From the beginning, Let Us Build Cully Park! was founded on a deep commitment to community involvement and community capacity building. 2011, we designed a bilingual survey to identify awareness of the Cully Park project, issues around park development, interest in participating, and the community’s park priorities. Over 225 surveys were collected by six Cully-focused nonprofits. Results included: 83% stated it is “Very Important” or “Important” the Park development process involves the community; 52% stated that it is “Very Important” to create jobs for local residents by building the Park; 55% stated that it is “Very Important” that the Park provides education for local youth.

In response to the survey’s community engagement and education priorities, Verde and partners applied our outreach capacity to lead Cully Park’s design process. From the Community Garden to the Play Area to the Native Gathering Garden, Cully students, families, and other community members have designed Cully Park. These outreach activities involved 612 community members in the project, including 191 youth.

In response to the survey’s economic priorities, Verde applied our social enterprise capacity to build Cully Park, with Verde Builds serving as project developer and general contractor and Verde Landscape serving as lead landscape contractor. This approach allows the project to set ambitious contracting and workforce diversity goals, achieving over 75% minority- and women-owned contractors. Additionally, the project expanded Verde’s capacity to develop environmental infrastructure and replicate the Cully Park model.

Of course, Verde didn’t do this by ourselves. There’s a reason we named our campaign Let Us Build Cully Park! ‐ no single organization, community, or jurisdiction could build it alone.