A Win for Civic Infrastructure
The recently signed federal omnibus spending bill includes funding for revitalizing public spaces in communities across the country.
In March, President Joe Biden signed a H.R. 2471, the “Consolidated Appropriations Act” of 2022, sometimes called the Omnibus Spending Bill. This bill allocates $1.5 trillion of spending to fund the government through 2022, and it also marked the return (after 11 years) of ‘earmarks’ (officially called Community Project Funding in the U.S. House of Representatives and Congressionally Directed Spending in the U.S. Senate). These are specific appropriations of federal funding requested (and supported) by individual members of Congress, designated for projects in their own districts.
While earmarks were allocated to a myriad of projects — including those related to agriculture, water, transportation, law enforcement and energy — in five Reimagining the Civic Commons cities, more than $7 million was allocated to civic infrastructure projects. These are the public places that boost local economies, increase resiliency, support health and well-being, create a more equitable society and strengthen democracy: parks, trails, Main Streets, town squares, play spaces, libraries, recreation centers and other public spaces. These places of gathering are open to all, predominantly free, and invite people of different incomes, backgrounds and races to share space, promoting civic unity in a time of growing social isolation and segregation.
The collective success of these Community Project Funding Requests demonstrates that elected officials recognize the important role of civic infrastructure in their districts, particularly given our current challenges, including a global pandemic, economic disruption and social divisions.
Here are the 5 communities making use of Community Project Funding for impactful investment in civic infrastructure:
Akron: Lock 3 Park
Located along the historic Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail in the center of Akron, Ohio, Lock 3 Park currently serves as a successful public event space for concerts, festivals, and other programs. Yet its current design has kept it from being an everyday park and living up to its true potential as civic infrastructure. Led by the Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition working in partnership with the City of Akron and County of Summit, neighborhood residents and community stakeholders, $1 million in Community Project Funding will help transform Lock 3 Park into an accessible, equitable and welcoming park for everyone in downtown Akron.
Plans include the addition of trees, informal seating, gardens, artwork, multi-purpose hardscapes that become winter ice-skating areas, and an improved performance pavilion for concerts and events. The design will not compromise the capacity for large crowds, but instead add amenities for employees, residents, students and visitors all year long.
The completed public spaces at Lock 3 will provide multiple benefits to downtown vibrancy, including functioning as a community asset that creates jobs, stimulating community and economic development and creating a public place that is accessible, equitable and welcoming for Akron residents as well as visitors.
Philadelphia: Bartram’s Garden Ecosystems Education Center and Freshwater Mussel Hatchery
Located on 50 acres on the Tidal Schuylkill River in Southwest Philadelphia, on land known by the indigenous Lenape as Lenapehoking, Bartram’s Garden is a free public park and National Historic Landmark. The country’s oldest surviving botanical garden, the site has been operated as a public park since 1893 and welcomes more than 100,000 visitors annually. Its free, year-round programming is focused on creating equitable relationships among people and nature through immersive, community-driven experiences: outdoor recreation like boating, fishing, and biking; an African Diaspora-centered farm and community garden; and all-ages environmental education and cultural activities. The Garden works closely with its immediate neighbors in Southwest Philadelphia to ensure that programming, site access, and long-term organizational goals align with local priorities such as youth leadership development, environmental justice, and community safety.
Today, Bartram’s Garden is planning a new ecosystems education center to complement the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary’s planned production hatchery for native freshwater mussels, which serve as natural water filters and remove pollution from the water. The $925,000 in Community Project Funding received by the Garden will help the ecosystems education center deepen the connection of Southwest Philadelphia residents to the river by establishing sustainable, safe ways for local residents to access and explore the watershed and its impact.
Minneapolis: North Commons Regional Vision
With $2 million in Community Project Funding, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, together with the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, Seeds to Harvest, and other community partners and donors, are one step closer to building a new community center campus at the city’s North Commons Park. North Commons redevelopment is a community-rooted vision for realizing the park’s potential as the center of cultural, social, and economic vitality for North Minneapolis.
North Commons Park occupies a significant amount of space, covering nine blocks and 26 acres. More than 12,000 kids live within a one-mile radius, making it one of Minneapolis’s most densely populated neighborhoods. Already affected by historic and persistent systemic inequities, residents and businesses in North Minneapolis today bear an outsize burden because of COVID isolation and its economic impacts, as well as an increase in violence amid the city’s reckoning with safety in public space for Black and Brown people.
