2010 POCKET PARK PROJECTS
1) New: Felege Hiywot Center: 1960 Hillside Avenue, 46218, in Martindale Brightwood. This is a new pocket park on a vacant lot that has had a lot of illegal dumping on it, being located on a busy street with not too many businesses nearby. This park will have a community vegetable garden as its focus, with areas for relaxing and building friendships. It is being done by the Felege Hiywot Center, which already has a successful gardening program (three blocks away) for after school and all day long during the summer for local kids. They are taught about the environment, gardening, where food comes from, nutrition, and then can take the harvest home to share with their families, all the while encouraging youth to embrace the virtues of community service. This site is also across a street from a church with a strong youth (sports and play) program as well, so the two groups will be partnering on this garden.
2) New: Irvington PreSchool Playground Renovation: 30 North Audubon Road, 46219, Irvington: This is a refurbishing of an existing playground used by 100+ kids each day in the church’s pre-school, and by neighborhood kids on afternoons, evenings, and weekends. This is a good, strong, established, and organized group. Volunteer activities will include painting the playhouse, installing a new piece of playground equipment or two, repairing some of the curb holding in the playground mulch, spreading more mulch, building a new paver walkway to access the playground, planting a few trees and flowers, and more. This project is scheduled for March 13th.
3) New: Dearborn Gardens, 842 North Dearborn Street, 46201, RMS10 Neighborhood, Near East Side: The neighborhood organization that developed the now-famous Paige Booker Park wants to add a few features to that park, but more importantly, wants KIB’s help in developing a nearby park that has a food growing focus. Thus, we are helping this neighborhood to expand their urban vegetable garden. KIB had previously provided large concrete “boxes” by CMG Manufacturing to be used for raised garden beds; we will be expanding on that concept with additional structures such as fences and arbors for additional vegetable and fruit growing.
4) New: Bishop’s Garden at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3425 West 30th Street, 46222: This is the creation of a peace garden with multiple amenities on land adjacent to the church, which will be open to the public. They have a number of activities they want to promote in this space. They want to develop the area closer to the church building into an amphitheater, a gathering place for music and social events and to differentiate that area from the area used as play fields. A gazebo will be placed so that it can provide shade for parents while children play and also be used for weddings. A buffer will be planted between the large open area (to be used for play fields) and the street to keep the kids safe from traffic. A children’s vegetable garden will be planted within the fenced-in playground area. And the IndyGo bus stop at the corner of their property will be landscaped.
5) New: Community Outreach Center, 900 East 23rd Street (at Guilford), 46205, King Park Area: This is a new pocket park on a vacant lot next to a community center, on the near north side. This is an important location, as the nearest park, Kennedy King Park, is across College Avenue and kids cannot get to it safely. This will give the neighbors a place to gather, and a place for the kids to play. It will create a focus for the neighborhood in an area of need. The park has not been designed yet, so specifics are not yet available as to what features we will be creating in this space. This is a group that was turned down 3 years ago that has since then built community and started work on their dream park without KIB. Their goal is to have a Paige Booker style park, but we will start them out smaller and easier to help build the momentum of their neighborhood involvement.
6) Oaks Academy Arboretum (multi-year project): 2301 North Park Avenue, Fall Creek Place, Near North Side:
We started this arboretum/park in 2008, building berms and planting 29 trees. The master plan for the school property includes natural playgrounds and open space for both active play and relaxation during the school day. The design by Charles Steele creates a visual interest in a flat neighborhood with berms and rocks, also creating a small amphitheater that can be used as an outdoor classroom. The tree selection is all native to Indiana, with a broad variety for educational purposes. The arboretum/park makes up about 25% of the total area of the master plan. Due to budget, the arboretum portion of the master plan was only half completed in 2008. In 2009, students and parents completed the arboretum portion of the master plan, adding more berms, native trees, and shrubs. As part of Lilly Day of Service, we continued work on the master plan with improvements to the natural playground, building a gazebo, an overlook, and planting over 50 trees. After LDOS, a few parents added raised beds for the students to grow vegetables and learn about where food comes from and nutrition.
