Unlocking the gates

Early on, Keith Russell gave the Discovery Center’s design team a tour about the site’s ecology. Someone asked him what types of new species Audubon might want to attract here, and project architect Jules Dingle remembers everyone scribbling down his answer.

“He said we should ratchet up what’s unique about this place rather than adding what is common,” recalled Dingle, principal of the firm Digsau. “He was talking about bird species and plant species, but we took that as a charge for the whole project, and a delightful one at that. We have this incredible, novel ecology and human-made landscape to work with and that’s enough.”

For the design team, Russell’s insight meant considering how to create a simple, bird-friendly building that accommodated all of the program needs for Outward Bound and Audubon in 14,000 square feet, working with the landscape features as their guide. Digsau, with the landscape firm Ground Reconsidered, chose to design the walk up to the building to accentuate the idea of an ascent to water, like hiking up to a high mountain lake. And the design’s big public gesture is a threshold through the building that enables public access to the reservoir – the site’s clear star – without having to go into the building itself. During hours when the center is closed, the entrance will be gated off but visitors can look through the gates to see the water. When it’s open, anyone can walk up to the water’s edge through an open courtyard.

Russell’s advice about building from the site’s strengths could also be useful to extend to Outward Bound’s and Audubon’s work with the neighborhood. Even though staff from the two groups has been working in Strawberry Mansion and with community organizations there for years, the Discovery Center was not derived through a community-engaged design process. And its programming focus, while public-facing, will begin by largely serving Outward Bound’s and Audubon’s existing communities.

Being responsive to neighborhood needs remains a tension that continues to inform questions about the project. The partners could have eased the Discovery Center’s arrival by hiring community organizers to embed early on in the neighborhood, or bringing in skilled civic engagement facilitators to help the community put its imprint on the Discovery Center earlier in its development. They could have made sure the project had better informational signage during construction, or stuffed neighborhood mailboxes with informational flyers that would be harder to miss than Facebook posts or a website.

Instead, the two nonprofits leaned on fellowship positions to help with neighborhood outreach this summer. A small team of consultants started work on the project in July, backed with Knight funding, to help guide community engagement for the rest of the year. That’s meant better-run meetings, with stronger turnout and more active listening by project partners. There was somehow money for public relations in advance of the Discovery Center’s opening, but not for investing in organizing around the project earlier.

In a fundamental sense, these struggles revolve around resources and power – who gets to claim what space, who gets what information or access to decision-makers, and who controls the outcomes? It’s not necessarily willful, but it does reflect what the Discovery Center chooses to do with the privilege of its position.

For the last several years, Outward Bound and Audubon have focused on getting the Discovery Center built and open. They have, by their own admissions, stretched to achieve this goal while running their existing programs. Though each has worked with neighborhood organizations, like the Strawberry Mansion CDC and Neighborhood Action Center, they have not prioritized sustained outreach and engagement with Strawberry Mansion residents about the Discovery Center until more recently.

No one says much about the neighborhood’s power dynamics or the backdrop of race. But Audubon and Outward Bound join a list of white-led organizations in Fairmount Park, with powerful enough friends enough to raise $18 million toward the Discovery Center, adjacent to an overwhelmingly black neighborhood, where its well-used recreational amenities, like Mander Playground a few blocks away, are tired. (Though, it must be said, Mander is a site selected for Rebuild improvements.) The optics remain challenging.

Recognizing that strong community relations would be key to the project’s success, and the continued support of some major funders, the Discovery Center team began hosting monthly community meetings in Strawberry Mansion in February. The basic hope was to improve communication about the project and give neighbors and staff opportunities to get to know one another in advance of the center’s September opening. For the first few months, attendance was sparse and there was no clear feedback loop between project partners and neighbors who shared questions or ideas.

Both organizations professed an earnest desire to be responsive to neighborhood input, but often gave ‘wait and see’ responses to direct questions. They were leery, they said, of over-promising and candid about the need for each organization to figure out how this experimental center would work. It’s new for everyone involved.

Concrete answers about community benefits have proven hard to come by.

At a community meeting in March, Outward Bound’s scholarship manager Jennifer Raymond, told neighbors about the leadership and conflict resolution work it does with groups of high school students. Community members perked up saying, this neighborhood could use those kinds of experiences – for whole blocks, for families, for young people – as a way of unlocking its latent potential. Outward Bound serves neighborhood youth in schools, Raymond said. It has, over time, worked with students from eight Strawberry Mansion schools.

The root question that all neighbors want answered still lingered: How can we all take advantage of all you offer?

“We don’t have all of the answers and we don’t have all the money,” said Outward Bound’s Katie Pastuszek, throwing a little cold water on the scene. “We are not going to open with everything solved.”

But that’s not enough for community leaders like Graham. “Nobody is expecting unlimited anything. But we expect something,” she told me in late July.

Audubon and Outward Bound have somewhat different approaches to neighborhood relations, but both want to build trusting relationships with neighbors over time.

“I came with this real sense of urgency that things have to be done and fixed and ready and everything has to be set by September 28,” Greg Goldman, Audubon Pennsylvania’s executive director told me in late July. “I’m coming to realize that that’s actually just not possible. It wasn’t actually a good position to hold. The building and the programming and the relationships have to always be evolving.” What feels important now, he said, is working to establish ways to be responsive to neighborhood feedback and staying open to adaptation. The Discovery Center’s opening, he stressed, is really a new beginning.

