A Conservancy Rebuilds And Revitalizes Urban Parkland
by Susan Rademacher
Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy
From Great Parks/Great Cities: Denver, 1998, a publication on an Urban Parks Institute regional workshop.
Since 1991, Susan Rademacher has led the Louisville Olmsted
Parks Conservancy in its effort to assist the Parks
Department in renewing Louisville's historic park
system. She also serves as Director of the Planning and
Design Division of the Metropolitan Parks Department, and
is responsible for project review and approval for the
entire Olmsted system as well as master planning and
project development. Ms. Rademacher was the Editor in
Chief of Landscape Architecture and Garden
Design magazines for five years.
A hundred years ago, the city leadership in
Louisville, Kentucky had the foresight to realize that
they wanted the city to grow around a structure of parks
and parkways. And they had the intelligence to bring in
the foremost landscape designer of the day, Frederick Law
Olmsted, to articulate their vision. Olmsted and his
successors left us with a legacy of 16 parks and 5
parkways -- about 2,000 acres and 15 miles of parkways --
around which our whole city-county park system is built.
The city's 16 Olmsted parks provide a brilliant
design that brings people into contact with nature and
with each other.
However, by the 1970's, Louisville's parks
had a problem. The parks were mostly empty. The parks
department had radically lost ground in the 1940s, when
the parks commission was dissolved and its
responsibilities were divided up among various city
agencies. Since then there had been a complete loss of
institutional memory about what these Olmsted landscapes
were designed to do, how to manage them, and how to
provide programs that would encourage public use.
In 1986, the parks department wrote a grant which
helped to fund the creation of the Louisville Friends of
Olmsted Parks. Their first task was to inventory the 180
properties that had been developed by the Olmsted firm
over a period of almost 50 years. At the same time they
began to see that the parks were truly becoming
fragmented, that development was extremely piecemeal, and
that the power of the park landscape was being lost, in
terms of community opportunities.
This led the Louisville Friends of Olmsted Parks to
recommend to the mayor that he create some other body to
get the funds and needed expertise. The Friends basically
wanted to stay low-key and focus on public awareness. So
the mayor, who was committed to saving the parks, formed
a committee to explore models for a new organization.
After looking carefully at the situation, city officials
realized that they did not have the knowledge with which
to approach the restoration of their parks, which had
been so carefully conceived by Olmsted. They had the
intention, they had the desire, but they didn't have the
knowledge. It took about two years, but a plan was
developed to form the Olmsted Parks Conservancy in
Louisville; including one million dollars in seed money
from the city over the first three or four years of
start-up.
The Conservancy Model, and How it Works
The specific responsibilities of the conservancy were
worked out by the first Conservancy board, including how
the money would be managed, where we would be housed,
etc. These responsibilities include:
- Ongoing planning, including developing
recommendations for a master plan that was
produced in 1994;
- Implementing the plan with phased capital
projects, including new ballfields and courts,
parking, stadium, and paths;
- overseeing and reviewing projects in all Olmsted
parks;
- Landscaping and restoration using volunteers,
including forest, wetland and prairie
restoration, and extensive re-planting of
parkways;
- Raising private funds to supplement public funds
in capital projects, seeking public match;
- Programs such as volunteer greeters and guides,
walking tours and lectures; and
- Design -- the conservancy sometimes teamed up
with consultants and parks
department -- creating a design pattern book of
elements common to all parks, as well as
coordinated signage program.
The conservancy is not involved in maintenance, which
is the responsibility of the parks and recreation
department. The partnership has worked out a formula for
who raises money for what: since city funding is limited,
the parks department funds basics like infrastructure and
operations; the conservancy focuses on improving the park
experience, providing a greater variety of recreation and
landscapes, improving character, and experimental
projects such as wetlands restoration.
The city does not contribute funds to conservancy
operations. Instead, each year the park department puts
in a budget request listing the conservancy's
contribution, the aldermen decide how much to appropriate
to each project. When bills come in, the city pays its
share, and bills the conservancy for the balance.
Conservancy staff is made up of an executive director,
a full-time administrative accounting assistant, a
development director, a public programs director, and a
part time landscape architect. The parks department staff
acts as an adjunct staff, especially in planning and
design. We also have approximately 50 regular volunteers.
