Reimagining Resilience: Holladay Park Survey Wrap-Up & What’s Next

What makes a public space truly resilient? That’s the question we asked, and over the past several months, our community gave us a powerful answer.

Through an in-depth survey process, focus groups, and a growing coalition of neighbors and partners, we’ve wrapped up the engagement phase for the Holladay Park E-Mobility and Resilience Hub, a bold plan to transform the park into a community-powered response center, gathering place, and model of inclusive, safe public space.

What We Heard: Key Themes from the Community

Based on surveys, conversations, and meetings, here are the top insights from our engagement efforts:

• Strong support for locating the hub within the park itself, not the right-of-way
• Desire for consistent activation and presence in the park to improve safety and connection
• Interest in low-cost, high-impact programming like coffee hours, exercise classes, and “Work With Us” outdoor office hours
• Clear need for public restrooms and access to power, Wi-Fi, and shade
• Widespread support for modular, mobile, or pop-up structures, especially if they include educational or community-serving elements

Community in Conversation: Our Advisory Lunch

We brought together nearly 40 community members, partners, and agency reps at the DoubleTree Hotel to close the loop on survey results, share next steps, and collectively envision a new model of shared public space.

From Parks and PBOT to neighborhood organizers and social service providers, this conversation showed what’s possible when we lead with equity, accessibility, and creativity.

What Comes Next

With phase one of the engagement complete, we’re transitioning from vision to action. Here’s what we’ll be doing as the year goes on:

• Hosting advisory board meetings to align our mobility, resiliency, and community goals and shape our operational and funding models.
• Developing a grant and fundraising strategy to support infrastructure and programming.
• Making an aggressive joint ask of Portland Parks & PBOT for shared stewardship and support.
• Finalizing a timeline for phased rollout, with activation pilots.
• This summer and fall, we’ll also hope to pilot public events and “Hub behavior” in Holladay Park, including:
  • Movie nights and resilience events, like Quake Night at the Park
  • Neighborhood office hours with our team and partners
  • Music and community activations, like POP! Party
  • Supporting groups holding events in the park with items from our Lending Library

Visualize the Hub

While design work continues, here are some draft renderings.