first stakeholder meetings were held in 2009 to see what advocates wanted for the park.  A user survey was conducted in 2010 – all volunteer driven – with 2200 respondents.  By 2010 merger plans were in the works based on the sentiment of users and advocates that one voice would lead to stronger leadership.  The four organizations voted to move forward in January 2011.

Where Do You Begin?

Sarah Earley, chairwoman of the nonprofit Belle Isle Conservancy, was recently quoted in the local paper as saying, “When we talk about what the park needs, you and I could talk forever.”

Not unlike the downtown BIDs I’ve talked to, “clean and safe” is the first priority.  And as Michele sees it, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit.  “Our first job is capacity building and working to support and enhance the work of our 4500 volunteers.  We have a track record of foundation support and through our annual events, raise $400,000.  It’s all right there for us to harness, put a system in place and get started.”  And getting started in this case means focusing on capacity building – hiring someone to manage the volunteer base and “being a master of leverage” in getting staff and volunteers in place for some key projects that don’t spread the organization too thin.

Belle Isle 5
Working with the City

Beyond an MOU that exists for the Conservancy and the city to work together around managing the aquarium there is no written agreement between the two entities.  The aquarium re-opened to the public last September after shutting down in 2005. A $75,000 grant from the state of Michigan to repair the roof and skylights – and a group of 30 volunteers – keeps the aquarium running and open to the public every Saturday.

Currently the city operates and maintains the park.  Michele said they are looking at the Central Park Conservancy model as one potential way for them to work with the city.  But it is premature to say that they will follow that model.  A master plan for the park was updated in 2005 and the Conservancy has begun talks with the planning firm which did the original plan about what is still relevant.  Assessments will be conducted of all the major assets to develop a capital improvements plan.

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan has offered to lease Belle Isle. Under the plan, in the works since last summer, the island would become a state park with an entry fee, thus covering the annual $6 million in maintenance and operations costs — funds sorely needed for the beloved landmark, which in recent years has fallen into disrepair.  But for the moment the city council has nixed the idea.

Belle Isle 6“We’ll work with whatever entity is at the table,” says Michele.  We were included in the proposal documents as a go-to entity for the state.  We were advocates for the proposal because we saw it as bringing resources to the table; and we saw the lease as an opportunity manage through the crisis.”

The idea is not dead.  An Emergency Financial Manager appointed by the Governor started this week, so it’s possible that the discussion will be re-ignited and involve all three parties.

Building the Budget and the Board

The Conservancy’s budget is almost $1.5 million, including restricted funds, with $700,000 spent annually for operations.  The city spends another estimated $2-3 million in the park.  For the moment there is no earned income revenue, but the idea is on the table.  So is building on the success of their annual fundraisers like the Grand Prix that runs through the park.

Though racing cars through a park is not a common way to raise funds, in June of this year the Grand Prix will once again take place at Belle Isle.  It’s one of their biggest fundraisers and the Grand Prix directors are very supportive of the park.  The Grand Prix though is just one event of many that take place annually in the park and the Conservancy is looking at ways to manage this distinctive event better and in balance with all the other goals and activities for the park.

The Conservancy stakeholders, many of them now on the board, have a 40-year history of working with the city of Detroit.  Each of the original four organizations has representation on the board.  Three or four representatives from city are voting members of the board; a City Councilman is a voting member of the board.

They are continuing to build out their board.  Their bylaws allow for 35 members and they are currently at 19 or 20.  Michele is a big believer in engagement and getting a truly representative board.  They do much of their business by committee – with committees made up of board members and non-members.

The board is balancing the idea of taking on a major capital project early on with doing “lighter, quicker, cheaper” – identifying things that can happen quickly this summer to show improvement.

The P3 Balance

Each time I look at a P3 partnership for parks in a city I wonder how the issue of private conservancies for parks is taking hold.  Given Detroit’s financial woes and challenges, it’s not surprising to see more partnerships blossoming.  Not just private-public but public-public, too, across jurisdictions.  It may turn out to be the best place to trial and showcase what P3s can do in a city.

