RochesterSubway.com : Park(ing) Day 2015

Park(ing) Day 2015

September 16th, 2015

The following is a guest post submitted by Sara Jenks, Young Urban Preservationists. Submit your story today.

Over the past year I’ve been itching to move downtown (“Oh, you live really downtown” is the common response upon mentioning my address). This past spring I finally ripped the bandaid and moved out of my mom’s house. In the month between choosing where to live and moving in, I scoped out my new neighborhood nearly every day. It was always obvious that surface parking lots dominated the usable land in the St. Joseph’s Park neighborhood, or as I like to call it, St. Joseph’s Parking Lot. What shocked me was one particular lot that never saw a car. Morning, noon, and night I drove by the lot on the Northwest corner of the intersection at Franklin & Pleasant Streets . Every time there sat only a rusty chain and two cones across the entrance…

I soon came to consider this surface lot “my park.” When I finally moved to the neighborhood in May, I dreamed of what could happen there, since it was not necessary in its intended purpose. I yearned to see the lot serve as a functional public space. At that point I called on Caitlin, co-founder of The Landmark Society’s Young Urban Preservationists (YUPs, for short) for help.

At the very least I hoped it could serve as a connector between St. Joseph’s Park and Schiller Park, the two existing (and underutilized) public spaces in my neighborhood. At best, it would become something completely novel — how many shipping containers could we fit in the lot?!

But for now, we’ve set our sights to a more manageable level and will be hosting PARK(ing) Day 2015 there this Friday, September 18th. PARK(ing) Day is an annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. Devoted Rochester Subway readers are, I’m sure, all too aware of the preponderance of surface parking lots and parking garages in our downtown core (see our 2014 Parking Madness win for evidence). So, the YUPs want to reignite this discussion. We want to ask–what might better serve our community?

For one day, we’ll reclaim this patch of asphalt from the weeds. We’ll have mini-golf (borrowed from our friends at the Inner Loop Country Club ), lawn games, lunchtime yoga (led by yours truly at noon), and we’ll be joined by Writers & Books and Rochester Greenovation . Join the Facebook event and spread the word.

After a couple of rounds of mini-golf downtown, finish off your golf game at 1090 Culver Road in the Triangle of North Winton Village. NeighborWorks® Rochester will be taking over a parking lot for the Triangle PARK(ing) Day Pop-Up Park. Eat Me Ice Cream and Ugly Duck Coffee will be on-hand, and you can take in the scenery while relaxing on some bus cubes courtesy of Reconnect Rochester .