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Community Impact Awards 2014: LAND Studio

LAND Studio’s renovation of Perk Park has energized an entire downtown neighborhood.

It takes only a few minutes for Sean Wyatt to walk from his job at Quicken Loans Arena to his apartment in the Chesterfield. So he usually stops home for lunch during nice weather and eats in the newly renovated Perk Park across the street.

“It’s beautiful to have a green space smack dab [in the middle] of some bigger buildings downtown,” says Wyatt, the 27-year-old communications manager for the Canton Charge, the Cavaliers’ D-League basketball team.

Just a couple years ago, however, the park on East 12th Street and Chester Avenue was perceived as neglected, unsafe and poorly maintained. When the Cleveland Foundation approached ParkWorks in 2002 to look into making downtown’s green spaces more inviting, Perk Park was identified as a place in need, says Ann Zoller, executive director of LAND Studio, an art- and green space-focused nonprofit created from the 2011 merger of ParkWorks and Cleveland Public Art. 

Zoller and her team worked with the city and Downtown Cleveland Alliance to raise $3.5 million for the design and renovations of the park. 
New York City landscaping architect Thomas Balsley was brought in to work with McKnight Associates to create an active, safe, public place. 

After years of planning, fundraising and construction, Perk Park opened in 2011 with more than an acre of green space available to socialize with co-workers, mingle with neighbors or just read a book. An orange trellis provides shade and a vibrant pop of color, and flower beds edge the park. There’s even a grid of light wands to keep the park illuminated after dark and a space set up for live performances. 

So far, the investment has paid off. Since the new park came about, downtown’s office occupancy rates have increased 5 percent. Oswald Cos. and BrandMuscle have attributed their moves to the 1100 Superior Building, which is across the street, to the new green space. The park is home to weekly spring and summer events such as the popular Walnut Wednesdays, at which around a dozen or so food trucks show up to feed more than 1,000 people.

“I think it’s fantastic,” Wyatt says of Walnut Wednesday. “I didn’t know [it] existed until I walked home from work for lunch one day and all of the sudden there were just a ton of trucks over there. My immediate neighborhood would have a little bit less personality if it wasn’t for that park. A lot less, probably.”

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