One Year of Listening for Looby Community Center
By Nia Smith, Community Design Coordinator
5 min read The Looby Community Campus Project involved extensive stakeholder and community engagement through walk audits, meetings, office hours, and public forums, focusing on improving accessibility, safety, and amenities while incorporating feedback from over 400 community members to inform our initial design recommendations.
It has been one year since we kicked off our process for the Looby Community Campus Project, and we have learned so much already. Let’s dive in! Taking it back to the beginning, to better understand our scope for the project, we conducted walk audits and meetings with the government and local communities. Because the site involves many different Metro Departments (Parks, Libraries, and General Services), it’s important to get all of the agencies engaged early, ensuring that we have a full understanding of who should be informed throughout the community engagement process. Some of the research we’ve referenced throughout the process include Imagine Nashville, the 2017 Plan to Play, and the NPL Facilities Master Plan. By comparing previous work with community insights we conducted for the project, we can identify gaps and ensure the final design is representative of all participants’ feedback.
On our stakeholder walk, we identified a few themes that we continued to highlight throughout our engagement process.
Unique amenities, like the pool and the Looby Center programming, are great assets but need enhancement.
What is a communal space if it is not easy for its primary users to access? How do we enhance accessibility to the Looby Campus?
Increasing pedestrian safety across the campus would ensure students and pedestrians can get to Looby safely.
Community Design Charrette
Engaging Community Members
Following stakeholder engagement, it is essential to discover how those themes aligned with what the greater community wants. Throughout the community engagement period, we had hundreds of meaningful conversations in various public meetings. We prioritized hosting office hours in addition to community meetings in order to be visible and available for patrons and staff to approach us and share their thoughts. Over the 5 weeks of Office Hours, we spoke with students from the Parks after school program with an average of 70 participants in the program per week. We hosted 3 formal meetings with civic leaders, including both government and community leaders. In total, we estimate important feedback from well over 400 overall community members. Follow along to learn more about how we engaged community members.
Office Hours
We began our community engagements by moving our Design Studio inside the Looby Center every Wednesday for 5 weeks. This was a great time to check in with Looby patrons and hear directly from them how they use this community space. We watched the after-school program in action, teens lingered around in the summer, and countless library and gym patrons came and went. We were even fortunate enough to watch a youth performance from Kennie Playhouse. One highlight from being at the Looby Community Center was seeing the local community groups activating the theatre and how well the theatre is used by the neighborhood, as well as bringing groups from across the county!
Community Walk
Ms. Barbara Jean, a North Nashville elder who was one of the first students to integrate Nashville schools at Jones School in the neighborhood, led us on the walk she would take to school every day. We were joined by stakeholders and residents on that journey and we discussed how in-depth zoning can hurt or help a neighborhood. Ms. Jean demonstrated many of the ways that Buena Vista Heights has changed and the many ways it has not.
Design Charrette
A charrette is a type of community design meeting commonly used in urban planning and design projects. These meetings provide space for open and creative collaboration between designers, community members, and any other stakeholders in a project. These participatory-style events are often done in a back-to-back series to result in a feasible and actionable solution to an issue that the charrette process is intended to address, which could come in various aspects and scales such as where to build a new sidewalk expansion or where to develop a new community park and what program element would be included in the design. We led a design charrette that was focused on the Looby Community Campus that involved Elected officials, community leaders, and departmental staff to create solutions for issues around the Looby Center.
Charrette Map Summaries
Context map above that summarizes design charrettes. Community comments include safety in orange, mobility in dark blue, and placemaking in turquoise.
Campus map above that summarizes design charrettes. Community comments include safety in orange, mobility in dark blue, and placemaking in turquoise.
Recommendations
Pathway to a Greenway Extension
Many people might not realize that Buena Vista Park actually encompasses the entire green space around the Looby Center, Hull Jackson Montessori and John Early Middle School as well as the wooded area to the West along Rosa Parks Blvd. Through the charrette process, we discussed connecting all the parks in the area. Ted Rhodes Fields and Rosa Parks Park both sit on the opposite side of Rosa Parks Blvd from Buena Vista Park and thus, Looby. Through those parks, there’s a connection to the Cumberland Riverfront Greenway, which is a major greenway for accessing North and Downtown Nashville safely. However, there are no safe crossings, nor protected bikeways, for pedestrians to get from one park to the other. Rosa Parks Blvd could use improved pedestrian crossings or bridges to get across safely. All of the parks could and should be better connected.