“Our first goal is to build social capital.  If you don’t have your social capital, cash doesn’t go as far. More than anything else we need the P3 capital – even more than cash.”  Then, Michele says, you can make decisions together and come to conclusions about the right balance together.  “We’re at a very important stage of our growth; we want to find the model that works for our community and has all of our stakeholders involved.”

Many in the city are talking about the right mix of P3s to make the city work well again.  John Gallagher has a long career covering urban redevelopment for the Detroit Free Press, and a new book out about Detroit that looks at reinvention ideas for the city. In a recent column he talks about that public-private balance, saying, “….perhaps the time has come to stop looking at groups like University Circle Inc. [a community service corporation in Cleveland] as a backstop for weak or nonexistent city services and more as a model for a new way of governing urban places.”

And today, while I spoke with Michele, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing announced that local business leaders had come up with $8 million to buy the city ambulances and police patrol cars.  The money from leaders within the Downtown Detroit Partnership will get the city 23 new EMS rigs and 100 police cars.

“Working together we can transform our city,” Bing said.

KBlahaKathy Blaha writes about parks and other urban green spaces, and the role of public-private partnerships in their development and management. When she’s not writing for the blog, she consults on advancing park projects and sustainable land use solutions.

Filed under: economics, funding, partnerships, programming | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Putting the Pieces Together

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Kathy Blaha

Since January I’ve spoken with leaders at city parks and their partners from Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston all the way to Caras Park in Missoula, Montana, studying park conservancies, BIDs and downtown associations in partnership with city and state agencies to manage, maintain, program and fund public parks – mostly downtown parks.  I’ve been thinking about those interviews and the research that I’ve done and trying to pull out the lessons and commonalities about these partnerships.  So far, I think lessons fall into three groups:

  • Governance and the art of partnering
  • Programs and usership
  • Community engagement, access and transparency

The Art of Partnering
Let’s start with the art of partnering.  When I talked about Central Park Conservancy in New York I referenced Chris Walker’s good framework for talking about governance:

Pic1Structure: How is the partnership organized and responsive to the park’s constituency?
Control: Who makes the decisions?
Assets and Liabilities: How are assets and liabilities shared?
Risks:  What are the strategies for mitigating risk?  

In looking at Central Park, Pittsburgh Parks, and Prospect Park I was surprised to find that these organizations operated without formal agreements with their cities for years.  They worked collaboratively and built a joint team leadership that later made determining roles and responsibilities, and contracting, much easier.  “A lot of change comes from gradual improvements,” explained Paul Levy, the Executive Director of Center City District – the BID managing Sister Cities Park in Philadelphia.

Just working together on a day-to-day basis with a set of simple goals – clean up, refurbish, make safe, create fun programs and raise visitation numbers – demonstrated a common commitment to the parks that aligned their teams and created a dedicated management effort.

Pic2DotHAll of those I interviewed also made clear the difference between owning the park and setting the goals – and carrying out that vision and set of goals.  In almost all park partnership cases, a public agency owns the land and sets the rules, and the private partner contracts to support them.

Who makes the decisions becomes far less contentious when the vision for the park is a shared one and the goals for getting there are clear.  In each case, driving these successful partnerships is a plan – a business plan or a master plan or both – that each partner contributed to.  In each case the private partner is walking their talk bringing people, money, talent, and innovation to realize that plan.  They share their assets and help to reduce the public agency’s enormous task.  The public agency, in turn, continues to represent the public’s interest with assuring access, public funding and a long-term commitment to making that public space successful.

Programs and Usership
Success is best measured in visitation – a high level of use by a diverse set of park users that matches a neighborhood or city’s demographics and culture.  If the park is attractive, people will come.  Downtown parks, especially, become meeting places.  Getting people to the park may take food, a beautiful landscape, programs and WiFi – all initiatives that are being carried out by the partnerships.  Out to Lunch in Missoula, food trucks at Rose Kennedy Greenway, successful cafes at the Philadelphia parks and vending carts in Central Park reinforce the idea that a park can be a wonderful place for lunch, a cup of coffee on your way to work or a meal to enjoy as the sun sets.

Pic3In addition to food, we’ve seen schedules for these parks that include, in some cases, over 200 events annually – plenty of concerts, carousels, ice skating, environmental education programs, water features in the form of ponds, fountains, and rivers, kite-flying, running and bicycling.

