How Lansing parks and their neighborhoods work together

I was in Hunter Park recently attending Allen Neighborhood Center’s Summer Art Festival and ran into some old friends. We were marveling at how beautiful the park has become and the many delightful amenities it features. 

The pool, with its colorful splash pad for the little ones and the climbing wall for their older sibs, has been packed all summer. The picnic pavilion is in steady use by ANC for its monthly potlucks, gardening workshops and events.  It is also in nearly constant use by neighbors hosting birthday parties and cookouts, and by local faith-based groups using it for social outings.

Several acres of this 13-acre park are under cultivation by ANC’s Hunter Park GardenHouse staff, which grows produce a’plenty to be distributed at ANC’s Breadbasket Pantry and in its Veggie Box Subscription Program. In addition to offering a full array of gardening and farming classes and running educational tours and workshops for kids, GardenHouse staff and a small army of volunteers maintain Edible Park, a u-pick, all-you-can-eat acre of produce and herbs.  Neighbors and friends are informed by colorful signage to help themselves to the fruits, veggies and herbs. Kat Logan, ANC’s associate director, points out that the names of plants “are written in both English and Anishinaabemowin, in deference to the historic use of this land by the Anishinaabeg.” 

The half-mile long path around the park perimeter is popular with members of ANC’s Walking Club, who track their miles and redeem them for farmers market tokens, as well as youngsters on bikes and scooters and neighbors pushing baby strollers or walking dogs. It is all pretty idyllic.

It wasn’t always so. The friends I bumped into and I found ourselves recalling the bad old days in the early-2000s when a chain-link fence across the front of the park kept nearly everyone out except for gang wanna-bes and those engaged in illicit behavior. At the time, people living on either side of Hunter Park approached ANC about holding a meeting to address concerns about drug deals and prostitution. Murdock Jemerson, then director of the Lansing Parks and Recreation Department, was invited to the meeting, which produced very little in the way of strategies to address neighbors’ concerns beyond trying to increase police presence.  After the meeting, however, Murdock asked us if we would be willing to undertake a Park Improvement Plan

We agreed and within a few weeks co-hosted a meeting that drew over 50 neighbors. The park’s landscape designer threw butcher paper on the wall, and folks enthusiastically joined in a visioning session, calling out what they would like to see in the park.  Someone (an ANC plant, I believe) called out “greenhouse,” and despite the startled expressions on attendees’ faces, it made it onto the butcher paper and into the plan. The product of the evening’s work was the Hunter Park 11-Point Improvement Plan, which had the blessing of the Parks Department and the formed-on-the-spot Friends of Hunter Park. Over the next few years, the Friends, ANC and the Parks Department collaborated on grants, fundraisers and workdays until all 11 improvements had been made. These included a transformed pool area, picnic pavilion, walking path, benches (we knew that sittable space was an essential feature of a well utilized park!), lighting, many more trees and, yes, a year-round greenhouse.  Top of the agenda, though, was removing the chain-link fence. When it came down, some neighbors expressed that they felt that they were seeing the park for the first time!

Because parks are meant to have people in them, ANC went about planning diverse programming for diverse people. We tried to schedule activities from 10 a.m. until dusk, seven days per week; it was clear that folks’ sense of safety would depend on there being plenty of legitimate park users as well as GardenHouse staff and volunteers throughout the day.

A few years after the last of the 11 improvements was crossed off the list, LPD reported to us that there had been a roughly 75% reduction in calls to report crime from people living in the three blocks directly west and east of the park. This was a lesson in how parks and the neighborhoods in which they are located do impact and reflect one another.

The story of Hunter Park is not unusual. People throughout this city and region are constantly at work to create more greenspace and improve park access. I hear often about new segments opening on the River Trail or about the creation of unique new parks, such as Play Michigan, a universally accessible park on the Riverfront near downtown Lansing.  We are fortunate in that Lansing has a large number of parks for its population —  “above the national average for parks and park acreage,” Parks Director Brett Kaschinske points out.

Neighborhood parks are uniquely important and have significant impact on our quality of life. They are often the most distinctive, interesting and beautiful features of our neighborhoods. 

I share the story of Hunter Park to encourage folks, if they haven’t already done so, to assess the neighborhood park closest to their home and consider working with the Parks Department on a Park Improvement Plan.  By working in partnership with parks and nearby nonprofits, churches and neighborhood organizations, citizens can help to create, improve or transform an essential neighborhood asset. And, in the process, perhaps transform the neighborhood itself.

Like sociologist William Whyte, who had a lot to say about neighborhood parks and believed that we have a civic responsibility to create physical places that facilitate community interaction, “I end then in praise of small spaces.” 

Is there a public park in your neighborhood that might benefit from a focused improvement plan? Neighbors talking to neighbors is a great place to start.

(Joan Nelson is the retired founding executive director of the Allen Neighborhood Center.)