Public forum explores the role of parks and community centers in the creation of healthy mixed-income communities - Metropolitan Planning Council

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Public forum explores the role of parks and community centers in the creation of healthy mixed-income communities

Quality greens spaces, community centers, and recreational facilities that are well planned, designed and managed can be central to the success of mixed-income communities.

On Aug. 25, the most recent forum of the “Building Successful Mixed-Income Communities” series tackled the issue of “Community Space and Stability: Parks, Community Centers and Recreational Facilities.” Co-sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and MPC, in collaboration with the CHA, the goal of this series is to provide a venue for stakeholders of the CHA Plan for Transformation to explore best practices, as well as their respective roles as policymakers, public officials, business andcommunity leaders, and developers, in contributing to the success of the communities emerging as a result of the Plan.

The format of the forum was a panel of local and national experts:

- María Saldaña (moderator), president of the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners,and MPC Board member

- William Little, Managing Director of Development, Chicago Housing Authority

- Lawrence Vale, Head of the M. I. T. Department of Urban Studies and Planning

- Gabriella DiFillippo , Vice President of Real Estate Services, Illinois Facilities Fund

- Eileen Rhodes, Director of Development, East Lake Management Development Corp.

Click here to learn more about the panelists.

Opening Remarks

María Saldaña and William Little opened the panel, focusing on the coordinated efforts of the Chicago Park District and CHA. Saldaña particularly stressed the need for green spaces in many neighborhoods of Chicago, a city with approximately 7,300 acres of green space distributed throughout more than 500 parks. Not only does this represent less acreage that smaller cities such as Denver, but 39 percentof this open space is located along the lakefront.

Historically, one of the most innovative and important ideas to grow out of the Chicago park system, she noted,was the “field house.” The idea of this building type within a park was pioneering because it established “a new national standard for park design and programming.” For the first time, these parks offered a variety of year-round services including both indoor and outdoor recreational facilities as well as educational, recreational, and athletic programming, and other services (i.e., free public bathing facilities, earliest local branch libraries, inexpensive hot meals, cafeterias, health services, English lessons). Essentially, these parks served as community hubs. The Park District now owns 250 field houses or "recreation centers" — as they are now called — and there is a demand for more.

As far back as the early 1900s, the founders of the city's park system recognized the value of leveraging public resources by partnering with other public agencies. The Chicago Park District and CHA have a long history of cooperation that dates back to the 1940s, when both agenciesbegan working together to provide open space surrounding the new public housing properties being developed throughout the city.

More than 50 years later, the CHA Plan for Transformation has made the cooperation between the Park District and the Housing Authority stronger than ever. One example, as expressed by Little, is Fosco Park, a 57,000-square-foot community center located in the Roosevelt Square community (the former site of the ABLA homes), which will include an indoor swimming pool, gymnasium and new daycare facility.Little called for stakeholders willing to participate in partnerships to help create the green spaces and community facilities needed for the mixed-income communities to be viable.

National perspective

Prof. Lawrence Vale described the key role the “dynamics of trust” between stakeholders (housing authorities, residents, developers, etc) play when it comes to planning and implementing the revitalization of distressed public housing. Public housing designers in the early 1940s resisted connecting housing with street life, avoiding spaces that were not either wholly public or wholly private, such as porches and front yards, when planning new housing developments. These decisions, along with the insistence by HUD on cutting costs and not involving residents in the planning of public housing, led to the construction of massive “projects” located in isolated superblocks and disconnected from the street grid, where the mid and high-rises were surrounded by poorly designed and maintained green spaces.

Vale presented two cases of successful revitalization of public housing in Boston, which tried to fix the mistakes of the past by including residentsin planningand giving them a voice and decision power throughout the design, construction and management processes. The two examples were:

- Harbor Point (the former Columbia Point), a 1,502-unit development built in 1954 and redeveloped between 1978 and 1990; and

- Commonwealth (also known as “ Fidelis Way ”), with 648 units, built in 1951 and redeveloped between 1980 and 1985.

Coulumbia Point was created in the 1950s in close proximity to the city dumps and prison, a sad metaphor, according toVale, of the spirit of public housing development in that period. Located steps away from Boston ’s shoreline, the site had no connections whatsoever to this amenity, nor to any kind of community-friendly open space. After decades of neglect, federal and local authorities decided to redevelop the area in a way that would re-conquer the open space for the residents, adding trees, sport facilities and parks and, more importantly, linking the waterfront to the housing through bike and pedestrian paths.

 

Columbia Point before its transformation

The role of residents was vital in the redevelopment planning process. As one tenant stated: “The community is not interested in being planned for; the community is interested in planning.”In the beginning, residents wereopposed tothe new public space areas, fearing that drug-dealing and other undesirable activities would take placewithin them. Yet after negotiations and through quality design and management plans, the areas became safe environments where all residents — public housing tenants and newcomers living in the affordable and market-rate homes — spend time and enjoy the facilities.

