During my time interning with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, I have been able to grasp
the idea of what goes into building sustainable communities.
You can find on their website a mission of the nonprofit organization as well as their
efforts toward diversity, inclusion, and equity.
The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy uses a holistic approach toward diversity, transparency, equity,
and community development.
Hi I'm Gavin White and I'm the community projects manager for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
My name is Brandon Riley, and I'm the capital projects manager.
Mellon Park is a vibrant open park space with even more opportunity ahead.
It's situated at the center of Pittsburgh's East End and at the top of the Naked Run Watershed.
It's at the corner of two main driving corridors, 5th Avenue and Penn Ave.
You know, in addition, it's used for a lot of recreational opportunities.
It's got fields, courts, play spaces that are busy year round.
But these amenities need an upgrading as well to make sure they continue to perform at the
high level that they are in the future.
The mission of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy is to restore the park system to excellence
in partnership with the city and communities around the parks.
So in Mellon Park, as in all of our projects, the only way to have a successful plan or
a project is to do a lot of community engagement and we do that through as many different means
as we can, we really try to meet people where they're at, so whether that's being out at
the park and talking to people here, having virtual meetings online, or you know setting
up surveys, going to other community meetings, we try to do whatever we can to get as much
input as possible from the community and really let them drive the project because they're
the ones that know their community the best and if we're going to design or improve a
park space, it's got to be with their intentions in mind.
So for the Mellon Park action plan and for any community process, transparency is really
important.
It's really critical to build that foundation of trust with community members and the only
way to do that is to be honest about where you're coming from, what your intentions are,
and what you hope to achieve with them.
We try not to hide anything in the way of our priorities or our funding or any other
detail that the community might be interested in so that they know we're being honest and
we're approaching this project from the perspective of really having their best interests at heart.