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Wow. Working with this eclectic group of eco-urbanists on National Park(ing) Day has been crazy fun.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to bring “fresh air” to the city (both literally and figuratively) and doing this has been that “fresh air” for the dedicated group of volunteers working on this. We hope our efforts produce the same effect on passersby and visitors.

In case you are just tuning in. Here’s what we’re doing.

Wednesday, Nancy and Lindsey, the event coordinators hosted our final meeting at their house. We got Zelda’s pizza (thanks to Eric with Walkable Neighborhoods) and set up a “mock” park in the space in front of their house in order to play around with the layout.

After it was laid out, we all kind of shocked by how much you can actually fit in a 22’ x 7’ metered parking space. Hopefully, this will be the same reaction from people who come visit our park tomorrow!

There’s been some amazing progress in the last couple of days… we’re getting sod (and we have a local downtown resident we’re donating it to afterwards). We got benches and umbrellas and tables and chairs and a chess table. We’ve got a live musician coming to play. The Tree Foundation donated 12 trees (including one’s with blossoms on them!). And, of course, our “Sit Here and Dream Big Signs” which we hope will inspire people to think creatively about this city.

To make things a little more interactive, we’ll have post-its and a bulletin board and we’ll ask people to write a quick thought answering the question “What do YOU think will make THIS city a better place to live?” After everything is over, we’ll be typing these out and sending them to key city influencer’s… who knows… maybe one of your ideas will get in the right hands and actually spark a change for the better!

We’ve got fliers which will be distributed tonight in Midtown/Downtown.

And the news is spreading…

We also finally got in touch with the right people in the city, and they quickly helped get all of the key people together in one room to rally around this event so there shouldn’t be any complications. I have to give props to Bill Thomas with the Developer Services Division and Howard Chan, Parking Services Manager, both of who stepped up and made the process of working with the city easy and fast! Its been great to see people working for the city banding around the event!

Of course, what will really make this event a success will be to see lots of people enjoying the park throughout the day.

Come out… sit a spell… and dream big.

Jason