These park partners are trying to find ways to enliven and activate their parks, trying new things in different spaces in the park.  As Jesse Brackenbury from Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston says, “We’re investing in the park and we want to know whether we are getting results from the investments we are making.”  What they really want to know is – are people coming?

Community Engagement
Prospect Park’s ComCom – its Community Committee –includes representatives from more than 50 local organizations, as well as all of the elected officials (federal, state, and city) and community boards that represent the park and the surrounding districts.   The Caras Park master plan in Missoula was developed by a group of 57 different businesses, residents and organizations that contributed time and money to the effort.

Melissa Brock, Acting Director for the Missoula Downtown Association says, “People recognize this park as a pretty dynamically run place.  We (all of the downtown stakeholders) work together on almost everything.  There is complete synergy in our downtown.  We have something unique in Missoula – how everyone works together.  We’re pretty fortunate to have such a compatible team,” says Brock.

Maybe not every partnership is as copacetic as Missoula’s but the idea is that community engagement and transparency about a park’s management reassures residents and users that the partnership is resulting in efficiencies and becoming a better place.  John Crompton reminds us that frustration with the inflexibility and relatively high costs of government providing direct services is one of the reasons behind the rise of park partnerships.  There is wide recognition of the inefficiencies of delivering services via a monopoly.  The goal of partnerships is about opening up the management process to both competition and collaboration to meet the demand of services that goes beyond what government is providing.

The public’s demand, their engagement – and accountability to them – are especially important in guiding governance and these issues play a vital role in ensuring continued support for public parks and their private partners.   Governance determines who has the power, who makes decisions, how other players make their voice heard and what methods there are for accountability.

As Tupper Thomas, former President of the Prospect Park Alliance and Administrator of Prospect Park in Brooklyn reminded us, “Cities are so strapped, there has to be a give and take.  As the parks department budget gets cut, the conservancies have filled the gap.  Cities without them would pour money only into the popular parks.  The conservancies leverage their ability to raise private money to keep all the parks open.”

Pic 4The success of conservancies continues to outshine their challenges and it’s likely we’ll see many more of them being created across the country.  The City Parks Alliance is committed to understanding and supporting park partnerships; their website is filled with best practices from around the country.  The future of parks appears to be wrapped up in these new forms of leadership – both for the resources and the innovation they offer.

KBlahaKathy Blaha writes about parks and other urban green spaces, and the role of public-private partnerships in their development and management. When she’s not writing for the blog she consults on advancing park projects and sustainable land use solutions.

Filed under: economics, funding, green infrastructure, maintenance/management, partnerships, programming | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Right-Sizing Park Stewardship

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Kathy Blaha

The Central Park Conservancy manages 843 acres. Prospect Park Alliance partners with the city to oversee 585 acres. And the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy stewards over 1,700 acres with its parks department. On the other hand, Sister Cities Park in Philadelphia is less than five acres, and Republic Square in Austin is less than two acres.

The big parks have large conservancies that focus on the enormity of their job. But many of the smaller downtown parks tend to work in partnership with their neighbors, much more aggressively leveraging their amenities together. In many cases, like Sister Cities Park, a small downtown park is managed not by a parks conservancy but by a Business Improvement District (BID) or a downtown association. In fact, there are a large number of parks not managed by their own conservancy but by downtown associations who have seen the value of parks – the living room of the city – in leveraging a vibrant downtown.

Downtown Missoula

Downtown Missoula

A good example of this is in Missoula, Montana where the Missoula Downtown Association (MDA) manages the riverfront-based Caras Park. In 1986 the Parks Department introduced “Out to Lunch,” a downtown weekly lunchtime festival at Caras Park, featuring musicians and today, over 20 varied food vendors. It became clear after the first year of the program that the Parks and Recreation Department was not well suited to producing large events like Out to Lunch because of limited staff resources. In response, the Missoula Downtown Association took over the program and has produced it for more than 20 years – along with currently 75 other annual events.

“We look at the park in a way that it adds to making the whole downtown successful,” says Melanie Brock, Acting Director at the MDA which began as an extension of a committee that started within the Chamber in the 1970s. They grew and became more ambitious with the success of their weekly “out to lunch” program, taking on not just the park but a whole roster of downtown issues. But the park remains central to what they do.

