OPB’s Weekly “Oregon Art Beat” Features Barbara Walker Crossing Designer & PPF’s Retired Executive Director

Ed Carpenter with the steel frame of the Barbara Walker Crossing during its construction. Photo: Naim Hasan for Portland Parks Foundation

“You can just see the way the bridge just dives into the woods on either side,” Ed Carpenter tells OPB in a new film they’ve produced about the Barbara Walker Crossing. “And that’s so satisfying, to have it be just emerging from the woods, growing out of the DNA of the woods, part of the forest—I love that.”

Carpenter has designed sites all over the world, so when he began championing the project that would become the Barbara Walker Crossing, people listened.

One of those who listened was Jeff Anderson, the former executive director of the Portland Parks Foundation. “This project represents really the best of… community leaders coming together to try to solve a problem in partnership with the City,” Anderson told OPB.

Anderson, Carpenter, and many others from the Portland community came together to build this safe crossing over busy West Burnside connecting Forest Park’s Wildwood Trail to Washington Park.

OPB’s weekly television show, Oregon Art Beat, conducted interviews and gathered footage throughout the project’s life. We’re grateful to OPB for spreading the story of the Barbara Walker Crossing and the hundreds of Portlanders who made it happen.

Portland Mourns the Passing of Nick Fish, True Friend and Advocate for Portland’s Parks

NICK FISH, PORTLAND PARKS COMMISSIONER SEPTEMBER 30, 1958 - JANUARY 2, 2020

Courtesy Portland Parks & Recreation

It is with great sadness that we note the death of City Commissioner Nick Fish, a true friend and advocate for the Portland Parks Foundation. And, it is with great respect that we celebrate all that Nick did for Portland, in particular for our city’s parks.

Nick was, at 11 years, the longest-serving Portland City Commissioner. During his tenure, he served as Parks Commissioner twice—both times seeing the bureau through some of the toughest times financially in its 115-year history. He leaves a parks legacy that was based on a vision to both build community and ensure strong financial stewardship, stretching and raising dollars to ensure all Portlanders would be able to enjoy parks and to build a sustainable system for volunteers and city workers to steward.

“It was cuts, cuts, cuts,” recalls Julie Vigeland who served on and chaired the Portland Parks Board during Nick’s first round as Parks Commission, 2010-13. “I would posit that Portland Parks & Recreation has remained as strong as it has because of Nick’s care and hands-on oversight.”

During his first stint as Parks Commissioner, the Great Recession denied him money to build new parks, so he focused on community gardens, recalls then-Portland Parks and Recreation (PP&R) Director Zari Santner. He worked with Oregon Solutions to develop the “1000 Gardens Initiative” partnering with churches and Portland Public Schools to bring on hundreds of new gardens city wide and the first such community plots to the outer eastside.

“Despite his background, Nick really cared about people in need,” Santner observed. “The gardens fit into his lifelong passion for serving underprivileged communities while capturing a new generation’s passion for locally sourced fresh foods.”

Mike Abbate, who followed Santner as PP&R director notes that Nick was also the first Parks Commissioner to address East Portland through the 'E205 Initiative.' “He didn’t have much money to spend,” Abbate recalls, “so he focused on improving the parks that were there.” These were simple things: new play equipment, bark trails, and benches, Abbate said. “People were so happy. It really galvanized a lot of public officials—not just parks’—around the needs in East Portland.”

Courtesy Portland Parks & Recreation

The one new park Nick played a critical role in was Gateway Green, Longtime East Portland advocate Linda Robinson recalled. Nick co-chaired the Oregon Solutions project that resulted in a “Declaration of Cooperation” between 22 organizations to shape a 25-acre piece of property leftover between I-84 and I-205 into Portland’s first off-road cycling park. Phase I opened in 2017.

But arguably Nick’s most far-reaching legacy was a simple, but extremely effective, act of marketing: the creation of Summer Free For All. “We had been doing movies and concerts in parks for decades,” Santner recalls. “And we served kids lunch in something we called the ‘Summer Playground Program.’" When Nick realized all these things were free, he put them together and called it Summer Free For All (SFFA). "When more budget cuts came,” Santner adds, “he found corporations, businesses and foundations to support SFFA. These were things he knew the community cared about.”

