Courtesy of Samantha Lee, Pocketparks
Last fall, Samantha Lee went for a run. Downtown, she stopped at 10th and Locust and looked around. It was a gray day, and St. Louis—and the rest of the country—was bracing for the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Streets were closed off, and businesses looked empty. No one was around.
“I think that most people would probably be sad about it,” Lee says. “But I saw so many opportunities.”
Lee is a designer by trade. She has a background in interior design and has dabbled in everything from graphic design to branding. But she always had a passion for work that would impact the masses. After that run, she started sketching. She thought about doing some kind of programming on the street, maybe a temporary activation event or hosting a dinner outside. But COVID-19 case and hospitalization numbers were climbing.
“‘Let’s throw a big party’—that wasn’t really on people’s agenda,” Lee says. “At the same time, I was learning a lot about St. Louis, our urban development, our environment, and the vacancy problem that we have here. I knew that if I was able to take an underutilized space and activate it, and not burden anybody with that project, it could still accomplish the same thing—helping out local businesses and activating the streets—everything that I was intending to do with an event. Really, it created even more of an opportunity because this was something that could stay there. It was something that could be more of a long-term solution than just a temporary weekend event.”
So the interior designer looked to the outdoors. And she landed on a parks project.
Lee launched her nonprofit, Pocketparks, to reimagine vacant lots into mini parks, with a goal of increasing safety, property values, community pride, and economic development. Her first project? A narrow strip of dirt at 923 Locust, across from the old Farm & Home Savings Association building, the site of that course-changing downtown jog. Now known as DUC Park, Pocketparks’ firstborn is named after its sponsor, Downtown Urgent Care.
With DUC Park and subsequent parks, Lee hopes to transform ugly vacant lots into tiny pockets of paradise, not only increasing a single property’s value, but also creating more economic opportunities within neighborhoods. “That can be customized to whatever that neighborhood’s needs are,” she says. “We can think about this from a high level or a very detailed level. More detailed ways are people using that space to create economic opportunities: a local yoga studio hosting yoga on the lot or a local restaurant wanting to do an outdoor dining feature in the park.”
Green Scene
Pocket parks—sometimes called vest pocket parks or mini parks—originated in Europe following World War II. Because outdoor spaces in major cities had been destroyed due to bombing, and because many cities lacked the resources to rebuild and restore them to their former state, residents came up with a cost-effective solution: the pocket park. Pocket parks are typically one to three lots in size, are used mostly by nearby residents, and rely on those people for their upkeep.
Philadelphia was one of the first American cities to adopt neighborhood pocket parks; since 1999, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has greened more than 7 million square feet of vacant lots. But Mexico City, an area about the same size as St. Louis City and County combined but with a much denser population, has been a model of how the implementation of pocket parks—under bridges, in parking lots—can transform a city.
In the 1980s, due to car exhaust and pollution, 6 out of 10 Mexico City residents reported respiratory issues. The city wanted to solve the twin issues of residents’ poor health and the negative perception that the city was dirty and polluted. It wanted to attract new businesses and tourists. A pocket park popped up in Zócalo, the city’s main square. It was meant to offer a mere example of what this new type of park could look like. After its opening, children and adults flocked to the space, and greening took off. In 1986, Mexico City had 2 square meters of green space per resident (the World Health Organization recommends 9). In 2016, Mexico City had increased that number to 17–18 square meters per resident. (Scroll down to see how St. Louis stacks up.)
The U.S. National Recreation and Park Association has found that an increased number of mini parks can reduce pollution, improve residents’ fitness and health, encourage socialization in neighborhoods, and reinvigorate communities. Lee adds that she would like to contribute to solving St. Louis’ vacancy challenge. In 2018, when then-Mayor Lyda Krewson outlined a plan to tackle vacancies, the number of vacant properties in the city was estimated to be 25,000—nearly 1 in 5 properties. After DUC Park, Lee intends to go into other neighborhoods to “give little pockets of vibrancy back to the city.” But downtown, where DUC Park is located, other civic organizations are adding green spaces, too, as part of a bigger vision for the area’s growth.