In 2010, we will be extending the arboretum to circle the perimeter of the future play fields, and will be creating a pathway that winds through these trees. The grant from Waste Management will be used to build a Trex recycled lumber bridge connecting two planted mounds. We will also work with the students to add interpretive signage to educate the students and neighbors about the trees and shrubs. This is a great project that combines NeighborWoods, GreenSchools and Pocket Parks, and has a lot of student and parental involvement. (2008 sponsored in part by State Farm, plus a 2009 grant from Waste Management),
7) Miracle Place: 941 North Temple Avenue, 46201, St. Clair Place Neighborhood, Near East Side:
This Catholic social service organization is located in an old double on the near east side. The park is on a formerly vacant lot (where a house burned down) directly across the street from their facility. This park is for both their clients and for the neighborhood. It was designed by Nicholas Oskay of David Holeman Landscape to be a multi-use park like many of the others KIB has built, with a small playground, raised vegetable garden, mural wall, and with trees and perennial gardens for beauty. This near east side location is a “hot spot” for KIB and the City, and a park here is a nice addition to a neighborhood in need. Volunteers from M&I Bank and the Village of West Clay helped the neighbors and clients build the park over 4 workdays, using materials donated by David Holeman Landscape and also from Vine and Branch. In 2009 we built everything except for the playground equipment, sponsored by Village of West Clay.. This group is taking excellent care of their park we built in 2009, and they want to attract more neighbors into it with the play equipment as in Paige Booker Park. We hope to install the playground equipment in 2010
8) Global Peace Initiatives, Island of Santorini Park, 1433 East Prospect Street.
This park space, owned by and close to Santorini’s Restaurant, is already under construction. They have built a topographical map of the island of Santorini by moving soil around. KIB is helping to complete the park with plantings on the “island”, hand made walking pavers with sayings of peace on them in the “ocean” surrounding it, plantings around the edge of the lot to define the space, and a vegetable “peace garden” in the rear.
9) KaBOOM Playground Build: Location not selected until summer 2010:
KaBOOM! is a national charity that believes in a safe place to play within walking distance of every child’s home. They give project grants to schools to build a large playground, with side projects such as shade structures, benches, picnic tables, tree plantings, and so forth, on the grounds of the school. The kids at the school help to design their playground. KaBOOM! supplies the playground equipment, KaBOOM! and The Home Depot supply lumber and other building materials, and KIB supplies volunteers, tools, trees, and other materials for this build. While we usually help out with 1 or 2 builds per year, KIB partnered with KaBOOM! on 4 school projects in 2009. Up to 300 volunteers from the sponsoring company, the school, and the community come together to assemble and build the kids’ dream playground, and to beautify the grounds of the school, all accomplished in one day!
10) Cottage Home Neighborhood Park (multi-year project): 758 North Highland, Near East Side:
This is an existing park, and the focus has changed a bit since they were originally awarded the pocket park grant for 2008, for improvements to the park. Thanks to Brian Burtch, an architect, and Karen Hotlep, a landscape architect, both from Interdesign, the park has been completely redesigned with a complex and environmentally focused plan. This includes a multi-use shelter/stage to make the park more of a gathering space. This resulted in moving (and expanding) the community vegetable garden. The plan for the park shelter is to use as many re-used and recycled materials as possible, many of which have turned out to be free, other materials will be paid for by the Waste Management grant. The grant from United Water is for stormwater control applications, including rain barrels catching water off the roof of the shelter, and a rain garden. Volunteers from Target have come out for 2 of the workdays to help neighbors and IUPUI volunteers build the features of the park. Professional chefs who live in the neighborhood have provided tasty meals for many of the work days. Work in 2010 will focus on finishing the walks and planting trees. Sponsored in part by Mike Smith, also in part by grants from Waste Management and United Water.
