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“Equitable access to green spaces is a universal need for both children, adults, and communities and promotes positive health outcomes emotionally, mentally, and culturally. I am thankful to work alongside GREEN Galveston to use a framework of evidence-based principles and input from our local community to meaningfully develop and expand green spaces across the entire island, making them accessible to all of our residents, workforce, and visitors."
-Torrina Harris, Program Director, Nia Cultural Center
Parks and green spaces are vital ingredients for creating healthy communities. Quality green spaces attract businesses, protect air and water quality, and help control flooding. Green spaces also improve community health by strengthening social ties, reducing stress, and lowering rates of chronic disease.
GREEN Galveston provides a framework for integrating “green” into Galveston’s landscapes—including parks, open spaces, public right-of-way, new developments, and redevelopments—and developing actionable strategies for doing this work across the island.
During Vision Galveston’s planning process, community members made it clear Galveston's urban environment needed new amenities and reinvestment, particularly to attract the next generation of urban professionals and businesses. Accordingly, these practices would help influence major Galveston-based employers' employee decisions to live on the island. Meanwhile, Galveston’s residents expressed a desire for better access to Galveston's natural amenities.
2021 Highlights and Milestones
In 2021, Vision Galveston announced the GREEN Galveston initiative, releasing the first GREEN Galveston report, which detailed its guiding principles and the island’s need for green space. In addition, this report included an original concept design for Jones Park, a pilot project for the initiative.
The report showed how GREEN Galveston plans to improve access to parks and other green space amenities and reshape perspectives about the value of quality outdoor space embedded in the community.
Jones Park is a neighborhood park known for continually flooding and not meeting area residents' needs. The pilot project’s redesign—to a modern, climate-ready, fully-accessible park—will serve as a proof of concept, a model for bringing more green space into Galveston's urban core.
In early spring 2021, in partnership with Better Parks for Galveston (Better Parks), GREEN Galveston engaged Parker Elementary students to inform Jones Park’s design during a day at the park. Students voiced their vision of a Jones Park that meets their needs, feedback that included drawings and comments of their ideal park and play equipment.
GREEN Galveston continued pre-development work at Jones Park during the summertime, collaborating with the City of Galveston’s Industrial Development Corporation on this resilient community green space.
The initiative added another urban space, Shield Park, to redevelop through this collaboration. Vision Galveston also negotiated an agreement with Better Parks for Galveston to support Phase I pre-development work at the Jones Park project. As a result, the Galveston Industrial Commission, Better Parks for Galveston, and Vision Galveston are acting in strong partnership to significantly improve Jones Park and Shield Park.
These actions—made possible with significant funding from IDC and Better Parks—are part of GREEN Galveston’s engagement with government agencies and private partnerships to study and remediate potential problems before beginning design work.
On October 19, the urban design architecture firm, Asakura Robinson, presented GREEN Galveston’s Action Team with a 15% design schematic for Jones Park’s environmental assessment. The team incorporated community feedback into developing a 30% design schematic presented in December. This deliverable represented the completion of phase 1 of the park’s redevelopment. Phase 2 will include further community engagement before finalizing construction design and build stages in 2022.