Downtown Seminole Community Project
We are developing a pocket park in our historical Downtown District. Please mark your calendars to attend our next meeting on April 25! Scroll down to see the project timeline and come back to this page for updates!
In December 2022, the Seminole Arts Council (SAC) was the recipient of the 2023 Rural Placemaking Innovation Challenge (RPIC) grant and cohort learning experience. In June of 2023, the SAC applied for and received the Citizen’s Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) grant and cohort experience to learn more about how to develop the design of the placemaking project.
In August 2023, the arts council started hosting monthly “Community Project” meetings that were open to the public, which will resume in the spring of 2024. There is a good-size group of citizens who are interested in the project and are helping provide valuable feedback on what the community's assets and needs are.
This blog post will contain information and updates regarding the community project, so bookmark this page and keep checking back to see our progress!
Donations can be made toward this project by clicking here.
August 22, 2023 Community Project Meeting: “What is Placemaking?”
During this meeting, we essentially had a crash course on what "placemaking" is, and how it is community-led community development. We learned that if we collaborate, there's nothing that we can't do. We all have special skills and connections that we can contribute to this project. We also discussed what kind of placemaking projects we thought our community would benefit from. Some of the things discussed were a public plaza with facilities and amenities, a public venue to bring more music and performing arts to the community, a revived but smaller swimming pool, water features for more age groups to stay cool in the summer, an art center with broad art programming for all citizens, recycling options that repurpose discarded trash for art projects, a pickleball court, more walkability and accessible sidewalks downtown and throughout town, and conversion of the old rail lines into a walking trail.
September 19, 2023 Community Project Meeting: “Deciding on a direction”
During this meeting, we discussed what we wanted to implement in our project based on the four key components of placemaking: Uses and activities, Sociability, Comfort and image, and Access and linkages. We used a visual tool to help us break down what these four components mean, and what features we could include in the project that would apply to those components. You can see that visual idea board by clicking here. We decided to move forward with the idea of a pocket park in our Downtown District, that would have a contemporary feel that is conducive to the historic downtown aesthetic, that would also provide lots of opportunities for games, live music, public and private gatherings, and much more.
I also let everyone know that I had put in an offer to purchase an empty lot on Main Street and stated that I was willing to utilize it as our project location, or we could seek out other locations. There were no objections to utilizing that property, but at that time I had not met with the Seminole Urban Renewal Authority (S.U.R.A.) to hear my offer.
September 26, 2023 Seminole Urban Renewal Authority (SURA) Meeting
The director of the SAC was able to meet with the SURA board and give them the run-down on the community project and discuss the ideas that we envisioned with our visual post-it board. They seemed very interested and supportive of the project idea, and offered to instead lease the lot to us on a long-term basis (I requested ten years). The great thing about leasing rather than owning is that the city would still hold the insurance on the property and cover the liability. And since we would be leasing it privately, we would not need to have city permits for events that take place at the park. They would treat it similarly to how they treat the private lease of the golf course.
But before we proceed with signing any agreements, they want our group to proceed with determining the project design, and continue to bring updates on the project before the SURA board.
Remember that in order for this project to be completed, we have to be able to collaborate with contractors (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc.) so if you know of anyone who might help, please bring them to our meetings! The Seminole Arts Council has also completed our Sam.Gov and Grants.Gov logins, and we are starting to search for grant opportunities to help fund our project.
October 17, 2023 Community Project Meeting: “How do we design our pocket park?”
At this meeting, we discussed the actual layout and design of our pocket park idea. It was a rainy day, so instead of visiting the proposed location in person, we were all given a digital overhead rendering of the layout of the land, with approximate measurements and a list of the amenities we wanted to include in the project.
Since we are still in the project's design phase, and need collaborations with an engineer or architect who can help us with visual renderings, we decided to continue collecting valuable community input on the project. Our next step will be to develop an online survey, plug it into a QR code, and place it on a banner to display on the proposed project-site (with SURA’s permission, which we intend to ask during their meeting on 10-31-23).
November 22, 2023 Community Project update: “First draft of rendering and naming our park”
As of this update, we are waiting for a lease from SURA to be executed. Once we have a signed lease we hope to put a banner on the property to help gather more community feedback/input. We received some first-draft renderings from David Talucci who works with Nabholz Constrution. It is a great starting concept and gives us lots of ideas, but also includes a lot of the aspects mentioned at the community meetings.
We are also discussing fundraisers, and have some volunteers working on a potential basketball tournament! We have applied for a few grants, including the American Rescue Plan Act and Wal-Mart Spark for Good grants. We are accepting any advice on where funding resources for our project may be!
More advice needed is on what to name our park! The ideas we have received so far include:
Seminole Art Park
Downtown Art Park
Seminole Creation Station
Seminole Arts Plaza
Seminole Innovation Park
Seminole Arts Amphitheater
Odom Park / Odom Art Park
December 13th, 2023 Seminole Urban Renewal Authority (SURA) Meeting
We successfully executed and entered a 10-year lease on the lots located at 321 N. Main Street for our community park project. The city will continue to hold insurance on the property, and we are scheduled to meet with the engineer in January to discuss project phases and costs.
March 28th, 2024 Community Project Meeting & Design Workshop
Our project committee, project engineer, and several community members gathered at the project site to participate in a fun, hands-on design workshop. Meeting at the project site helped those participating better understand the space we were developing. We had a lot of great ideas from mini-putt that doubled as rainwater collection and irrigation for plants and community garden beds, corner stage platforms for storage and event flexibility, and a projection setup for movies in the park or parties. We are hosting the same design workshop again on April 25th to collect more feedback and get more community involvement. In addition to the design ideas, we had some more great park name ideas:
The Brickyard
Downtown 321
The Come Together Place
Here are some photos from our workshop meeting.
July 12, 2024 Groundbreaking and Park Name Decided!
We have decided to name the park The Downtown 321! We felt like this was a really great modern name that tells you exactly where the park is located — Downtown District, 321 Main Street. We were contacted by Lehman Dirtwork, who did the initial groundbreaking for us, leveled part of the property, and cleaned up a lot of rocks and debris to increase safety for parkgoers. Thank you Lehman Dirtwork for your generosity and support with this project!
If you are interested in being involved with the design, fundraising, or construction of this park, please send us an email at seminoleartscouncil@gmail.com.
Donations can be made directly to this project by clicking here.