SEUL is hoping you’ll vote for their project in the upcoming Umpqua Bank’s Build Your Block Challenge to win money to create a pocket park on SE Uplift’s grounds. So check it out!
Pocket Park and Garden on Main Street (between 35th and 36th)
Description: A lush 3,000 square foot pocket park/garden full of native, medicinal, and edible plants – where multi-generational community members and visitors relax or meet friends, take lunch breaks, garden, gather for educational workshops, read, or play a friendly game of chess/checkers. The benefits will be far reaching: re-generation of a run down area, business and residential community members working together cohesively toward a safer and more sociable community space, a haven for native pollinators that will increase the pollination of plants nearby, and access to educational workshops from local experts specializing in naturopathic and botanical medicine, creating pollinator habitat, gardening for food and medicine, aromatherapy, and essential oil distillation! Creating an inspiring natural area will strengthen our neighborhood’s vibrant identity and sense of place, while increasing the vitality of our urban ecosystem and providing a respite from the stresses of daily life.
Remember to visit the Hawthorne Umpqua Bank to vote by April 15th.
Is this going to be 100% ADA usable and accessible (e.g. universal design)? I would support it only if so. If not, I would not, and I would ask Umpqua Bank not to support it, because it would just be creating another chaotic public zone of exclusion for elderly and people with disabilities like all that mess around Sunnyside School. It should not be necessary to ask this question about a project sponsored by SEUL, but so it goes these days.
Katy,
I’m not sure what the requirements are for a space to be considered 100% ADA accessible but we hope to make it as inclusive as possible. Our primary goal is to improve the area so that people WANT to access it. If awarded the grant, we would certainly welcome any input on how to create a truly welcoming community greenspace.
Tim
SE Uplift