This story was originally published by Fresnoland.
Just around the corner from Fresno’s brand new Broadway Parque is the first door Kiel Lopez-Schmidt and his neighbors knocked on eight years ago, asking what people wanted to see built on the lot that’s now home to the park.
Before it was Broadway Parque, the corner was the site of a Fresno police substation. At the time, Lopez-Schmidt and his neighbors had just learned the station was getting torn down, and the thought of taking that space and transforming it into a park was only a dream.
Fast forward to Thursday, the day the park officially opened on the corner of Broadway and Elizabeth to swarms of children and South Tower families — and it all feels a little surreal, Lopez-Schmidt said.
“Our dream was for this day and beyond,” he said. “Eight years of work, and now it’s arrived.”
City leaders joined Lopez-Schmidt’s organization, the South Tower Community Land Trust, to celebrate the new $3 million park’s grand opening Thursday.
It brings 6,000 square-feet of green space to a community that “sorely” needed it, said Mayor Jerry Dyer.
On top of that, Broadway Parque boasts several top-of-the-line amenities: a playground, swing sets, shade structures, picnic tables, paved walkways, lighting and perimeter fencing.
And families in the neighborhood are here for it. Dozens came with their children to enjoy the long-awaited new park on day one.
“We were literally counting down to this day,” said Amanda Brazzell, who with her husband Brazz brought their 4-year-old son Arahm to run around the park Thursday.
In addition to residents’ advocacy, Fresno voters’ approval of the Measure P sales tax for parks and cultural arts in 2018 — and the measure’s triumph over legal challenges in 2021 — was also instrumental in making Broadway Parque a reality.
“If we did not have those public resources, this park would not exist (with) this level of grandeur,” Lopez-Schmidt said of Measure P funds. “We still would have made it happen. We would have laid down the grass ourselves to make it happen. But luckily, we had the resources to do it.”
While Thursday marked a new milestone in South Tower’s advocacy for green space and beautification for their neighborhood, it’s only the beginning of the investments residents will see, said South Tower’s City Councilmember Miguel Arias.
Next up, Arias said, are improvements to the neighborhood’s San Pablo Park — which also just celebrated the completion of 20 new murals — and the Ted C. Wills Community Center.
“Our hope is that South Tower will have three high-quality parks to be able to benefit from” between the three locations, Arias added, “without having to drive outside the neighborhood.”
From dream to reality
The police substation that once stood at the corner of Broadway and Elizabeth streets was decommissioned in 2017.
Some city leaders wanted the vacant lot rezoned for new apartments. The neighborhood had other plans.
“We saw that this property, the police station, was going to be torn down, and did not get an invitation to the table to decide what was the future of this land,” Lopez-Schmidt said. “We had to invite ourselves.”
After leading door-to-door canvassing around a two-block radius of the lot, Lopez-Schmidt and his neighbors found that a majority of residents “resoundingly” wanted a park built there.
Over several more years of advocacy, Lopez-Schmidt estimates they received input on the park plans from roughly 750 individuals.
Then, when Measure P cleared its final legal hurdle in 2021, the way was paved for Broadway Parque to receive city funding.
The design process for the park consisted of several community meetings with South Tower residents, said the city’s parks director Aaron Aguirre.
Construction began last September and wrapped up in early July.
Aguirre hopes the end result will serve as a template for other neighborhood parks.
“Your innovative ideas really set the blueprint,” he told the crowd of South Tower residents Thursday, “for other park assets here in the near future.”
Green space in South Tower
The Brazzells have lived in South Tower since right before the pandemic started — and shortly before their son Arahm arrived.
“We didn’t notice too much the lack of green space before we started a family. Then,” Brazzell said of her and her husband, “when we did, it was just so apparent.”
Before the new park was built, the closest one for families like the Brazzells in the South Tower neighborhood was about a mile away, Dyer said.
And even other community spaces in South Tower predating Broadway Parque come with a troubled legacy, including San Pablo Park. It was built underneath an overpass of the 180 freeway that cleared out homes and disrupted the neighborhood in ways it’s still trying to recover from.
To now have a place like Broadway Parque within walking distance of their house on Wilson Avenue, the Brazzells said, is a big deal for their son, who’s homeschooled.
“Honestly, our son loves to run,” Brazz, his father, said. “He’ll take advantage of the entire space.”
“He’s the type of kid that will give himself away during hide-and-seek because he wants to get to the seeking part,” added Amanda, his mother. “So any space that he can run (in) is going to be amazing.”
Beyond Broadway Parque
But the park isn’t just for children.
There are picnic tables with checkerboard patterns for visitors to play chess. There’s a shaded platform for artists to perform. There’s a doggie-bag station for anyone walking their pet.
South Tower resident Soledad Freeman, who joined the Land Trust just a month ago as an executive assistant, said she not only plans to bring her immediate family to the park but any friends or family who visit her from now on, too.
“This will be one of our stops whenever out-of-towners come,” Freeman said. “I’ll be like, hey, let’s go hang out at the park — have some dinner, have some lunch. Or, hey, there’s a live performance happening there.
“Let’s go to Broadway Parque.”
Freeman and her colleagues at the Land Trust believe there’s also lessons to be learned here for other residents in Fresno that want to see more green space for their neighborhood.
Lopez-Schmidt recommended people look into what land is publicly owned in their neighborhoods, since California’s Surplus Land Act helps facilitate the development of things like affordable housing and parks on government-held land that isn’t currently in use.
But the work isn’t over for South Tower’s share of green space, or even for Broadway Parque, he added. They’re looking into traffic-calming measures around the entrances to the park, and, after helping coordinate three of San Pablo Park’s 20 new murals, they’re looking to bring another one to the new park, too.
“We’ve got 300 feet of wall space,” he said, gesturing to the perimeter of the park, “to do a future mural. We’ve got a grant application in for a Measure P project that’s under review right now.”