Indeed, Nick’s fundraising acumen was legendary, and mostly for causes beyond his own reelection. Abbate recalled how Nick raised important gifts for the 2014 parks bond, even though he was no longer parks commissioner.

Nick was known in all his bureau assignments (Housing, Fire, Water, BES, and others) for his deep support of front-line staff and community volunteers, and his ability to engage other City Commissioners in solving the problems his bureaus faced. In his latest term as Parks Commissioner, he inherited a bureau with a structural deficit that forced budget cuts. The hearings he staged brought hand-chosen spokespeople from the community to testify rather than the usual, all-comers lottery system. The result was an orderly, transparent process during which the issues around painful cuts were clearly articulated.

With Portland Parks & Recreation Director Adena Long. Photo courtesy of Portland Parks & Recreation.

“Nick was—and I mean this completely positively—the ultimate professional politician,” said Abbate. “He could walk into any room of any group of people feeling bad, down, and angry and, in five minutes make people feel he was on their side, and then he would go do something about it. This was his craft.”

“I joked that Commissioner Fish “wooed” me to Portland to serve as Director of its park and recreation system; I am so glad he did,” said Adena Long, who arrived from the New York City Parks Department last year to become director of PP&R. “Despite the long-standing challenges the bureau faced, he knew the important role that open space, nature, recreation and the arts play in creating a healthy and thriving community, and he worked tirelessly to support them. Nick was the consummate public servant, and his accomplishments will be celebrated for years to come. I am grateful that he chose me to join his team and I am honored to continue his legacy as a champion for all things Portland Parks & Recreation.”

In the months since those most recent budget discussions, Nick led a methodical investigation of strategies for new parks funding, everything from new levies and bonds to the establishment of a parks district, bringing parks leaders and experts together to weigh the tradeoffs within Oregon’s complicated tax system. The work has yet to result in conclusions, but his leadership and the team he brought together has provided a baseline education against which to weigh the politics.

That was quintessential Nick Fish. Vigeland recalls how as a freshman parks board member, Nick invited her to his weekly Monday meetings with parks staff. “When I first joined the board, I wanted to quit: I didn’t know anything,” she said. “But Nick took me, a novice, and helped me get an education.” Vigeland stayed on the board for six years, chairing it for three, and then she joined the board of the Portland Parks Foundation. “Those meetings made me the advocate for parks I am today,” she said.

“Nick’s leadership style was uniquely inclusive,” says Vigeland. "Whether it was the volunteers or the entire bureau, he was all about how can we work together to meet the same goals. It was in his soul.”

Our collective hearts go out to Nick’s family, friends, and staff, and to all those who knew and loved him.

Courtesy Portland Parks & Recreation/Ken Rumbaugh

Announcing the Fall 2019 Grant Awards

We are excited to announce our Fall 2019 grantees! The Portland Parks Foundation (PPF) has awarded three small grants to the local organizations below – each with a focus on promoting equitable access for all Portlanders to parks and parks programming. Our grants program is founded on a generous bequest from Nancy Hebb Freeman, an artist, hiker and lover of Portland parks.   

Friends of Columbia Park: $2,471

Strengthening Organizational Capacity

Hiring a development consultant, database subscription, printed and branded materials, and volunteer appreciation event expenses

Columbia Park is 35-acres of mature Douglas-firs and lindens, sports fields, a historic cottage, an indoor pool, and an important shared community space. The Friends of Columbia Park is a group of supporters for the park who have maintained a presence in the area since the early 1990s. Recently they have hosted community forums, art and music events, organized daily clean-up efforts to pick up litter with a local school, their “Park and Poolooza” event, a celebration of the park and pool, and a monthly Bingo night for the park community .

This grant from the Portland Parks Foundation will help them diversify their fundraising efforts, recruit, organize, appreciate, and retain volunteers to continue their important efforts. With improved organizational support and volunteer power, Friends of Columbia Park plans to continue the work they’ve been doing while expanding to partner with Portland Parks and Rec to plant a native nature patch, grow park cleanup efforts to include other neighbors and organizations, advocate to fill funding gaps and keep the Columbia Park Pool operating, foster a new relationship with a local corporation, as well as host more concerts and community gatherings in the historic cottage.