In December, the city of St. Louis adopted Design Downtown STL as the neighborhood plan for downtown and downtown west. The 10-year plan—essentially a road map for the continued investment and development of downtown St. Louis—is now an initiative of the new nonprofit Greater St. Louis, Inc.
The plan launched with five big goals, three of which are design-related:
- Realize downtown’s potential to be the region’s premier walkable, diverse urban neighborhood.
- Redesign and activate downtown’s streets for a dynamic bike, pedestrian, and transit network.
- Invest in an open space network to provide vibrant public spaces and green infrastructure throughout downtown.
“Reactivating the Gateway Mall, creating new plazas and opportunities to gather, and integrating new landscaping and trees will have a cumulative effect of boosting Downtown’s image, supporting Downtown jobs and small businesses, and bring[ing] a renewed vibrancy to Downtown streets and public spaces,” the plan states.
In an online open house, respondents were asked to rank which open space projects should take priority. Twenty-one percent of respondents said that expanding park space along the river in Laclede’s Landing should take precedence. Just behind, at 20 percent, was reusing vacant lots as temporary and/or permanent green space.
The plan lists a number of ways to inject downtown with a dose of green, including infilling vacant lots with pop-up parks, particularly in downtown’s northwest corner. The Design Downtown STL plan lists food truck events, seasonal gardens, and permanent gardens and parks to serve residents as options for the area north of Olive and west of 16th. Another interesting idea: growing the downtown tree canopy by planting on streets, in medians, and on underutilized lots and spaces, which would potentially reduce the urban heat island effect, capture stormwater, and reduce air pollution, among other benefits.
“Activating downtown’s streets and parks is exactly what was called for in the Design Downtown STL plan, and creative thinking like this is exactly what we need to strengthen the fabric of downtown and all of St. Louis’ neighborhoods,” says Sarah Arnosky, vice president of Greater St. Louis, Inc. “It is great to see groups like Pocketparks engage the community and step up in alignment with Design Downtown STL in support of the downtown neighborhood to make it more attractive, vibrant, and sustainable.”
Pocket Protector
On a warm May day, Lee and her team hosted a preview event at the soon-to-be transformed DUC Park lot. Attendees could stop by, play some ladder toss, Frisbee, or Connect 4 on a giant board, and order food from nearby Baileys’ Range or a drink from STL Barkeep. Residents could vote on which activities they’d like to see permanently installed in the park. Donations went to fund the project. This summer, artists will create a mural on the park’s large wall.
Before the event, Lee evaluated the area to assess existing parks, school locations, and crime rates. She did a walking survey with residents to ask if they felt safe there and whether they would continue to feel safe at night or while biking. “We’re doing a pretty quick [approach to the] research so that we can go ahead and test the model, but because we’re small, we can always stay flexible,” Lee says. “That’s what I’m most excited about. What we’re doing is awesome because we can do this with limited resources on a very fast turnaround and start seeing immediate impact. It doesn’t take a million dollars. It doesn’t take hundreds of people. If we find that people said that they wanted bocce ball but they really wanted pickleball, we can quickly turn it around and give them that.”
Next up, Lee is partnering with Cortex to transform a corner at Forest Park Parkway and Vandeventer into an urban sunflower field, dotting the lot with more than 300 flowers, which will bloom in August. Interested parties can sponsor a sunflower for $10. She’s also hosting another activation event on June 26, this time at a vacant lot in the West End, 5902 Clemens.
Although Lee would eventually like to expand to other cities and pull together a playbook on how to implement the parks, she’s keeping it local for now. Her eye is on the area south of Busch Stadium. “What I’m hoping that we can do is take a space that nobody really wants to go to and make it a space that everybody wants to go to.”
