The cornerstone of our park creation process is to ensure that every park meets the needs of the people who will be using it. To make sure this happens, we execute an extensive community engagement process for every design.  

The year kicked off with input gathering for our newest trail in Peekskill, NY's Depew Park with the New York New Jersey Trail Conference (NYNJTC). A survey was distributed to residents to learn how people use the trails and what they think could make them even better. The survey received over 200 responses! Building on this feedback, NYNJTC hosted a round table with a targeted group of community members to hear first-hand about their experiences and priorities.  

This feedback went directly into the creation of the White Loop trail which connects Depew Park to the nearby Blue Mountain Reservation and opened to the public in July.  

As the year continued, we began initial community outreach in our two newest cities: NYCHA and Newburgh, NY.  

For NYCHA, we set up tables in common spaces at UPACA 5 & 6 and Bay View Houses to hear from residents about their wants and needs for their open space. Recently, we attended our first tenant meeting at East River Houses, beginning what will be an in-depth community-led design process to learn what residents think about the current open space and what they would like to see in the future.  

Over in Newburgh, we made many spring and summer visits and hosted several community meetings to talk to city residents about how they use their 24-acre Delano-Hitch Park and what they hoped to see going forward. Two surveys, in both English and Spanish, engaged the larger community. This input will help us finalize a community-centered design for Delano-Hitch Park and help to secure funding for the project.  

This year, we grew our projects team to bolster our capacity to engage deeply with each and every city and community.  

Community engagement efforts were led by Chanda Bennett, Programs & Partnership Director, and Shannon Hui, Senior Project & Research Associate. Our landscape architect Emmanuel Thingue (Design & Project Management Director) lead many community engagement sessions to explain his proposed designs and gather community feedback for the final iterations. Wilfred Nieves joined NCP in July as our Director of Capital Projects. Wil is bilingual and has helped us improve our ability to connect directly with Spanish-speaking residents in our cities.