Friends of Gateway Discovery Park: $2,225

Outreach to Create New Friends Group

Basic tabling supplies, translation of materials into Spanish and Russian, co-sponsor three large events in area parks

Gateway Discovery Park & Urban Plaza is a new 3.2-acre neighborhood park located near the Hazelwood, Mill Park, and Woodland Park neighborhoods in East Portland. The park was completed in August of 2019 and features a programmed urban plaza, green space, an inclusive nature playground, a small skate park and a picnic area.

Friends groups are an important link to the city’s agency tasked with managing our parks, Portland Parks & Recreation (PP&R). Friends of Gateway Discovery Park plans to help PP&R guide future programming so that it meets the community’s needs and to promote community activities in the park. They will also prioritize outreach to children with disabilities and their families, people of color, immigrants, and lower-income renters in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Our grant to The Friends of Gateway Discovery Park will help them form a strong identity to gather around, supplies to tell the community about the group’s existence, including materials translated into Spanish and Russian; host “Tree Walks” with PP&R, something a survey the group conducted showed the community was highly interested in; participate in three events, sponsoring when necessary, that will draw large numbers of participants from the groups prioritized for outreach; and finally engage community members who show interest in being more involved with the formation of the Friends of Gateway Discovery Park so the group’s efforts continue on into the future.

Grow Portland: $2,000

Parent Engagement Sessions at Rigler Elementary Pilot Project

Educator time, refreshments, translation of materials, administration costs

Grow Portland is the leading local nonprofit dedicated to school garden education. To date, they have served over 10,000 students, half of them students of color, primarily from low-income schools. They work with Portland Parks & Recreation and local school communities to improve school garden sites and to integrate hands-on, culturally responsive environmental science education into the school day. They also introduce fresh vegetables to school cafeterias to promote healthy eating.

The grant from the Portland Parks Foundation will allow Grow Portland to pilot a new project: bilingual garden education and parent engagement at Portland Parks & Recreation’s Rigler Community Garden at Rigler Elementary, where the organization has been at work for four years. They’ve chosen Rigler Community Garden and Elementary School because all students at the school participate in garden education and half of those students come from families where Spanish is their first language, but none of the current regular garden educators speak Spanish.

Our grant will allow Grow Portland to better engage with the students at Rigler, but it will also allow them to engage the children’s parents. This will help families understand why garden education matters and help them understand how the garden is a resource for both the school and the neighborhood community. If this pilot project is successful, Grow Portland plans to expand it to other schools in the future.

About the Small Grants Program

Projects for funding consideration may include organizational development, programming, events, transportation, challenge grants or other imaginative ideas.

PPF is especially interested in projects that further develop an organization’s capacity to fulfill its mission. Grant applicants may seek to stabilize or strengthen their operations through a specific activity, including, but not limited to:

• Building and diversifying revenue sources

• Planning or updating communications, marketing and outreach

• Improving and diversifying volunteer recruitment, training and retention

• Strengthening governance, leadership or volunteer expertise

• Developing and implementing a fundraising plan

Competitive projects will clearly align with PPF’s mission to ensure a thriving and accessible parks system for a healthy Portland.  Preference will be given to projects that promote equitable access for all Portlanders to parks and parks programming, primarily benefitting low-income populations, communities of color, and other historically underserved groups.

Find more information here.

Major Bank of America Grant Enhances PP&R's Mobile Lunch + Play Program

The Portland Parks Foundation and Portland Parks & Recreation are pleased to announce that they have received a $200k Neighborhood Builders grant from Bank of America. The two-year grant ($100,000 each year) will significantly expand free summertime lunch and recreation activities in east Portland, the region of the city most in need of those services.

Portland Parks Foundation and Portland Parks & Recreation staff, including PPF Executive Director Randy Gragg (black sweater), PP&R Director Adena Long (center) accepted the grant with Parks Commissioner Nick Fish (checkered shirt). The Bank of America grant will allow the Bureau's Mobile Lunch + Play program to expand significantly.

The BofA grant will greatly expand Portland Parks & Recreation’s (PP&R) Summer Free For All Mobile Lunch + Play program. In partnership with Meals on Wheels People, Mobile Lunch + Play brings free summertime lunch, sports, arts, crafts, and games to apartment complexes and sites in Portland where parks are currently scarce. Meals on Wheels People was the recipient of the Neighborhood Builders grant last year. 

