By Dorian Panchyson
Christopher Hofley / The BUZZ
Centretown’s Dundonald Park has been selected to participate in a program that offers underused urban spaces a facelift, and local residents are being asked to contribute to the planning process.
Chosen from over 30 applications submitted from across the province, Dundonald Park will take part in the Active Places, Healthy People initiative, a program that works with community members to transform under-performing parks into more vibrant centres for the neighbourhood.
Organized by 8-80 Cities – a Toronto-based non-profit organization in partnership with the Centretown Community Health Centre (CHC) – the Active Places, Healthy People project educates and empowers communities to transform public parks as a means to promote social interaction, health and community cohesion.
Running along Somerset Street between Bay and Lyon, Dundonald Park has long been a hub for the Centretown community.
It offers a tree-lined splash of greenspace in the heart of downtown and features paved paths that weave through grassy spaces and raised perennial beds. The park also boasts an enclosed area for children, permanent chess tables, and plays host to Centretown Movies, the outdoor movie festival held throughout the warmer summer months.
However, while Dundonald Park certainly has a lot to offer the community, the space often suffers from the social ills that tend to plague other urban spaces, notably after-hours alcohol and drug use.
Residents often bemoan the lack of adequate night-time lighting, an element that many believe makes the park difficult to navigate and patrol after dark.
But Dundonald was not selected for the 8-80 Cities project because it was seen as derelict or branded a problem park. Rather it was chosen because of its immense amount of unrealized potential.
“It is not about how the park looks,” explained Simone Thibault, executive director of the Centretown CHC. “It’s about how the park is being used. [Dundonald] is not being used to its potential.”
This notion is at the heart of the 8-80 Cities project.
“Public spaces like parks and streets should be the very best spots in our communities, overflowing with life and vibrancy,” said Gil Penalosa, executive director at 8-80 Cities.
“But many of the public spaces in our cities are poorly designed and underused. We need to involve the local community in recreating these spaces.”
To garner local input into the planning process, community members from across Centretown are being encouraged to contribute to the development of a
long-term action plan for the park.
To help facilitate the consultation, the Centretown CHC held an outreach session on March 7 to canvas area residents for
input into the long-term plan for the park.
“Our long-term vision is a community park for everyone,” explained Thibault. “A place where people visit, play and relax in an atmosphere of safety and comfort, taking advantage of opportunities to come together constructively and proactively, reducing isolation and increasing community cohesion.”
Thibault and the Centretown CHC have also organized specific focus groups with various subsets of the community – seniors, city staff, local politicians and new Canadians – to help make the final product representative of the area’s diverse population.
The input garnered from these sessions will be synthesized by 8-80 Cities and used to populate a final report to be presented to the public in June 2012.
It will then become the community’s responsibility to engage the proper channels to operationalize the report’s recommendations. This could include leveraging local resources offered from the city, or mobilizing volunteer contributions from the community.
Either way, Thibault and the Centretown CHC are optimistic about the project’s future.
“There is a lot of energy around the project,” said Thibault. “The response from the community has been amazing.”
The project has received the blessing of the Friends of Dundonald Park, a volunteer organization that serves as guardians for the space.
“I personally hope that the (8-80 Cities) project will awaken Centretown at-large to the amazing opportunity for community collaboration and interaction in this historic greenspace” said Suzanne Harding, long serving member of the Friends organization.
“(We) support respectful, innovative and inclusive park activities and would welcome any increased community use and stewardship of the space that may be stimulated by the project and associated discussions.”
Individuals looking to participate in future consultation sessions are encouraged to contact the Centretown Community Health Centre at (613) 233-4443 or online at www.centretownchc.org.