One of the more unusual aspects of the relationship is
my position. I serve jointly as Executive Director of the
nonprofit Conservancy and also as the Assistant Parks
Director, reporting daily to the Parks Director. The
salary for this position is split by the Conservancy and
Parks Department (the Conservancy reimburses Parks). Both
the mayor and parks director had to approve my hiring.
This arrangement helps give me credibility as a city
employee. It also cements the partnership between Parks
and the Conservancy.
Turning the Parks Around
In 1990 we began the transformation from neglected
parks to well- maintained and well-used parks. First we
set up a board, most of whom were tapped by the mayor for
their fund-raising expertise, not because of their
interest in parks. It was a diverse board -- made up
of 30 people from very, very different walks of life
thrown together on this new project. We have neighborhood
representatives and professionals with specific expertise
such as architecture, advertising and historic
preservation. Ex-officio members include the Director of
Public Works, the Director of Parks, the Parks Advisory
Board, the Friends of Olmsted Parks, and representatives
from the mayor's office.
The board has several basic activities including
overseeing the planning process, providing planning and
design expertise, raising funds, implementing plans,
ensuring community representation, and preserving
Olmsted's legacy.
Much of our capital income comes from foundations,
corporations and individuals. Half of our operating
income comes from interest income on a $1.5 million
endowment, and construction capital dollars which are
invested. Our endowment income is from gifts, and 23% of
all private funds raised for capital projects deposited
to the endowment.
The Master Plan
We quickly realized that a key contribution we could
make would be the development of a master plan for the
entire Olmsted Park System. We started with a belief in
the native intelligence of this community, and we invited
the public to dream about what these parks could be, and
what they remembered the parks being in the past.
Typically, changes that come about in parks are
politically motivated to get a little bang in the short
term for the next election. And our parks were suffering
from that approach. So when we invited the community to
dream large, we also changed the expectations of the
public sector.
In this way, we began to build the idea of one park
system, one city, and promoted our parks as a way of
connecting us all with democratic space and recreational
opportunities, locally and regionally. And we made a
radical shift in treating our historic landscape in terms
of its natural systems, making sure that we restored it
as a healthy landscape first and foremost, so that then
we could deal with the restoration of the cultural
heritage and the improvement of the spaces for current
uses.
Our master planning team included ecological and
historical landscape architects, engineers, historians,
parks department maintenance staff, park users, and city
council members. The many points of view helped to ensure
that the product would be useful -- not a plan that would
sit on a shelf. We then invited the public, including
people the alderman had suggested would make important
contributions, to the first public organizational
meeting. Every person who had written a letter to the
editor or called in to complain about a park-related
issue was invited. Of this group we eventually found the
people who were committed enough to be on the new
stewardship councils. The councils met as needed;
consulting with the planning team whenever they needed
input.
Our master plan, which took three years to produce,
was a blending of ecological restoration and historic
preservation which I consider to be a real
accomplishment. It was formally adopted by the board of
aldermen as the guide for all improvements in the parks
and parkways, and for management of the Olmsted parks and
parkways. That was a real achievement, because it called
for a renewal of the parks department, and community
ownership. The parks department was totally reorganized
and renewed. We've created a value for sustainable
parks, and an appreciation and growth of partnerships for
parks. Park use is now thriving, adding considerably to
the credibility of conservancy. The adoption of Olmsted
values has served as a model for expansion over the
entire park system. I consider it a real achievement that
new designs for parks in new housing developments around
Louisville incorporate not only linkages to, but the
design sensitivities of, the Olmsted system.
The conservancy model is working well for us in
Louisville. We have a day-to-day operating relationship
with the parks department -- since I am also the
Assistant Parks Director, every project is done through
the parks department, and a team of department staff
usually gets involved in project management. In this way
there are no surprises.
To protect our close working relationship, the
conservancy abstains from any advocacy. That role is
played by the Friends of Olmsted Parks, which is
independent politically, outside the government process
and a very vocal advocate. The conservancy works from the
inside, at different pressure points.
Lastly, I want to say that I think its critical to go
out and listen, because the politicians, and the park
users, and the park neighbors know what is wrong with the
parks. You don't have to do a lot of searching to
find out what needs to be addressed. They don't
always know the difference between a symptom and a cause,
and they don't always understand what the cure could
be. That's our job. To work with them from the
beginning, and let them know that there are alternatives.
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