Centered on park capital investments — including a new three-story tournament-quality community center and state-of-the-art water park — phase 1 improvements will also retain heritage trees and abundant greenspace. As a local gathering place, youth, families, and neighbors will find community at North Commons throughout the year. And as a regional destination, North Commons will bring people together to elevate culture and community through jazz festivals and art fairs, Juneteenth celebrations, and athletic events.
This project invests in park and recreation infrastructure and will benefit Minneapolis residents because parks are a known remedy to many health and wellness disparities in our society.
San José: The Guadalupe River Park
Guadalupe River Park is a three-mile-long ribbon of parkland that runs along the Guadalupe River in downtown San José. As the largest open space in downtown San Jose, it offers recreation and the experience of nature for residents of California’s third-largest city.
The Community Project Fund investment of $360,000 will aid in the restoration of the Guadalupe River Park, including replanting trees, the rejuvenation of historic fruit tree orchards and the Heritage Rose Garden, improved signage for visitors, environmental opportunities for all park users, and better community coordination to expand the park’s volunteer base.
Led by the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy, the project will also create a new stewardship program providing training and workforce development in park maintenance for young adults and unhoused residents.
Parks are popular in San José: 90 percent of city residents visited a park at least once a month or more last year, and 80 percent of residents live within a 10 minute walk of a park. In addition to improving the Guadalupe River Park’s recreational benefits, this park project will support using green space efficiently to improve public health, restore the environment, expand food security, create greater access to jobs and skill development, boost volunteerism, encourage environmental education and stewardship and focus on equity and access for everyone.
Memphis: The Mississippi Riverfront
The Memphis River Parks Partnership has received $3 million in Community Project Funds to develop and expand the city’s ongoing riverfront improvements, with a focus on the 30-acre, mile-long Tom Lee Park space, a large but relatively nondescript area of lawn along the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis. The goal: create an equitable, shared community space for all Memphians.
As the most visible and largest piece of the Memphis’ Riverfront, Tom Lee Park has the potential to be transformative for the city’s ongoing work to reclaim riverfront space for residents. It is one of the best places to view the mighty Mississippi River, yet the human-made dike has been vacant since its creation in the 1990s. It sits next to some of the most valuable real estate in the city and yet is also ringed by some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, including one zip code that is the poorest in the entire state of Tennessee.
Plans for its makeover are inspiring: more than 1,000 trees, shrubs and grasses will be planted, providing new habitat for birds traveling the “Mississippi Flyway,” an entrance plaza with a misting fountain for hot Memphis summers, and a children’s playground designed by renowned international firm Monstrum. Food and drink pavilions will provide refreshments while fitness equipment will give people a chance to work out alongside the river. Decks for rivergazing and a hammock grove will give visitors a more contemplative experience, and a floating roof called a “civic canopy” will shade event space and sports courts. Public art will honor the park’s namesake, famous Memphian Tom Lee.
Memphis River Parks CEO Carol Coletta points out how this work will benefit all residents in multiple ways. “Tom Lee Park is critical civic infrastructure, a place that supports the health and well-being of Memphians, boosts the local economy and increases our connections with one another at a time when it is so needed,” says Coletta. “We hope that the federal government continues to support civic infrastructure by providing ongoing federal spending for projects that build resilient, equitable and vibrant communities everywhere.”
These examples of civic infrastructure being funded through the Omnibus Spending Bill are an opportunity to build a more equitable recovery for communities large and small, a recovery that will leave transformative civic assets in place for decades, creating stronger local economies, more sustainable communities and connecting Americans to one another. The cities leveraging federal funding for civic infrastructure are seizing the opportunity to make once-in-a-generation change in their communities, change that directly improves the lives of their residents.
A recent Brookings report points out that the most effective and equitable economic development strategy is investing in “quality of life and place.” These five cities point the way towards a future when federal, state and local investments work together to create more equitable, sustainable and connected communities through civic infrastructure.
For more information about how your community can design, operate and manage transformative civic infrastructure, please read “A New Way of Working for Cities” on our website.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