“Thanks to Bank of America, thousands more Portland children will receive a free, healthy meal,” says Portland Parks Commissioner Nick Fish. “The Neighborhood Builders grant strengthens our longstanding partnership with Bank of America. Thanks to our philanthropic partner – the Portland Parks Foundation, and to Roger Hinshaw and Monique Barton at Bank of America for their commitment to Portland families.” 

“We recognize the critical role that local nonprofits play to build pathways to economic progress in the Portland community. Through Neighborhood Builders, we connect nonprofits like Financial Beginnings Oregon and the Portland Parks Foundation to the funding and leadership development resources they need to further scale their impact,” said Roger Hinshaw, Bank of America’s Market President in Oregon and Southwest Washington. “Both of these nonprofits do extraordinary work, so I am pleased we are able to bring forward this additional support at a particularly strategic time for them.” 

Nearly forty percent of east Portland households still lack a park within a half mile of their homes. Density continues to grow in east Portland with an estimated 25,000 more housing units coming by 2035. Bank of America’s support will allow PP&R and PPF to expand the Mobile Lunch + Play program to reach more kids and families in need, and bring fun and games to areas without easy park access. 

A Mobile Lunch + Play event brings smiles to kids at an east Portland apartment complex. The Portland Parks & Recreation program brings free lunches and the summertime park experience - games, sports, arts and crafts - to areas which don't yet have ready access to parks.

“The Bank of America Neighborhood Builders grant will allow us to bring a lot of the fun of a park directly to the kids,” says Randy Gragg, PPF’s Executive Director. “With our city growing so quickly, Mobile Play + Lunch is a fast, effective way to better serve more of our city’s kids.” 

“We are so thankful to Bank of America,” says Portland Parks & Recreation Director Adena Long. “The grant helps our Free Lunch + Play program grow in size and scope; to deliver the summertime experience every Portland child deserves.” 

For more information on Portland Parks & Recreation’s Mobile Lunch + Play and other Summer Free For All programs, please click here. 

For more information on Bank Of America’s Neighborhood Builders grant, click here. 

We Did It

When we dreamed of a big celebration for the bridge connecting the iconic Wildwood Trail over West Burnside, we wondered if anyone would actually come—it would probably rain, planning it would be complicated, and we would need so many permits. 

Well nearly 1,300 of us showed up to celebrate the opening of the Barbara Walker Crossing last Sunday. Under sunny skies, the Grand Ronde Color Guard and BrassRoots Movement led hundreds of us up West Burnside, a half-mile to the bridge; kids and adults tested their speed in a 100-meter dash organized by Foot Traffic; we witnessed the bridge’s blessing by leaders of the Siletz and Grand Ronde tribes; Bodyvox and Michael Curry Design performed an enchanting “ribbon tying”, symbolizing the joining of Washington and Forest parks; speakers from the City of Portland and the U.S. House of Representatives acknowledged our community for the groundswell of energy now memorialized in a new safe crossing for one of Portland’s crown jewel’s: the Wildwood Trail. 

And best of all, we stepped onto the bridge we’ve all been dreaming about for more than 20 years! 
 The Barbara Walker Crossing has been a dream for decades.

It moved from dream to drawing board in 2012 when architect Andrew Wheeler and artist Ed Carpenter began lobbying.

In 2014, the Portland Parks Foundation adopted the project and partnered with Portland Parks & Recreation, the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Metro, and hundreds of Portlanders to bring the bridge to life.

Companies like KPFF, R&H Construction, Walker Macy, and Shiels Obletz Johnson all played important roles, donating hundreds of hours of work for the design, engineering, construction, and installation of this bridge. 

Contributions from foundations, businesses, and hundreds of donors made all of this possible. If you were one of them: thank you!

Now get out there, get in touch with nature, and enjoy that bridge!

See photos from Sunday's event here. 