For neighbors who remember the reservoir, it’s picking up where they left off years ago. An hour and a half into the April community meeting, Tonnetta Graham asked what felt like a fundamental question: “How do we want to see our community represented in the building? What about our narrative and the story of our connection?” It was a telling ask from someone who has had a seat at the table with project partners for years. And even she has felt on the outside at times.

In early September, the Discovery Center began collecting people’s stories about the site. Photos and a video of Strawberry Mansion residents sharing these memories will be on display in the center when it opens and posted on the center’s website. The West Basin will also be rededicated as Strawberry Mansion Reservoir.

But where does the relationship with neighborhood residents go from there?

“We know that our existence depends on good, solid relationships with the community,” Katie Pastuszek, who recently became Outward Bound’s national director of advancement, told me this summer. “Does that mean we’ve been out on the streets in Strawberry Mansion trying very hard to engage with a neighborhood that quite honestly doesn’t really understand Outward Bound yet? Well, we’re not there yet.”

Audubon and Outward Bound are also not of one mind about how their public-oriented work should serve the neighborhood. “That is an area, to be honest, where the two organizations have not quite been able to come to the same place,” Goldman acknowledged. “We are still working that out.”

Shifting that dynamic is a change in leadership at Outward Bound. Its new director, Meg Wise, knows the territory. She ran Smith Memorial Playground across the street for the last seven years. At Smith, Wise set out to build stronger relationships with the neighborhood, growing visitorship and the funds to support it. And she was part of a coalition of East Park sites collaborating to make the park function better for everyone.

Coming into the Discovery Center, Wise said, she will bring the same “deep and real commitment to listening and responding” she had at Smith, focusing on ways to strengthen both Outward Bound and the neighborhood. “It’s not just what could Outward Bound give to the community, but it’s how can the community make Outward Bound better? It goes both ways and it’s not easy,” she said. And, she stresses, community engagement isn’t just something to check off her to-do list. “Doing it right means the work goes on forever. Forever.”

One of the tests for the Discovery Center is that there haven’t been a lot of major public space investments in North Philadelphia, Wise said. “So the challenge is that this has the potential to get over-weighted with significance. It can’t be everything. It’s actually kind of a little center, it’s a 37-acre lake, it’s a pond. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a little space, and [the Discovery Center] can’t be everything to everybody. And everybody probably has a really strong opinion right now about what it should be.” There isn’t one right answer.

“There’s the potential for conflict with every single person sitting at that table,” Wise said. “But the thing that makes my eyes light up is, if we can align those things, then it’s like a rocket.”

All this hidden beauty is yours

To understand the potential of the Discovery Center, all you have to do is walk up, take in the view of the lake and talk to someone seeing it for the first time. I’ve heard cops, kids, city staffers, and neighborhood leaders say, upon approaching it, this is just beautiful.

“The view is gorgeous,” neighbor Linda Strum-Copeland told me after her first visit to the Discovery Center in July. “It is so picturesque that I find it hard to believe all that beauty was hidden.”

That experience belongs to everyone who chooses to visit. The reservoir makes a great first impression, but it can’t do all of the heavy lifting.

The first community meeting held at the Discovery Center drew a big crowd because, finally, there was something to see. People were curious and enthusiastic. Now it’s up to Discovery Center staff to ensure that everyone who walks through its gates feels welcome, and to try offering new neighborhood-focused programs. Each visit, each point of contact, is a chance for the Discovery Center, Audubon and Outward Bound to make positive connections.

“I think it’s so delicate for our neighborhood right now because if, say, two people from our community go to the Discovery Center and feel like they’re not welcome, and they are the right two people or the most vocal, that’s just going to set it back so much,” Graham cautioned.

Starting this month, the Discovery Center gets its first three staffers. The Center Manager, Damien Ruffner, comes from a position managing school programs at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. RaeNa Johnson, a Strawberry Mansion native who has lifeguarded at Mander Playground’s pool, will be the center’s Community Engagement Coordinator. And Amani Reid, who had an environmental fellowship at the Discovery Center this summer, was hired as the Center Assistant.

The Discovery Center is currently seeking volunteers to be greeters, starting in early October, and ultimately for other public-facing functions soon. The hope is that by bringing neighbors on board, a familiar face at the door will help others feel welcome.

The first big public test for the Discovery Center will be its inaugural “Discovery Day,” a free, half-day of community-oriented, family-friendly programs planned for one Saturday each month. The first is September 29, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., featuring bird walks, live bird demonstrations, a mini challenge course, crafting, a cookout and music in the parking lot.

In an effort to raise the project’s visibility and invite people to visit, Audubon and Outward Bound had a Discovery Center table at Strawberry Mansion Day, an annual neighborhood festival at Mander, on September 8. Staff gave out temporary bird tattoos to kids and tote bags with information to anyone who came by their booth to chat.

Everyone I stopped carrying those orange Discovery Center totes was new to the project, leaving seemingly plenty of room for first impressions among neighbors.