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Recap of May 9th Community Meeting

On Tuesday, over 200 members of our community gathered at Waterfront Elementary School to hear the community-driven vision for the transformation of LaSalle Park into Ralph Wilson Park.

More than 1200 partners, community members, and stakeholders have been involved in the planning and design of the park, including the 20 person Imagine LaSalle Focus Group who dreamt up what a world-class waterfront park can be. Learn more about Imagine LaSalle here.

We share the principles that informed the design of the park: community access and environmental sustainability. Ours is a beloved park with exceptional waterfront views and boundless opportunity. West side neighbors felt cut off from the park, and so we are building a beautiful, big, welcoming pedestrian bridge and improving the green space on 4th Street to become the entrance of the park. The shoreline was at the end of its life and the park couldn’t sustain the increase in frequency and strength of storms and rising water levels, so we are building a resilient shoreline and elevating the park to protect against flooding and weather events.

You can check out the presentation we shared here and watch the Facebook Live recording of our community meeting here.

We also asked people to join our Community Working Group. Our community informed the physical design of the park, and now we are asking our community to inform park programming and communications. We are looking for people who are representatives, ambassadors and participants. You can read more and sign up here.

Send us your questions through this survey and we will use them to update our FAQs. Here are the answers to the questions we received following the meeting.

Students from Leonardo daVinci High School displayed and sold their artwork inspired by Ralph Wilson Park. We are thrilled to be able to continue offer these prints for sale online. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the student artists!

Executive Director Katie Campos shares details about the park’s planning process.

Mayor Brown welcomed the community to the meeting.