April 2016 - Parks & Recreation - 30

Member to Member
Making Ends Meet
It takes a village of funders to re-make a park
By Beverly Smith

elly Park, in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood, had seen
better days. Operated jointly by the Chicago Park District and
Kelly High School and located directly across California Avenue,
the 7-acre park had deteriorated so badly since opening in the
early 1950s that the school's soccer and football teams had to move their
home games elsewhere. That turned into a problem when street gangs, operating east of Western Avenue, began attacking Kelly players at the larger,
better-equipped McKinley Park.
" Our park had been passed up and
forgotten, " said Patrick Brosnan, executive director of the Brighton Park
Neighborhood Council (BNPC), a
nonprofit community organization.
" So we began to organize. "
Individually, the park district,
the school, or any other local partner did not have the couple million
dollars it would cost to install a synthetic turf field. But, through a series of strategic phone calls, BNPC
linked up with Local Initiatives
Support Corporation (LISC) Chica-

go and applied for a $200,000 grant
through the LISC/NFL Foundation
Grassroots Program.
Cooperation was key in securing
the $2 million football/soccer improvement. Besides $200,000 contributed by the Chicago Bears via
the NFL Foundation Grassroots
Program, significant investments
came from the Chicago Park District, the public schools, the state
of Illinois through the efforts of
Sen. Martin Sandoval (D-IL), the
U.S. Soccer Federation, the city of

With funding from the NFL Foundation
Grassroots Program, the Indianapolis Parks Foundation and the city of
Indianapolis installed the 6-acre Central
Greens Field, seen here.

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Chicago and the Pritzker-Traubert
Family Foundation.
The $200,000 NFL Foundation
Grassroots grant represented a fraction of the new field's total cost, but
with that money in hand, BNPC
gained considerable credibility as it
approached other potential funders.
Through those contributions, Kelly High School athletes will have a
place to play, as do residents of the
largely Mexican-American Brighton
Park neighborhood. It's a phenomenon that is occurring elsewhere in
the country via the NFL Foundation
Grassroots Program.
Building Fields, Partnerships
and Communities
There's little doubt that safe, accessible park and recreational facilities
are essential for fostering active,
healthy communities. The question
that park departments and outdoor
recreation advocates often face is
not, " Should we build or renovate
our facilities? " but rather, " How do
we make it happen? " and " How do
we pay for it? "
Increasingly, the answer is
through the type of partnerships
and multi-organization collaboration that sparked the Kelly Park
renovation. This often requires park
departments working with schools
and nonprofit organizations, not
only because they can contribute
much-needed resources toward
projects and programs, but also because they are deeply rooted in local
neighborhoods. These groups are

April 2016 - Parks & Recreation

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