 Whether it is century old Central Park in New York City or newly developed Millennium Park in Chicago, the economic development benefits of parks should not be underestimated. A report from the Central Park Conservancy recently declared Central Park contributed $1 billion to the city’s economy in 2007.
With momentum building, we have been steadily entering an era of reinvestment with public parks at the forefront – a new era that might be eventually compared to the “City Beautiful” movement of the late 19th century. The development of new parks, park planning and revitalization of decade old parks has been a driving force across the country from New York City’s High Line Park to Orange County’s Great Park in Irvine California, to recently completed City Garden in downtown St. Louis.
Even right here in Northern Michigan, communities are coming together to build parks. Greilickville Harbor Park in Elmwood Township will be completed this summer, and Roscommon Township last year completed a small waterfront park on Houghton Lake with hopes to revitalize the aging M-55 commercial corridor, Traverse City, in conjunction with Garfield Township, have joined together to turn a 56-acre portion of the Old State Hospital's grounds into the Historic Barns Park. Traverse City is also undergoing a huge planning effort to revitalize over 2 miles of public waterfront.
|
|
|
| After ten years of planning, friend-raising and fundraising, the botanical garden has a home at last! Located on 25 acres of land within the Historic Barns Park, on the site of the old Traverse City State Hospital, the garden encompasses a wide range of ecosystems, from meadows to woodlands to wetlands. A variety of display, demonstration and research gardens will be designed and planted in the core area of the garden, including landscaped beds around the historic barns themselves. |
|
The Botanical Garden Society of Northwest Michigan (BGSNM) has a new home at the Grand Traverse Commons.
For
the past ten years, the Botanical Garden Society of Northwest Michigan
(BGSNM) has worked tirelessly to establish a site for a regional
botanic garden. Although public input from an extensive 1999 MSU
Extension survey, as well as follow-up feasibility studies, showed a
strong desire by the public for the garden to be located on the grounds
of the old State Hospital in Traverse City, past efforts were
unsuccessful. When it looked as if a site on the Commons (State
Hospital grounds) would never become available, BGSNM pursued an
alternate site at Three Mile and Hammond, just outside of Traverse
City. However, we were unable to garner adequate public and financial
support for that site, and our supporters kept encouraging us to
revisit the Commons once again. Now there is good news! |
|
|
A brief perspective of our Garden's potential.
"I
believe this garden has the potential to not just rival the best
gardens out there, but to greatly exceed the vast majority of them.
This doesn't start with the much abused and over-used expression of a
desire to have a "world-class" garden. Instead it comes from a more
heartfelt, perhaps more modest vision of a garden that is of its time
and locale - one that communicates its research and education mission
through the poetry of place-based design rather than the stilted prose
of chock-a-block over-programmed mini Disneys. You have already set
forth the right tenor to create such a lyrical challenge to the dull
mediocrity of those everyday public gardens. We would be honored to
collaborate with you toward these higher expectations."
Warren Byrd,
Nelson/Byrd Landscape Architects |
|
|
|
|
|
|
News