For the Love of Riverfronts
I love rivers. Always have, always will. The love affair started when I was kid growing up in a far north-west suburb of Chicago. Like many suburbs, my hometown did not have a ton of exciting features to occupy or entertain children, young adults, or even adults…. other than its river and river-front trail.
My favorite memories of my hometown are the bike or walking trips my family and I would take along that trail, stopping at various picnic areas to sit, eat and enjoy watching the river lazily drift by.
It’s that personal history that made me so excited to have the very first CreatINg Places project be the Riverfront Plaza in Wabash Indiana. Last fall the not-for-profit Wabash Marketplace, Inc. pitched a very simple idea: they wanted to open up access to the Wabash river with a large and welcoming plaza. At the time, there were not many decent places to access or even view the river, and even fewer within walking distance of Wabash’s revitalizing downtown.
Wabash Marketplace wanted to change that with this plaza, placed conveniently along an expanding bike trail and next to a major city thoroughfare that will receive streetscape and sidewalk upgrades in the next few years. They envisioned the space as a destination for picnics, bike trips, running-group meet-ups, yoga classes, and late-night s’more-making.
After an incredibly successful crowdfunding campaign at the end of 2016 and thanks to a mild winter in early 2017, construction on the plaza began as early as February 2017. By early June the plaza was done and ready to be open to the public. I attended the official opening on the first Friday in June, and was more than impressed not only with how the space had turned out, but even more so by how many people attended the opening.
As I sat and listened to the casual conversations and later to prepared remarks by Tyler Karst of Wabash Marketplace and by Wabash Mayor Scott Long, I could feel the excitement and pride of the gathered Wabash residents.
It was an awesome event to be a part of, especially when it was announced that a local family would be opening a sandwich and ice cream shop in a building right next to the plaza. What a great surprise!! AND great proof of the power of projects like this one — what started as a connection between the downtown and the river quickly grew beyond that into a space to enjoy Wabash-inspired art and eat at a Wabash-based eatery, all driven by Wabash residents.
Interested in starting your own version of the Wabash Riverfront Plaza? Not interested in plazas but have another intriguing idea for a public space in your community? Feel free email me at veronica@patronicity.com, schedule a phone call and then gush about how awesome your city/town/neighborhood is and how your idea will make it even better; from there we’ll figure out if or who CreatINg Places can support that idea.
If you are interested in plazas, but you’re not sure what it takes to make a patch of grass into an engaging gathering space, take a look at the budget outline below from Wabash. Prices and materials in your area will probably be different, but it’s a good place to start.
