Park Bond Reinvestment Projects
Equitable Park Improvements
LHB is leading the design and implementation of nearly $8 million in improvements in seven parks throughout Brooklyn Park. Beginning in 2019, LHB’s multidisciplinary team vetted the original master plans through additional technical evaluation and budgeting, as well as continued community engagement within affected neighborhoods.
The park building designs, which include one new building and two building additions, are especially unique. They integrate ICC 500 storm shelters into the overall function of the building. Each building design also provides a warming house, multipurpose room, restrooms, a kitchen, and storage. The site improvements included several miles of critical trail connections, upgraded parking lots, ADA upgrades, universal athletic fields including cricket pitches, basketball courts, prefabricated restrooms and kitchens, nature play areas, community gardens, shade structures, solar trail lighting, native plantings, and stormwater improvements.
Park improvements were equity driven to fulfill the city’s goals to create parks that invite all members of this diverse community to gather and play.
Customized Community Engagement
Engagement is at the heart of our design work and is customized to each project. This engagement plan focused on reaching a key radius around each neighborhood park to receive major improvements. The population surrounding these parks had limited access to internet, was comprised of a range of ages and family structures, and had an average household income below the city’s average.
Approachable Graphic Design to Engage Community
A key part of our engagement strategy on this project involved creating welcoming, approachable graphics that were easily understood by all ages and abilities. Engagement graphics were designed to be fun, accessible, and shared in multiple languages while in keeping with Brooklyn Park’s branding. Printed media was showcased at open house and, pop-up events at schools and was distributed via mail and a door-knocking campaign.
It was important to the client that this engagement built upon previous work within the community. A clear, concise story was told with a combination of graphics and approachable text.
Separate graphics were created in different languages and used as the focus depending on the targeted population.
Existing conditions were shown that tied the design goals back to the City’s recent 10-year Park System Master Planning effort. This provided important context and transparency for the community
