When the nonprofit Benbow Park Community Association sought to improve its neighborhood park, association Vice President Chad Roberts tapped into the talents at N.C. A&T.
As a result, six seniors in the landscape architecture program, a part of the Dept. of Natural Resources and Environmental Design, led ten area residents through an exercise to help them create their own master plans for the park to guide the students’ work.
Meeting in a community room at Kindred Hospital, the students gave a 10-minute presentation of possibilities for the park – which includes a creek, a basketball court and a playground – to help spur the residents’ imagination.
“We know that the park … is bigger than us, so we wanted to explore different options and different opportunities with you all to create something new,” said Ronald Okanume, who led the student’s presentation. “Our goal is to create a master plan for a renovation of Benbow Park that reflects the community’s needs, desires and dreams.”
Neighborhood residents paired up and set to paper the features they wanted to see in the 8.7-acre park, as well as a piece of adjoining, vacant city land. At the top of their lists were better lighting, gazebos with fire pits, more bridges and better accessibility.
The students will meet with residents again on Nov. 21 to show them designs incorporating their preferences for the park, which is located on South Side Boulevard.
Assistant Professor Steve Rasmussen Cancian, who teaches the seniors, said the exercise gives his students real-life experience working with the city – which oversees the park – as well as community members.
Benbow Park area residents were given icons representing park features that they could glue to a map of the park.
“The students actually walked the full length of the creek in the water. That was great because they got to experience the animals — there’s a lot of wildlife,” Cancian said.
The city is building a new basketball court at the park to be named for Bob McAdoo, the NBA Hall of Famer who practiced there as a child. With a wealth of African American history, local officials are seeking to have South Benbow Road recognized as a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places.
Cancian said the city is prepared to hire one or more of the students to work as interns over winter break to create the master plan.
Students will bring draft designs incorporating the residents’ desires to a Nov. 21 community meeting. At that time, the group will either vote to choose one of those designs or combine them as it wishes, Cancian said.
Resident Pamela Leak said she enjoyed the group activity.
“It was a lot of fun, because you hear and see what people actually are thinking about the future,” she said. “You think, ‘OK, 30 years from now, what is this park going to be like?’ “
Roberts, a 1983 A&T graduate, said the park means a lot to the community and residents get together to help maintain and beautify it twice a year.
“But as hard-working and brilliant as we are,” he said wryly, “we’re not landscape architects. That’s where the A&T landscape architecture program comes in.”
