How D.C.’s version of the High Line
The 11th Street Bridge Park engaged community members from the outset, working to understand what residents needed and find ways to limit displacement. – Fast Company
Five-City Equitable Development Workforce Pilot
In 2021, 11th Street Bridge Park (Bridge Park) in Washington, DC, received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the JPB Foundation to establish a “five-city pilot” to expand its highly regarded workforce-development approach to similar equity-focused parks around the country. – Urban Institute
11th Street Bridge Parks’ Scott Kratz on Community Engagement with Public Projects
One of these projects, within the network of the highly successful High Line project in New York, is the 11th Street Bridge Park in DC. Scott Kratz, Director of Building Bridges Across the River, spoke about the project on a panel during Bloomberg’s CityLab conference. In his comments, excerpted here, Kratz addresses the importance of community and local engagement when it comes to altering the built environment, as well as the overall mission of Washington DC’s bridge reuse project. – The Planning Report
Learning from 11th Street Bridge Park’s Affordable Housing Strategies
The Bridge Park has helped found job programs that have already placed over 150 residents in construction jobs, who will be the first to actually build the park. It has also supported people’s training on culinary skills and technical assistance to black owned businesses and provided a total of over three million dollars in grants and loans to help prepare their businesses well in advance before the park opens… – The Urban Activist
River East Design Center created The Bridge Spot, a small business kiosk
Community Forklift’s Community Building Blocks (CBB) program provided free paint from our reuse warehouse to aid in the construction of The Bridge Spot mobile kiosk. The kiosk is designed to support a group of small businesses from east of the Anacostia River, allowing them to travel around the city and vend at festivals and markets. – Community Forklift
Data Sharing Can Better Allow Partner Networks to Meet Equity Goals
From landscape design to economic development, equitable public space and infrastructure-reuse projects must interact with many different domains to fulfill their missions. But this web of partnerships and stakeholders also necessitates growing data collection and analysis responsibilities to measure performance and meet equity goals. – Urban Institute
Building Equitable Communities: Northwest Arkansas and the Future of Community Land Trusts
““We need to be willing to remold our plans based on feedback and truly listen to the needs and desires of the community we’re serving.” – Scott Kratz” – I Am Northwest Arkansas
Hundreds of Young People, Adults Pour Their Hearts Out at Youth Summit
Hundreds of young people and adults converged on THEARC in Southeast D.C. on Sunday to reflect on the current state of affairs in the District and talk about what they believe to be solutions to the violence that has rocked their communities over the past several years. – The Washington Informer
11th Street Bridge Park relaunches its Anacostia small business preservation program
Select businesses will get pro bono assistance from … – Washington Business Journal
Improving Access for Small Businesses East of the River
A small business kiosk is providing added visibility to Black-owned startups from east of the Anacostia River across Washington, D.C., as it hits the road for the very first time this summer.
Known as The Bridge Spot, this distinctive two-tone green mobile kiosk aims to provide visibility and improve marketing and sales for businesses in Wards 7 and 8, with an eye toward helping entrepreneurs build generational wealth. For Angela Chester-Johnson, Founder of the tea, spice and sauce shop Plum Good, The Bridge Spot also offers an opportunity to promote health and well-being across the District and beyond. – Capital One