 

Harbor Point: Columbia Point after its transformation

In Commonwealth, the revitalization of the site did not include a mixed-income component, but it has also became a successful model. Additional roads were created, along with a community and daycare center, and a new city park. The mid-rise buildings were converted into townhomes with private gardens and yards, as well as porches. The tenants were deeply involved in the revitalization process from the very beginning, and through an agreement with the Boston Housing Authority and the developer, retained the right to fire the management company.

Vale shared a number of lessons learned:

- Successful new communities are built from the successful parts of older   communities;

- Design process matters as much as design products;

- Public space must be planned for and managed through agreed-upon standards;

- New communities should be city pieces, not enclaves;

- Private spaces should provide informal surveillance of public places.

To download the complete presentation by Lawrence Vale in PowerPoint, click here .

Local Resources

Gabriella DiFilippo of the Illinois Facilities Fund (IFF) opened her presentation stating, “With the right mix of people, place, programs, and partners, community facilities offer an important foundation for community building.” The IFF, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, is producing a high level assessment of the community facility needs in nine CHA transformation sites and its surrounding community. The sites are:

     -         Roosevelt Square (formerly the ABLA site)

-         Westhaven (formerly Henry Horner Homes)

-         West End (formerly Rockwell Gardens)

-         Park Boulevard (formerly Stateway Gardens)

-         Legends South (formerly Robert Taylor)

-         Oakwood Shores (formerly the Madden-Wells-Darrow site)

-         Hilliard

-         The Lakefront area, including Lake Park Crescent and Jazz on the Boulevard

-         The Near North mixed-income communities located on and off-site the former Cabrini-Green

The assessment prioritizes those sites most ready for a community facility plan and will include specific recommendations on how community facility needs should be addressed. The IFF’s approach to developing community facilities will be broad – in every case, the services provided must meet the needs of a community and be sustainable over time.

Some of the findings to date are:

-         There is no consistent approach to planning for facilities in those nine sites

-         Good demographic projections do not exist for the age breakdown of residents (IFF had to develop its own methodology)

-         Services are not needed everywhere as demographics do not show need

-         Available land shortages and insufficient funding are large barriers

Help is needed, according to Ms. DeFilippo, to increase the awareness of existing assets and services in the communities, establish more partnerships, coordinate between entities that own land or buildings (such as the Chicago Public Schools or the CHA), and obtain more financial support for the development of facilities where they are needed.

To download Gabriella DiFilippo’s presentation in PowerPoint format, click here .

Local Practices

At East Lake Management Development Corp., Eileen Rhodes is responsible for overseeing all aspects of East Lake’s development portfolio: from financing to design to construction management to property management and occupancy. East Lake is the master developer of West End, an 823-home mixed-income development being built mainly on the site of the former Rockwell Gardens (bounded by Madison, Western, Van Buren, and Rockwell) and on nearby properties off-site.

During her presentation, Rhodes outlined three kinds of challenges that her firm has faced while trying to develop open space and community centers for the West End community.

The first set of challenges were location-related: where to put the community space in an area where available land is scarce, and even off-site land has been acquired in order to accommodate the projected homes? The proximity of service providers such as Marcy Newberry, the Salvation Army or Medical Center, led the planning team to question whether the provision of on-site centers would duplicate services already provided by these agencies on nearby sites. Finally, the community residents had different concepts of open space, depending on their needs: some of them wanted private green space around their homes, others prefered medium-size parks, and others gave priority to the creation of a large park with sports and recreational facilities.

The second set of challenges relate to the lack of strong, established stakeholders in the area. Although the development has a number of allies in the community, unlike other transformation sites, West End lacks strong institutions that feel connected to the redevelopment of the community, such as the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), tied to the Roosevelt Square community; the YMCA and the LEED Council, both connected to Cabrini-Green; or the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in the Park Boulevard area.

Finally, funding constraints are provoking delays in the construction of a community center that is $300,000 short of budget. East Lake is proposing a $1.6 million campus-park to be developed in partnership with the Park District and CPS at nearby Grant School. This underutilized school might be used by Marcy Newbery for the provision of services such as daycare.

Questions and Answers

The forum closed with a Q&A session. Here is a sample:

Q: Did residents of the Boston public housing developments have access to professional assistance from planners, architects, lawyers, etc. through the revitalization process?

A: (Lawrence Vale) Yes, they did. Many residents volunteered their time to participate in the planning process and negotiate the different agreements with the housing authority and private firms involved in the redevelopment effort. The Boston Housing Authority paid for professional assistance for these residents, and firms located in the Boston area provided pro bono architectural and legal assistance.

Q: How do you guarantee that all residents will use the public spaces and facilities?

A: (Gabriella DiFilippo) If the facilities are planned, built and managed following high-quality standards, they will be used by the entire community.

A: (Lawrence Vale) It is important to work with the edge. If the community looks enclosed or gated, only people from the “inside” will use the common areas. If these common spaces are inviting and welcoming, more people will feel attracted. To avoid that sense of enclosure, it is important to be careful when placing architectural elements such as gates or fences.

For more information on MPC's Public Housing in the Public Interest program and its Building Successful Mixed-Income Communities series, click here .

Keywords

Housing

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