December 17, 2001

Urban Open Space Foundation releases new images & report: “A Community Vision for Madison’s Central Park”

In November, the Urban Open Space Foundation (UOSF) and Jones & Jones Landscape Architects conducted a series of community visioning workshops to create a grassroots concept for a Central Park in the East Rail Corridor. The results are now ready.

Participants created shared principles that will guide planning and design: the park should stress learning, civic encounters, the neighborhood’s diversity, and it should have many simultaneous, complimentary uses. It should be safe and functional at night and during the winter, it should not undermine the neighborhood’s affordability, and it should be tied to a revitalized Main Street as well as to the Marquette neighborhood.

Citizens also offered ideas for park elements: an outdoor performance space, a skate park, a family-oriented playground, open-air markets, community gardens, a “sky garden,” a meandering wetland, and others. Many people also voiced a strong desire that the park’s design aesthetic celebrate the corridor’s history as a wetland and its rail and industrial heritage. (Jones & Jones’s full report, including color renderings, will be available at www.uosf.com as of 7am tomorrow; for print-quality images contact UOSF.)

The community visioning process attracted more than 150 participants to 8 workshops located throughout the East Isthmus and downtown. Attendees included neighborhood residents and activists, civic leaders, planners and architects, UW students, employees from local businesses, workers at city and state agencies, and many others. (See “credits” page of “A Community Vision” for a list of supporting organizations and host locations.)

Creating a community vision for a Central Park is an iterative process, and “A Community Vision” is only the first stage. UOSF’s next steps will include outreach to teens, school kids, minority groups, and low-income neighborhood residents.

UOSF is an urban conservation land trust that invests in the health of Wisconsin’s communities – preserving and enhancing critical neighborhood lands and waters through acquisition, citizen-based stewardship, education, and technical assistance.