Dan Fair: A Proof of Concept: Reflections on Placemaking in Holladay Park

Over a whirlwind 90 days this summer, our three Summer Programming Leads worked to fill Holladay Park with life, community, and connection. As part of our Lloyd Live at the Park grant-funded sprint, they planned and hosted events designed to bring neighbors together. In this series, we asked each of them to share their reflections on the experience, the people they met, and the lessons they learned. Read Cal’s reflection here and Wally’s here. The following is Dan’s:

Space activation and placemaking have been major themes across just about every community conversation I’ve had in the last several months. My experience working with Lloyd EcoDistrict to present Lloyd Live at Holladay Park and Duckworth Dock this summer proved an incredible opportunity to put that talk into action and establish proof of concept for how creating inclusive, welcoming spaces can have a widely positive community impact.

My overall takeaway from this project is that these programs resonate deeply with community members and are an effective strategy for both community engagement and public safety. The most fulfilling thing has been the sheer number of residents in the final two weeks of our program coming up to let us know how much they appreciated our work this summer, and that they had spent more time and felt much safer in the park, both while events were happening and throughout the day following events. We received exceptional feedback, particularly for our live music events, and for larger community events like Quake Night, and our City Council constituent office hour events with D2 Councilors Kanal and Pirtle-Guiney.

While I consider this program largely successful, there are some key learnings as our city continues to explore space activation strategies in the years to come:

• Promotion and Outreach – while we had some events that were very well attended, a number of them struggled to attract participants. This may be due in part to the events themselves, but I think increasing awareness and experimenting with how to get folks involved will be key to future efforts.
• Geographic Isolation and Accessibility – Holladay Park in its current state is fairly hard to access for anyone outside the immediate vicinity. Housing development in the area is a crucial step towards activating green spaces like Holladay – there simply needs to be more residents nearby to more consistently activate the space.
• Infrastructure, Food, and Restroom Access – there’s a lot more than a bullet point to unpack here, but in summary, having access to food is a major component for successful activations, and I think that we could facilitate more effective activations by being less restrictive on food vendor permitting in our city parks. Conversely, restroom access is a catch 22 – if we want thriving public spaces, we absolutely need functioning restroom facilities, but I know that park restrooms can enable drug use, which then makes our facilities unsafe for use. I predict this problem will naturally resolve itself with increased community presence, but it was definitely a challenge at this stage and scale.

Overall, I’m extremely proud of the work we did this summer and grateful for every participant who came up to say hi and tell us how much they enjoyed our programming, and equally grateful to have collaborated with local businesses, artists, and elected officials who gave their time and energy to participate. I look forward to seeing similar efforts in the future throughout Portland and the broader region.