Friends Annual Meeting Recap

The Friends of Clark Park held our Annual meeting on October 19th. It was the first time the meeting was held online, as most of our board meetings had to switch to this year.

During the meeting we elected two new directors to our board: Erik Nash and Jonathan Marcus. Also three directors were re-elected to new terms: Ari Kessler, David Forde and Carol Jenkins. Erik and Jonathan bring welcome skills and energy to our mission to serve the park. Carol, David and Ari are staying on to continue their key contributions to the Friends. All four officers were reelected to another term as well.

My deep gratitude goes out to all of our directors and officers for your commitment to serve Clark Park. I would also like to thank our departing directors for their service to the board during their terms; Algernong Allen, Caroline Van-Zeijts and David Jonas.

COVID-19 cast a long shadow on 2020. Both of our iconic soccer seasons had to be cancelled, along with the always amazing Shakespeare in Clark Park and our annual Party in the Park which was set to coincide with Clark Park being the city’s signature site event for the Love your Park week in May.

Losing these and essentially all events in the park was definitely sad but it was more important to protect the health of the community. That being said COVID highlighted just how important a large green space is to an urban neighborhood. Clark Park gave us a place to get outside of our quarantine and spread out safely. It was still a place we could exercise and see our friends and neighbors and just get a little sunshine on an otherwise cloudy year.

The Friends also took advantage of the relative downtime. We ordered and installed new benches and sold them as memorials, and created a new logo and branding material as well as updated our membership guide. We also created an online store so that customers can now access our merchandise all the time. Perhaps most importantly we started and finished a strategic plan which we will use to guide us and engaged city council to bring attention to the condition of our perimeter sidewalk.

Look for more to come on those fronts next year. Into 2021 we will be implementing our new plan and also working on a master plan, which has long been needed for the park. This effort will be key to making improvements to Park B especially.

Most importantly of course, we will continue to protect the park and work to make it a place that welcomes and embraces all. Thank you to all of our members and partners and neighbors in this trying year and please stay safe.