2014 APA Florida project awards Awards of Excellence Cascades Park
Category: Planning Project A centerpiece of downtown, an environmental restoration project, a jewel of recreation for residents and visitors, a planned and programmed stormwater facility, a site commemorating historic events, a resolution to local land-use controversies, and a wonderful addition to the Tallahassee Community and surrounding areas. These descriptors are used to identify the recently completed Cascades Park in Tallahassee, Florida. The park has been 15 years in the making involving multiple agencies and complex community issues, with Blueprint 2000 planning and sheparding the effort from inception to completion. Tallahassee’s city/county intergovernmental agency Blueprint 2000 has been at the helm of addressing and fixing the City’s most pressing infrastructure needs since 2000, with the Cascades area in one of the highest priority tiers. What Blueprint 2000 provided for Cascades Park is holistic infrastructure planning that has resulted in multi-use corridors, abundant greenspace, regional storm water facilities, and recreation.
Clean and Safe Action Plan Category: Best Practices
The Riviera Beach CRA Clean and Safe Action Plan provides innovative solutions for planning professionals who need to improve real and perceived safety as part of their efforts to transform places into walkable, healthy, and livable communities. It integrates detailed techniques to enhance the physical environment, all kinds of program elements, and strategic communications in ways that improve perceptions – and realities related to safety. The plan is helping to accelerate reinvestment in Riviera Beach, and it has broad application wherever planners need to be intentional about safety – which should be everywhere.
From Pop-Up to Permanency: Opa-Locka Category: Grassroots Initiative
The Pop Up Park initiatve was originally developed by the Gold Coast Section (GCS) of the APA Florida Chapter as a tool to help communities improve access to physical activity opportunities and improve community health. The community of Opa-locka in Miami-Dade County was the first to embrace the concept and take ownership of the execution of the project. Over a 2-year period, the community (working through OLCDC and the City of Opa-locka with technical support from GCS) identified and secured sites, raised awareness and built up sweeping public support, successfully engaged community partners, sponsors and volunteers, and obtained the necessary resources to take the project from concept to implementation, through the coordination of two pop up park events and eventual construction of a permanent playground in one of the City’s most needful neighborhoods.