City Council, staff praise Northeast Neighbors for Umso Park collaboration

City councilors recognize the Northeast Neighbors for their work with the city in creating a new neighborhood park.

Councilor Jennifer Yeh: I just want to make a general comment, mostly a huge thank you to the Northeast Neighbors, who have just shepherded this program along and not given up and been patient and collaborative.

I don’t think this would have happened without their support and their board support through all this, as well as all the residents who came to so many meetings to talk about this and work through our different ideas.

We were able to accomplish so much by all of us working together. It’s just such a jewel up in North Eugene now, and we’re just so happy to have it.

[00:00:43] Councilor Mike Clark: There’s a neighborhood association that this park resides in—it’s the Northeast Neighbors—that both encompasses parts of Ward 4 and parts of Ward 5.

And so that’s why I got involved was, the former chair of the Northeast Neighbors, who I think needs recognition in this as well, his name is Kevin Reed. And this simply would not have happened without his dogged determination (I’m sure I’m going to see Carolyn smile there a little bit) in the process of making sure that this stayed responsive to neighbors in the course of its development and everything else. I really appreciate how well you worked, Carolyn, with the neighborhood association on that development.

[00:01:25] Carolyn Burke: My name is Carolyn Burke and I’m the parks and natural resource planning manager. I also just want to acknowledge that a lot of neighbors worked for years on this project to bring it to fruition.

[00:01:38] As did the City Council. really coming to the rescue of Striker Field on a couple of occasions to add more funding to the park to allow this to happen. So, it’s been a long time and terrific collaborative effort.

[00:01:53] It has a really large playground, and there’s a lot of natural materials used in the playground, and they don’t necessarily tell you how to use them, but they inspire a lot of creative play, so it’s really fun to go out there and see how children are imagining to utilize these spaces.

[00:02:11] There’s a really large picnic shelter which again encourages the community to come together and it can be used for a variety of different purposes and different scale events. Fun places are integrated into the playground using landforms. Seeing kids interact with these kind of ‘humpy lumpies’ in the playground is really fun and there’s places for kids to climb.

[00:02:34] Of course we have sand play, which is always really popular with the younger kids…  and we’ve got pickleball courts, basketball, we have pétanque, the French version of bocce ball. And there is actually a local club that provides free lessons and provides equipment at the sites.

[00:02:55] So, again, really kind of catering to a lot of different age levels at this site, reaching that goal of being a place where the community can really come together.

[00:03:05] John Q: The original vision for the park was much different.

[00:03:09] Carolyn Burke: Some of you may remember that when we first conceived of this, how this park would be used, we thought it would be a sports complex. 4J School District owns the adjoining property to the west, and we had conversations with them about blending our properties together in order to have enough land to develop a sports complex. This was before a lot of this residential development was here.

[00:03:34] Once we had funding, we started talking to the neighborhood and what we heard loud and clear was that due to the amount of residential density in the area, people wanted a more traditional park that would serve the day-to-day needs of the community rather than a more specific activity-oriented sports complex.

[00:03:55] So we continued to engage the community and we collaboratively came up with a really well-supported design to be more of a space where the community could come together and gather and where we had a variety of amenities that would interest residents of all ages. And throughout that planning process we also heard interest in renaming the park to something that was more suited to its current function and configuration.

[00:04:28] So, once we had our park designed, we engaged the community again. And we modeled this after a successful naming process for three different streets in the Riverfront District. There were several steps, the first of which was to accept nominations of names from the community, and so then we would vet those names, and then put those names back out for a public vote, and we would identify the top three choices, and then bring those choices back to City Council.

[00:05:03] The option to vote for a name recognizing local Native American groups and languages was by far the top vote-getter in this process.

[00:05:12] We also provided a question to indicate preferences of the five nominated names from the community that did honor Indigenous peoples. The top three were ‘Kalapuya,’ which of course is a Native American Tribe of the Willamette Valley; ‘Ulalie,’ which is the Chinook Wawa word for ‘berry.’ And ‘Umso,’ which is the Kalapuya word for ‘It is good.’ So, in the spring of this year, we were ready to begin consulting with the Tribes.

[00:05:46] They gave us a lot of insight and guidance, particularly into the five nominated names by the community, so helped us understand what might be appropriate choices there. So, based on that input that we received, and the desires that were expressed through the community survey, we’re here today to share a recommendation with you for the renaming of Striker Field Park to Umso Park, which is Kalapuya for ‘It is good.’

[00:06:21] John Q: In addition to the Northeast Neighbors, a few more people also deserve thanks.

[00:06:27] Councilor Mike Clark: It’s also important to say that without the work of EWEB Commissioner John Brown and certainly former Mayor (Jim) Torrey, the land would not have been set aside for this. Their hard work needs community thanks as well.

[00:06:40] John Q: As a great new neighborhood park serves Northeast Eugene, city councilors and staff recognize the contributions of the Northeast Neighbors, Kevin Reed, John Brown, Jim Torrey and the sovereign nations.