The Toro Company Urban Park Innovation Award, sponsored by The Toro Company, recognizes innovation in park management and practices and is presented in partnership with City Parks Alliance. The award is announced ahead of the Greater & Greener international urban parks conference and is one of the ways that the conference creates a lasting impact on the parks and community.
The Rainier Community Center’s urban garden was awarded the 2024 Toro Company Urban Park Innovation Award.
Seattle Parks & Recreation partners with local organizations to create gardens at community centers throughout the city, which serve as mini urban farms. The Rainier Community Center Garden’s urban farm model will help inform future Seattle Park and Recreation’s urban food system projects with the potential to be replicated nationally and internationally. Seattle Parks and Recreation is partnering with iUrban Teen and the University of Washington’s School of Public Health’s Nutritional Sciences Programs to develop the Rainier Community Center Garden project. The project will support local community members in gardening and producing foods that express their cultural and ethnic values.
The 2022 Toro Company Urban Park Innovation Award recipient, the Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Center, recycles an average of 6,000 tons of organic waste from Philadelphia’s urban forests into usable products and community-building projects like the pool gardens featured here. The Toro Award grant will help to sustain collaborative youth-driven programs that support a circular economy in Philadelphia.
The La Lomita Park project showcased a unique collaboration between Denver’s Parks and Recreation and Public Works agencies and served as a pilot effort for the City & County of Denver’s Green Infrastructure Implementation Strategy. The success of the project — both the collaborative approach to design and implementation as well as the multi-purpose performance of the park for stormwater management and recreational purposes — established a precedent for future multi-agency projects. The funds from the Toro Company Urban Park Innovation Award helped to transform the park into a learning lab by supporting environmental education through interpretive signage for the community and nearby schools.
The winners of the first award in 2017, Parque Castillo in Saint Paul and Bossen Field Park in Minneapolis were chosen for the important roles they play in bringing their communities together through recreation and arts and for their ability to demonstrate excellence in park design and programming.
Bossen Field Park, in a culturally diverse Minneapolis neighborhood, needed a multi-use, flexible field to better serve community needs. With no other nearby parks available during renovation, the Toro Award supported construction using sod rather than seed for immediate use.
Parque Castillo, in St. Paul, was redesigned with community-selected amenities including a festival lawn, play area, and water feature. The Toro Award supported perimeter seating that features murals by local artist Craig David depicting the park’s namesake Nicolas Castillo and stories that reflect the neighborhood’s cultural history.