Ragen Cote wants people to walk and maybe even grumble and get a little frustrated that they can't find a parking spot right outside the front door of their favorite restaurant for a few hours on Friday.
To the executive director of Downtown Partners, taking extra steps is worth it to create a vibrant downtown – even if it's only for a day.
Park(ing) Day is taking place Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. along Fourth Street, Fifth Street and Water Street in downtown Sioux City.
"Park(ing) Day is an international day where people basically take parking stalls and turn them into spaces for people – creative, interactive, sometimes green spaces, yard games. There are tons of different things that can happen in those spaces," she said. "In 2005, it started in San Francisco. Go figure. You know, all the creative spaces over there. It started there and then people just kind of recognized that day as a good way to remind people to interact with each other and use parking spaces as a way to do that."
The event is always held on the third Friday of September. Around the world, at past Park(ing) Day events, spaces have been turned into outdoor classrooms, interactive art studios, lawn games, open poetry readings, back porches, dog parks, playgrounds and life-size chess tournaments.
Sioux City’s Park(ing) Day is hosted by Downtown Partners,Sioux City Blue Zones Project, SIMPCO and the City ofSioux City.
More than 25 businesses and organizations will have fun, free outdoor activities like a dunk tank, a puppy bowl and a tea party set up in designated parking spots in downtown Sioux City from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday.
One of those businesses is Be Yoga, which Jackie Paulson opened just over six months ago on Historic Fourth Street. She’s doing more than rolling out a few yoga mats for Park(ing) Day.
"Our theme is called Be Moved, and it's really multiple ways in which somebody can be moved in their life – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – the parking space is going to offer you to help you move in any one of those areas of your life," she said.
There will be yoga mats to get moving, but Paulson also plans on having a Reiki table outside for energy work and, as a mental health therapist, she has another healing modality to offer.
"This is probably the part that I am most excited about is that I'm actually setting up a little therapy corner, and if you stop by and you just need maybe like a quick 15-minute therapy session, we'll do that right out on the street," she said.
Siouxland Public Media is also participating in the event. I will be “parked” with my recording equipment on Historic Fourth Street, across from SoHo Kitchen & Bar, working on a project called “Street Stories.” I’ll be asking diners and pedestrians what changes they would like to see in downtown Sioux City.
Paulson took a crack at the question.
"What I've come to find with Sioux City is that there are a lot of hidden gems," she said. "There are a lot of these hidden gems around the city that maybe not very many people know about, but once you do, it's like, 'Whoa! This is amazing. I can't believe this community offers this.' It's really enriching to peoples' lives. I think just more opportunity for enriching peoples' lives through culture and arts. I love that. I think there's a whole other spectrum to life that we sometimes miss out on.
"I believe that there's room for more, room for more culture, more arts, things that can also help us enrich other areas of our life. Just like we move mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually – it would be cool to have more spaces that invoke that in peoples' lives."
Last year, Downtown Partners launched a pilot project that installed parklets and a bike lane along the east side of Nebraska Street in downtown Sioux City for 10 days.
"I think the parklet concept – that Better Block project – was meant to show people that we don't need three lanes of one-way traffic in our downtown. We need to make it more walkable and friendly for pedestrians," Cote said. "That was kind of the point beyond all of that. Lots of downtowns have actually used Park(ing) Day as a launch for getting parklets installed and doing more a permanent structure to keep green spaces and different interactive spaces alive. Something like this being put in a parking stall is great for a day, but how does it affect that community if it stays?
"These types of things, the more people utilize them and walk and experience downtown in that format, it will become a little easier to get things like that like the parklets done, so people just need to be open to being more walkable and getting out of their cars downtown."
Cote is suggesting a shift in the way people think about downtown. She recognizes the proposed changes might seem jarring to commuters, especially when you start talking about reducing lanes of traffic.
But she’s looking further down the road at the big picture of downtown revitalization.
"Slowing down traffic in downtown just helps make it more friendly for people, and when you've got more people on the street, you've got more retail, you've got more business. When you've got more business, you've got more events, more things going on," she said. "And then we're looking at all these people coming in for new housing developments. They're going to want those amenities. They're going to want to walk to the grocery store. We're going to have to bring in those things and so for something like this to kind of help get peoples' minds around how it could be is very important."