Caras Park was enhanced and developed by the MDA in four phases over the last 25 years. First, seating and an events ring were created; then, creation of a brick plaza area. Phase three created a formal park entrance and parking lots along the riverfront. The fourth and final phase provided restrooms and storage.

The first tent on the site was purchased from a traveling circus show in the early 1980s. The permanent Caras Park Pavilion was constructed in 1997. That structure cost $600,000 with $280,000 of that cost covered by tax increment financing. More than $300,000 was raised and borrowed by the Missoula Downtown Association to complete the project.

The Partners
Since 1997, the City of Missoula has contracted with the Missoula Downtown Association to manage and lease the facilities for both public and private events. Rental fees pay for park operations. The MDA may take the lead on the park’s management and events, in partnership with the city Parks and Recreation Department, but there are a handful of organizations that work closely on a vision for the downtown that builds on that activity center.

Caras Park

Caras Park

MDA partnered with the Missoula Redevelopment Agency (MRA) to originally develop the park site and the MRA retains a seat on the Downtown Association board; they are currently in a partnership to raise money to refurbish the park. The Business Improvement District (BID), housed in the MDA offices, also keeps a seat on the MDA board, as does the Missoula Parking Commission and the Missoula Urban Transportation District. “Everybody plays together really well,” says Rod Austin, Director of Operations for the BID.

In 2009, they jointly paid for a master plan that lays out a development plan for the downtown, including the park, for the next 20 years – along with 57 businesses, individuals and organizations that contributed financially to the creation of the plan.

“Anyone can rent the facility,” says Brock. “For large events we created a Caras Park Committee run out of Parks and Recreation that includes all the key neighborhood councils.” The committee meets annually to review the events schedule – in particular the extraordinary events, events likely to attract more than a few thousand people. They work out a schedule, deal with issues like noise, go over rules and develop a plan for the year.”

Caras Park

Caras Park

“People recognize this park as a pretty dynamically run place. We work together on almost everything. There is complete synergy in our downtown. We have something unique in Missoula – how everyone works together. We’re pretty fortunate to have such a compatible team,” says Brock.

Almost all successful downtown vitality strategies require the community to make the downtown more pedestrian-friendly, give the downtown a strong sense of place and program it with activity that invites visitation every day of the week. But how to do that is the question. All plans fail without a management strategy – what one blogger in talking about smart growth implementation calls, “…the software of the process: the personal leadership role of staff, advocates and elected officials.”

Missoula takes this idea of a team approach to its best incarnation – they provide a way to integrate the park into the planning and programming of downtown housing, commercial activity, transportation and infrastructure. The park becomes one more venue – and a public one – for getting people into the city. Then they invite downtown leaders who are investing in the downtown to be part of the park’s governance and management.

This idea of integrating a public park into the fabric of downtown is not a new one. Hundreds of downtown parks and plazas can be spotted across the country. But many are littered, homes for the homeless and have long since lost their visionary beginnings. So what keeps a park from turning into a no-man’s land? Generally, a failure to provide resources and a plan for governance and management after the ribbon gets cut.

Last week the City Parks Blog provided a link to a story about plans to revive Republic Plaza in downtown Austin. “What is there now has a ‘leftover’ feeling to it; it was not designed for the intense use that the park sees today,” said Marty Stump, a project management supervisor in the parks department.

“Downtown parks are highly coveted event spaces, but they are underutilized as daily public spaces,” said Melissa Barry, arts and parks director at the Downtown Austin Alliance, which represents downtown property owners.

It sounds like Austin now has a vision for the park that involves programming it both for events and as an everyday place for residents and downtown workers. Parks advocates say they expect Republic Square to become more popular as the downtown grows with new condo, hotel and retail projects in the works. Hopefully, the  new downtown plan will make management of the park clear including who will be taking the responsibility for ensuring the outcomes in this new place-making vision?

KBlahaKathy Blaha writes about parks and other urban green spaces, and the role of public-private partnerships in their development and management. When she’s not writing for the blog she consults on advancing park projects and sustainable land use solutions.

Filed under: economics, funding, maintenance/management, partnerships, programming | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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