The workshops have concluded, tears have been shed, and blood has been spilled but finally the new 5th-year teams have been chosen. 

(Drum roll please) 

TA-DA! We are so excited to introduce ourselves as the Smith Park team! We are: Meghan Tahsler, John Ratley, Trenton Williams, and Amanda Kaase!

Our task is the design and revitalization Curtis Smith park, a neighborhood park located along Highway 69 in Greensboro, AL. 

Park it right over there

For some context, Smith Park has been a part of Greensboro since the early 1970s, serving as a hub for baseball, softball, and community events. In the 2000s, Rural Studio worked on the Lions Park projects, shifting many activities. Unfortunately, a tornado led to the park entering a state of disrepair, resulting in its underuse. Our goal, along with the help of the community of Greensboro and the parks and recreation board, is to bring Smith Park back, offering a new type of park experience for the city and the neighborhoods around it. 

When (s)parks fly

For a few weeks, the team dove right into the project, visiting the many parks around Greensboro (Lions Park, Davis Street Park, Curtis Smith Park, and more) to document their conditions in an attempt to learn how they are used, maintained, and designed. The team was also visited by consultants Mary Margaret Jones, David Hill, Julie Eizenberg, Hank Koning, and Roy Decker to help develop early schemes with a special focus on landscape design, material reuse, and community engagement. 

In early September, the team held a community meeting event on site at Curtis Smith Park. We came together with the community, ate food, discussed ideas for the park’s future, and learned about the history of Curtis Smith Park and the people who made it what it is today. Our goal is to take all the information we learned and use it in all of our design work moving forward.    

Up next for the team, we are steadily working toward halloween reviews at the end of October, with plans to reconvene with the community to begin discussions about our plans for the park. 

As for our Halloween costumes, you’ll have to wait and see! To hold you over, a hint: Extinction