City of Lansing Draws on Public Engagement Efforts to Create New Parks Master Plan

Public engagement played a major role in the creation of the city-wide parks master plan for Lansing. The City wanted its citizens to feel connected to the project and invested in each recommendation, because after all, the City’s parks are meant to fill the community’s needs. 

Public engagement is important to our team in every project we do.  This has allowed us to perfect our ability to tailor an engagement strategy to individual communities and projects. We worked hand-in-hand with the Parks and Recreation Director, Jason Crum and the City Manager, Tim Vandall, to ensure we were being inclusive of the community in every step of the project. 

Our engagement approach in Lansing included:

• Unique Project Branding: Color palette, project logo and branding package 
• Online Survey: An initial online survey that asked questions about use of park space and the amenities they would like to see
• A Project Website: Integrated engagement calendar, survey link, project background information, email updates on engagement events and an integrated map of all park properties
• A Mailed Postcard: A project branded postcard encouraging people to visit the parks and get involved
• Social Media: Utilizing the City’s existing social media accounts to post announcements about the project and answer any questions
• Pop-Up Meetings: Attended several soccer games and events in the community to talk with residents about the project and gather feedback
• Design Charrettes: Hosted two, full day charrettes where we created many preliminary concepts alongside City stakeholders

Using the above approach, we were able to gather feedback from a broad range of residents, create excitement about each of the park designs and incorporate almost all of the requested amenities. The community loved seeing all of their ideas on paper and is very eager to see it come to life. We worked closely with the City to create a detailed, multi-phased plan that works within their budget and will allow many of the amenities the citizens requested to get built.

The first phase of the project is scheduled to begin next spring, starting with their biggest park, Bernard Park.