After sitting empty for 18 months, a lot in Champaign’s Garden Hills community is being converted into a new recreational space.
The project, labeled ‘Safe Places, Active Spaces’ by its planning committee, will create a temporary park in the lot this summer.
The park will include tables and seating areas, along with basketball courts and garden space.
Modeled after initiatives in Chicago neighborhoods that use outdoor recreational space to combat community violence, the project hopes to engage Champaign residents and decrease violence in the area.
“We can’t necessarily guarantee that this will make the neighborhood safer, but we can guarantee that if we do nothing we’ll get the same outcome,” Lacey Rains Lowe, Senior Planner for Advanced Planning, said.
Champaign County experienced a record 259 shootings in 2021 according to police reports, a 37% increase from 2020.
In response, Champaign City Council passed the Community Gun Violence Reduction Blueprint in February.
The Blueprint sets guidelines for community safety and proposes ways to prevent shootings and murders from increasing in future years.
Rob Kowalski, Assistant Planning and Development Director for the City of Champaign, says the parks project will follow Blueprint guidelines to help reinforce its goals.
“Part of [the Blueprint] is to offer more engagement opportunities for youth, to give them positive influences to hopefully keep them away from guns,” Kowalski said.
POPCourts! were created in Chicago following the pandemic as a way to promote economic growth and neighborhood safety.
The project began in accordance with the Chicago Architectural Biennial initiative when ARC, a team of local designers and city planners, turned an empty lot into a park and gathering space in the Austin community.
The space has three courts, each built to serve different functions within the neighborhood.
A variety of programming is meant to be able to “pop” up in the area, making it useful for all members of the community.
The space is decorated with pop art murals, which were completed during a Community Paint Day organized by the ARC. Austin residents gathered to fill in the murals at the event.
In addition to creating a park in the Garden Hills lot, Kowalski and his team plan to bring in similar youth-targeted programming.
The project hopes to partner with local businesses and centers like the Champaign Public Library to increase traffic to the space.
“The more we can do to be in the neighborhoods, meeting with people, engaging people, getting youth together in positive ways, the better,” Kowalski said.
While the project was recently approved to continue with planning and improvement earlier this month, Garden Hills residents believe there is still work to be done.
Rita Conerly, president of the United Garden Hills Neighborhood Association, says that the park should do more to embrace the area’s diverse population.
“One thing I think we’re missing here is the fact that it’s not inclusive. So, not only is it ‘safe space, active space,’ but Black space,” Conerly said at a City Council meeting. “So we need to make sure this space is going to be a diverse space, especially considering the fact that it is in a marginalized community.”
Many feel as though the neighborhood’s issues have been neglected by the city government.
In 2016, 14.6% of all violent crimes using a weapon in Champaign were committed in Garden Hills, according to police data.
The neighborhood has also faced a lack of street lighting, sidewalks and flooding problems, despite being one of the largest communities in Champaign.
In 2019, the city pledged $50 million toward a drainage improvement project that will also be used for sidewalks and street lights in the neighborhood.
Construction on the project, however, will not begin until 2030.
Residents worry that between the drainage project and the new park, there won’t be enough money to go around.
“As we’re making these considerations and we’re pouring dollars back into the community, don’t just throw pennies at us,” Conerly said. “Give us something that is equitable, something that is engaging, and something that is gonna benefit everyone in that community.”
Construction on the Safe Places, Active Spaces project is slated to begin this spring and end June 1, though plans are not yet confirmed.