Myles-Wimberly Park
WELCOME TO OUR PROJECT!
The Myles-Wimberly Park has a rich history of sports for the community of Barnesville, GA. Named after two coaches, the park sits half of a mile from downtown, nestled in between the E.P. Roberts Community Center and surrounding housing authority. The park in the past has offered the community sports field space, playground space, and now a combination of the two. This park is extremely important to the surrounding community as it acts as a walkable greenspace for people that live nearby and may not be able to or desire to otherwise access the Lamar County recreational fields within driving distance. The park is utilized as both a public event space and play area and flexible sports complex equipped with two basketball courts and enough space for football and baseball pick up games.
[Written by Maggie Dyer]
Existing aerial image of Myles-Wimberly Park. It is surrounded byhousing authority and nearby E.P. Roberts Center.
Current highly-used facilities are becoming run-down and overused.
The surrounding community has been long asking for a revitalization of their beloved historic park.
Phase 1: Outdoor Engagement Activity
With overwhelming help from the city of Barnesville, GA, we were able to help put on an event at the project site, Myles-Wimberly Park, equipped with a hotdog cookout done by the police department, a DJ, and a bouncy house. The city advertised the event through flyers and Facebook in order to get the most participants on site and excited about the new redesign. Because the park was used for events in the past (e.g. family reunions, church picnics, etc.), it was the perfect place to gather and get the neighboring houses involved.
As the design students, we had compiled a list of unique park elements they might like added (e.g. splash pad, art fence) as well as their current elements in need of repair/redesign (e.g. baseball field, basketball courts, walking track, playground, bathrooms) and had them rank them using dot stickers by necessity/desire. We found an overwhelming desire for the current elements as well as added feedback on security measures and safety being a must. Alongside this activity, we encouraged children that came to the event to stop by our drawing table and draw some ideas of their ideal park/what they love about their park now. A resounding appreciation for the sports facilities (basketball court and recreation field) were found. Lastly, we had paper surveys for community members to fill out either there while at the site or to take home as well as just talking to people and asking them about their past experiences with Myles-Wimberly Park.
These activities at the outdoor event were extremely helpful in giving us direction, purpose, and goals for the site that aligned with what the community wanted: revitalized recreation facilities, more parking, and heightened security.
[Written by Maggie Dyer]
Phase 2: Narrowing Down Our Options
(Top) First of two options given to the client. Image source: Ashi Vashist
In this second phase of engagement, we presented over Zoom to our client with two options of the park layout. Both layout options were pitched by both group members in order to make sure each layouts' design authors were ambiguous.
Our clients were very helpful and upfront about what they liked and disliked about each plan. Through their feedback and input we were able to basically merge the plans and come up with a best-of-both-worlds situation.
[Written by Maggie Dyer]
Phase 3: Pitching the Design
After we had finalized our site plan, perspectives, and walkthrough video, we helped organize a meeting comprised of half community members and half city staff/officials in the E.P. Roberts Center nextdoor to the project site in order to discuss what we had come up with and get their feedback on it.
We held this meeting with a presentation followed by an open discussion to gather questions and concerns from the present audience. The audience members were very excited and impressed by our design and the walkthrough video.
We also had a box for those who did not want to voice questions to the general public to have an opportunity to make their opinions known. This was very successful and gave us a lot of feedback and ideas to ruminate over in the next few weeks before the final package needed to be created.
[Written by Maggie Dyer]
In this phase, the detailed comprehensive plan included layout and specified size of components, generalized appearance of features through the use of SketchUp, Lumion, and Photoshop, and an opinion of probable construction costs offered up to the client in order to gather funds and apply for grants.
Phase 4: Final Presentation
After presenting our design to the community, and the city officials, we went through the feedback, questions and suggestions in the box and what we had written in our notes during the open discussion. Most of them included positive feedback along with a few questions. Surprisingly, there were no major changes required in the design. After this, we worked on the panting and material plan, construction drawings and two DIY projects. Some of the areas were designed in detail like northern and southern entrance.
A package was prepared which included all the required drawings, DIY projects and cost estimation. As part of our last presentation, this package was sent and presented on zoom to our main two points of contact, Niki Sappington and Yasheka Buckner. They were very excited to see the whole design together and were trying to take this forward for construction.
[Written by Ashi Vashist]
Blog Post Reflections
Presenting to Myriad People
The City of Barnesville was such an encouraging client to have for this project. Having the support and guidance of our two main points of contact, Niki Sappington and Yasheka Buckner, made the project fun and exciting to work on. They were so passionate about seeing the park redesigned for the community and made events like the first and third phase engagement events possible and very successful.
As someone who would rather be in the background and simply work silently on projects, having to take the lead on engagement activities helped push me out of my comfort zone and into someone who could rally support and participation for a project. This was a very difficult hurdle to overcome, especially in the first phase when we had just arrived to the site and had to be welcoming and inviting in a place we had never been before to people we had never met. I tried to channel some outgoing part of myself that could relate to any of the community members no matter their age in order to form a connection with them, while still being authentic and true to myself. For example, it was reassuring to talk to some of the older women in the community and find things we had in common like a love of plants and nature, which then inspired the terraced welcome planter in the south entrance.
Upon our third engagement phase where we pitched our idea to a room of half community members and half city staff/officials, I felt that my biggest challenge was fielding questions and criticisms in a respectful but confident way. It was hard not to feel like an imposter as a twenty-two year old student coming into the community and marketing a design like it was the best design the community could wish for. I would say that presentation to a split audience was definitely the biggest learning opportunity for me.
[written by Maggie Dyer]
(above) Doing some park drawings of my own alongside the kids. You have to walk the walk to talk the talk, right?
(above) One of my favorite areas of the site was the privately-owned Nellie Wimberly Park which we envisioned becoming a family park with playground and picnic tables.
Involvement of Everyone in the Process
The project to design a park for a neighbourhood in the city of Barnesville was very exciting for our group. The process involved to get to the final design was engaging and full of learning for the community as well as for us as the students of design. The whole community including children were actively involved throughout the process and were very eager to see the outcome.
As students of design, we would need to interact with the clients regularly. With this studio and the project, I realised it is very important to discuss your design and ideas with the client on every stage. Since the design is being done for them, they are ones who knows the best. Along with this, we sometimes think, that kids won’t be able to explain their ideas well. However, we came up with some engagement activities like, ‘draw your dream park’, which helped us to interact with the kids easily and get them involved in the process. It was surprising to see, what adults and some parents thought that their kids would like in the park like baseball field, the kids were not very interested in those ideas. As students of landscape architects, we pay a lot of attention to planting plans for any design. However, it was shocking that most of the community people were not very interested to talk about the kinds of plants and trees that should be planted there. I also learned that walkthrough videos are one of the best ways to explain the design to the clients. That one of the main things, that made our event ‘design presentation to the community’s success.
Talking about the challenges that we faced, I think one of the biggest challenge was to involve kids in the engagement activities. Though the activity included drawing, not all the kids were enthusiastic about it. I remember running behind them, playing games with them and offering other gifts to get them to draw. It was a tiring but fun experience. In terms of design, we learned that grade change is not always a barrier in the design. We designed one additional entrance for the park to make access easy from the neighbourhood. The grade change helped to create a grand entrance and acted as a dividing element between the park and the traffic road.
[Written by Ashi Vashist]
Blog entries and project content were developed by Maggie Dyer.