'Pop-up park' hosted at police headquarters

A group of Homewood residents called the Homewood Greenspace Initiative would like to add a little green to the gray of buildings and pavement in downtown. On Sept. 21, they created a one-day “pop-up park” to show the possibilities for urban green space.

The Greenspace Initiative is particularly interested in replacing the Homewood Police Department with a small park once the police relocate to their headquarters under construction in West Homewood. Carolyn Buck, the Red Rock Trails System director of Freshwater Land Trust and a Homewood resident, shared the idea of a pop-up park with other organizations she had been working closely with.

“We would just love to see a gray downtown become a little greener and a little more inviting and a little shadier,” said Buck.

On International Park(ing) Day, the Homewood Greenspace Initiative partnered with Freshwater Land Trust and American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) to transform the HPD parking lot into a park for the day. The groups combined their transformation with the global event as part of the movement “to improve the quality of urban human habitat,” according to the global event’s website.

“It really gets attention and it brings the community together,” said Betsy McGuire, a member of the Homewood Greenspace Initiative. “It’s been a fun thing to work on.”

With local and regional donations of plants, furniture and decorations, the narrow parking lot was transformed into a green oasis in downtown Homewood. It included trees, flowers, cornhole and decorative bunting made of recycled plastic cups in different colors.

An hour in, the organizations had 75 people join them to fill out surveys and hang out with activities and drinks.

“No where else does that happen, where everybody comes together and bond and people form community,” said Jane Reed Ross, president of ASLA. “… So we need to make it as pleasant as possible, so those people can engage with each other and form a community that helps each other and we’ll be a better society for it.”

The organizations that helped create the park see this as a great opportunity to improve their already growing city from an economic, environmental and aesthetic perspective. For more information on urban greenspace, you can find Homewood Greenspace Initiative, Freshwater Land Trust and ASLA on Facebook.