Guest Op/Ed: Reimagining a Classic Park for Modern Us

Lewis Park in west Bradenton hasn’t changed at all since I discovered it as a young boy, many decades ago. It’s exactly the same. Some might say that the park's old-fashioned, vintage feel is appealing, but judging by its current lack of use, I’m not so sure it couldn't benefit from a thoughtful reinvention.

Reaching an age when I could ride my bike out past the bend in the road and old enough to finally explore the world a bit on my own, I delightfully discovered Lewis Park for the first time when I was around seven or eight years old. Approaching the park, I slowed down my bike and stared at the many happy kids, all of whom seemed to be about my age, who were playing there. There were trees to climb, swings and monkey bars to play on. Kids were laughing and screaming as they played, swung, and climbed on everything. It was a child’s paradise.

The children playing there, who soon became my friends, lived in the surrounding homes around this park, including a girl, slightly older and very pretty, who made my heart beat just a little bit faster each time I shyly looked at her. The thought still makes me blush today.

I’m older now, and when I drive past Lewis Park, smiling at my memories, I see that very same swing set that I used to swing on way back when. It’s still there. So are the large trees I used to climb.

As generations grow older, fondly remembering their childhoods and what made them happy long ago, newer generations rise up behind them who are attracted to new things. Younger generations search for fresh new ways to play, and the problem that I see with Lewis Park, even though it still makes me smile, is that no matter how many times I now drive by it, I never see any kids playing there.

It's not just because the swing set I used to play on is being ignored–not unlike the song that reminisces about the old days and that sad old swing set that is still quite strong, but is feeling ever so lonely, waiting for some child to once again play with it. Much more significantly, Lewis Park is well within Bradenton’s city limits, and as I drive around the streets surrounding Lewis Park, I do not see kids anywhere. I do not see any toys in any of the driveways, nor tree forts in any of the backyards.

What I do see as I drive along the streets of Lewis Park these days are older people–an older generation out walking their dogs. This is fine, and something that has always been welcomed by Bradenton, as the city was pretty much founded by attracting people of yesteryear to move here and make Bradenton their warm inviting home.

But if our downtown is to thrive, if jobs are to be created, if the empty office buildings which currently saturate our business district are to ever bustle again, businesses within the city limits need to attract a younger adult worker. It would surely help downtown Bradenton if this younger adult work force could live close by. One of the best ways to attract a younger family to live within a specific area, is to have something in their neighborhood that kids will enjoy, a place where everyone will want to play, something like a beautiful park–a park where families will want to gather, to walk dogs, to ride bikes, do yoga, grow gardens, have picnics, take classes; a park where there are multiple fun things to do; a place of nature that is immeasurably, limitlessly appealing in so many wonderfully beautiful ways.

Why do I care so about Lewis Park? Lewis Park has many personal warm memories for me. But I am not focusing on it just because of self-serving nostalgia. Lewis Park and the neighborhood which surrounds it offers something more.

For one, the homes which line its surrounding streets are charmingly modest. A bit old fashioned perhaps, but they could be upgraded to include a modern digitized interior: wood framed, wooden floors, computerized everything, exactly what is popular in the real estate market right now out in the contrived communities which attract younger families to plunk down a big mortgage to purchase a new home way out yonder, far out of town.

Young families need to see a future in the place where they live, a future for them, and especially for their children. This usually includes schools, shopping and safe streets. Lewis Park has all of this. Parents will typically even accept driving long distances to and from work, just to be able to drive home in the evenings to a setting like this. However, with Lewis Park located within Bradenton’s city limits, they wouldn’t need to.

So what does Lewis Park lack in attracting younger families to want to live there? In my opinion, it’s the park. It’s missing an actual park in any modern sense. As the years have passed since I used to play in Lewis Park, nothing about Lewis Park has changed. I believe, sincerely, even though no one loves the memories of how Lewis Park used to be more than me, that it needs not only a redesign, but a re-imagining.

It needs changes, ones that will make it more appealing to children and families, adults old and young, in a way that will truly compete with all of the many pop-up communities being built miles out of town that have been drawing young families the past several decades to live way out yonder in droves.

Fortuitously located on a corner of Lewis Park is the Manatee River Garden Club, a social setting filled with caring individuals who truly love to cultivate beautiful gardens. Founded in 1929, their building donated to them in 1948 by Kiwanis and symbolic of how our community has always supported each other, its members meet regularly to discuss gardening, flowers, and even the care of koi ponds.

Lewis Park is literally right outside their back door. Wouldn’t it make sense, even be a wise suggestion, to encourage–perhaps with a bit of design motivation and some motivational funding–to have the Manatee River Garden Club turn their loving inspired attention to Lewis Park, to make Lewis Park one of the most beautiful parks, not just in our community, but in the world?

Florida, especially our area, is robust for growing nearly everything. Lewis Park, with our very own Manatee River Garden Club overseeing it, could become a forever project, one in which its garden club members, generation after generation, could imagine, discuss, create, plant, trim, prune their own beautiful garden ideas–right outside the garden club’s very own backdoor.

It would be a place where they would meet on a Saturday or a Tuesday, have some tea and sandwiches, a slice of cake, perhaps share a little bit of local gossip, and then put on some colorful, slightly soiled gloves, pick up a trowel, and step outside their rear door and create something that becomes ever more beautiful each and every time they gather.

The garden club could also create an organic vegetable garden, growing produce that could cater to the participation, education, and even the nutritional needs of local residents and visiting school children.

Perhaps they could make a forest of edible delights. The garden club could design settings for classrooms, book readings and open air discussions. It already hosts weddings. Perhaps their wedding settings could extend throughout the park. The garden club could even oversee the placement of statues and sculptures that would artistically blend with the many beautiful gardens they design.

City parks, such as I am imagining, and what I sincerely believe the Manatee River Garden Club could help imaginatively create with a little bit of help from the rest of us here in Bradenton, can indelibly change the neighborhood all around it. And by doing so, the garden club could actually–seedling by flowering vine, basil by gardenia by cucumber by tulip and rose–revitalize the city of Bradenton’s downtown, of which they have been integrally a part of for so many decades. I humbly even believe that garden club members could create a park setting so beautiful our own little Lewis Park could attract national, if not international, attention.

Photos of the park could be featured in design magazines and travel websites. Tourists and tour buses would make trips to Bradenton just to visit our very own beautiful Lewis Park. Lewis Park, and how its redesign has positively influenced the neighborhood around it, as well as how it reinvigorated our local charming friendly city, could become truly renowned.

And who knows, maybe one day my child and then someday their child, will ride their bike out past that same bend in the road, making the same discovery I did: a nearby neighborhood park filled with playful kids having a wonderful time.

Hans Carl Clausen is a Bradenton native. A self-described "child of the '60s," he attended Jessie P Miller and Manatee High School before heading off to the University of Florida and then forming Architecte Miniatura, a concierge design & media studio. Happily married, he presently lives in the same family home his dad hand-built, the home where he was both born and raised, the one from which he would walk to school each day. Hans appreciates and remains inspired still today by the caring sharing family values he learned while growing up in this warm and friendly community. His maintains a blog about the city, which can be viewed here.