Even in the midday heat, Girsh Park hums with activity: there’s a lively pick-up basketball game in progress, a group of kids practicing soccer, a mother reading to two little boys in the welcoming shade of a tree. The 25-acre park is a landscape with which people engage, a setting that draws folks of all ages and income levels. The park’s Executive Director Ryan Harrington is understandably proud. “This is one location that brings everyone together,” he says, “Kids and adults with different norms, values, socioeconomic levels, all gathering for games, picnics, birthdays, even baptisms and weddings.”
In 1999, when the park first opened, there were a few fields, basketball courts, and picnic areas, but the then-12-acre facility was a blank canvas, with no programs or events in place, or even much of a plan. A sustainable business model was needed in order to manage this new community asset, and the decision was made to create a nonprofit foundation, combining fee-for-service income, private donations, and city contributions to yield remarkable collective good.
Before long, the soccer fields drew a couple of adult soccer leagues that started playing weekend games there. A few years later, the park acquired an additional thirteen acres that included four more baseball fields and a permanent home for Dos Pueblos Little League, and the AYSO Region 122 began using the fields in the fall. This addition to the park became known as Elings Fields. The framework of Girsh Park was taking shape.