Rebecca Butler was strolling through downtown Gainesville when she noticed one corner wasn’t bordered by its usual parked cars.
Instead, a park popped up in its place.
"I was just kind of out and about, you know, finding a place to eat my watermelon," the 28-year-old Bistro 1245 server said.
The UF Student Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects transformed three metered parking spaces into a park as part of a global event: PARK(ing) Day.
The parking spots, near Florida Community Design Center and across the street from The Top, were open to the public, and about 110 people visited the area Friday and Saturday.
Butler said she passes by the corner often and noticed the addition of grass and benches.
"I stumble across this little, magical, quaint environment, you know, where it’s usually just like cold, hard concrete," she said.
UF landscape architecture junior and UF SCASLA social chair Daniel Rodriguez said the park adds an element of beauty to the community by showing any outdoor spaces have the potential to be something else.
"We’re so accustomed to a parking space belonging to a car or the streets belonging to cars," the 24-year-old said.
UF SCASLA collaborated with local organizations and businesses, including FLCDC, Students for the New Urbanism at UF, The Repurpose Project and Garden Gate Nursery. The organizations and businesses helped execute the event and donated all of the event’s materials, like refurbished furniture and $700 worth of plants, Rodriguez said.
"Having the opportunity to do something like this, that’s not something that you see every day," he said. "It opens people’s eyes."
Forrest Eddleton, executive director of the FLCDC, said the event aims to make people think what would happen if small spaces were used differently.
"The broader goal is just to start this conversation about space," he said.
Butler, who ate her watermelon on a wooden bench in the pop-up park, said it gives people a chance to look up from their hectic days.
"It’s nice to kind of take a break from all that you know and share some watermelon with a stranger," she said.
Daniel Rodriguez (left), a UF landscape architecture junior, and Lea Kindt, a UF landscape architecture freshman, both members of UF’s student chapter of America's Society of Landscape Architects chapter, write twitter hashtags on pavement downtown Saturday for the (PARK)ing Day event. The chapter coordinated with the Florida Community Design Center and Pop GNV to create "pop-up parks" on several corners of Northeast First Avenue on Friday and Saturday.