See media coverage here:
KGW
KPTV
KOIN
Portland Tribune

The Oregonian

Oasis of Hope: Casey Sclar on American Public Gardens in an Era of Radical Change

Speaker:          Dr. Casey Sclar, Executive Director of American Public Gardens Association

Date:               Monday, November 4

Time:              6:30 pm

Place:              The Armory, 128 N.W. 11th Avenue, Portland

Tickets:           $5-20 sliding scale; tickets at Eventbrite

Casey Sclar, Executive Director of the American Public Gardens Association, will explore the urgent and evolving role public gardens must play in knitting the social fabric of our communities and addressing global challenges.

Can our public gardens preserve threatened plant species as the climate changes? Can they be places of beauty and psychological health that are more inviting to communities our public gardens have not typically engaged? Can public gardens transition from traditional ornamental collections to becoming critical societal infrastructure?

"There is an urgent new role public gardens can play," says Sclar. "We must get it right."  

Dr. Casey Sclar is the Executive Director of the American Public Gardens Association (APGA). APGA connects, protects, and champions over 600 public gardens and 9300 individual members throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and 24 other countries. These gardens reach over 121 million visitors per year, continually envisioning “a world where public gardens are indispensable.”

Casey’s work experience in horticulture and plant science spans three decades. He spent 15 years at Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, PA) directing integrated pest management, soils and composting, land stewardship, and other sustainability programs. That work earned him APGA’s Professional Citation in 2011 for outstanding achievements in public horticulture.  He is the Inaugural Chair of NICH - the National Initiative for Consumer Horticulture - which raises overall awareness of the $196B/yr. end-use horticulture industry, serves on the Board of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and sits on the Advisory Council for Seed Your Future to help more leaders pursue horticulture and the plant sciences as a career. He holds a B.S. degree in horticulture from Cal Poly State Univ., San Luis Obispo, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in entomology from Colorado State University.

New grants projects connect underserved communities with local parks and programs

Portland Parks Foundation is pleased to announce the new grantees from our Small Grants Program, which provides capacity building support for organizations whose work aligns with PPF’s mission to ensure a thriving and accessible parks system for a healthy Portland. “We are excited to work with our new grantees, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO)  and Ecology in Classrooms and Outdoors (ECO). These projects directly address PPF’s priority for supporting underserved communities that have barriers to accessing the benefits of local parks and programs,” said Jessica Green, PPF’s Operations Officer.

IRCO’s Slavic Youth and Families Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Community School Program at Gilbert Park Elementary.

IRCO is nationally and locally recognized as a culturally and linguistically specific community-based organization with a deep understanding of the diverse communities residing in Oregon. Their proposed project supports Portland’s Slavic Community, Oregon’s largest refugee-based community, which includes diverse ethnicities such as Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, and Czech. “After experiencing religious and political persecution, conflict, and corruption, Slavs are often isolated and reticent to mainstream systems. Almost one in three Slavic children live in poverty, twice the rate of White children. One in five Slavs speak English less than well. These disparities represent significant obstacles for Slavic families seeking resources through PP&R,” IRCO wrote. Through this project, IRCO will provide opportunities to engage Slavic community members with Portland parks spaces and programs through information sharing and events. IRCO hopes to not only increase Slavs’ access to parks, but also help “provide the sense of belonging that Portland’s public spaces, and by extension the city itself, is ‘for them.’”

Students participating in an ECO program at Kingsley D. Bundy Park in SE Portland.

With a mission to reconnect kids with nature, ECO shared that their work “is rooted in the understanding that when kids enjoy and understand the natural world, they grow into adults who take value and take care of it.” Eighty percent of the students ECO serves qualify for free or reduced lunch and 63% identify as minority. City parks that ECO students engage with include Powell Butte Natural Area, Springwater Corridor, and Kingsley D. Bundy Park. The proposed project is to provide diversity, equity, and inclusion training for ECO’s staff and board, with the goal of increasing capacity for the organization to deliver equitable and culturally responsive ecology programs. With increased capacity, ECO sees the impact of this program as helping to build “a more inclusive and diverse next generation of Portland residents who value and support access to thriving parks and natural areas.”

Congratulations to IRCO and ECO!

If you’re with a public park friends group or another community partner, be sure to keep in touch with the PPF throughout the year. You can learn more about our Small Grants Program here. Our next round of applications will be open beginning March 1, with a deadline of March 30, 2019. In addition to small grants, we also offer seasonal technical assistance workshops. Past programs have focused on fundraising strategies, equity and inclusion, grant writing, and building your board.