By connecting across Rosa Parks Blvd near Great Circle Road, we can actually extend the greenway itself, and tap into the network to create safer mobility paths. From Looby, we think the path should continue South along 10th Avenue because it is the only road that connects Hull-Jackson Montessori and John Early Middle School to Looby. Converting part of the road into an urban greenway, or another pedestrian prioritizing road, makes it easier for students to go between their schools and parks safely, first and foremost. It also solidifies the multimodal connection that neighbors can use to get to the post office and other amenities across Rosa Parks Blvd.
There is also a trail that connects 9th/10th Ave to 11th Ave, creating a natural connection to the proposed greenway extension. This path is lined with historic masonry, created by the Workers Progress Administration and a 2021* Big Tree. It is a pedestrian throughway that has the potential to be more comfortable. A new walking trail could continue to the south of the existing trail, creating a pedestrian refuge through the wooded area east of John Early.
Continuing to connect Looby Campus to more amenities, we could continue the extended greenway system West through Buena Vista Park towards the new Rip Patton Transit Center, which is a huge new community asset and connector for pedestrians in North Nashville. The Transit Center connects to Looby by way of Rosa Parks Blvd past Buena Vista Park, so this is a great opportunity to create a beautiful linear park safely connecting these two assets. This would ease pedestrian access to Looby even more, and provide connections to amenities like the 37208 Community Building and the McGruder Resource Center.
Activating Looby Campus for Teens
Graph showing what charrette participants thought was the age group most appropriate to design play spaces at the Looby Campus.
We reiterated the need for a teen area within the campus, which is further defined by the Nashville Youth Design Team. Based in their research, the team recognized a desire from youth for more outdoor spaces. They recommended creating a skate park or pump track. There aren’t very many skate parks in Nashville, but there is a pump track at Watkins Park. There are also a lot of hills in this neighborhood, and this could be a safe place for kids to roll around. Currently a weekly skate session occurs at the Looby Community Center from 2:00-4:00pm on Saturdays. We’d be adding to an existing program and supporting a captive audience.
An additional location for skate and bike programming could be a park in between Hull Jackson and John Early in Buena Vista Park. This would solve the desire of creating a teen space outdoors and help activate the park between the campuses. By creating compatible play spaces, we have the opportunity to make one skate park welcoming for beginners and the other a space for all skill levels.
It’s important that the upgrades to Looby include places for youth to age into as well. We saw this theme come up in other spaces, like the lack of a playground for ages over 12. The Nashville Youth Design Team came up with some upgrades to the Teen Center in the library.
Nashville Youth Design Team design for Looby Community Campus Plan
Improving the Arrival Experience on Campus
Visibility is a large problem when it comes to activating the Looby Campus. The small wooded area along Rosa Parks Blvd is beneficial this close to the river, but it makes it difficult to see the Looby Center. Additional signage is needed to explain what programs are available at Looby. Larger gateway treatments at the streets that touch Rosa Parks Blvd (9th Ave, 24th Ave) will make Buena Vista Heights and Looby more visible. This visibility will help people see where Looby is, and can also make Rosa Parks a bit slower. Gateways in the intersection can make physical changes to the road, encouraging cars to drive more carefully. This visibility concern applies to the frontage of Looby as well, as the setback of the Library, Community Center, and Theater is so far from the road. Gateways can celebrate the entrances of the campus, making arriving feel more special.
Nashville Youth Design Team working on concepts
Within the Looby campus, the Nashville Youth Design Team created a system of pathways that can be used by students to get to the Looby Center from its edges. Their new network includes an ADA compliant path through the baseball fields and a playful winding path towards the Looby Center entrance. The Team also recommended widening the concrete landing at the entrance so there was more flat space to gather, which would also provide additional play space for the afterschool program.
The goal is to treat the Looby Center like a mixed-use neighborhood plaza, as developed by the neighborhood. There was a request to bring back Fountain Square. Fountain Square was the shopping center in MetroCenter until the late 80s. The structure is still there and has the potential to be activated by the new apartments moving into the neighborhood. There used to be sculptures along the pier at Fountain Square, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t bring a sculpture garden to the Looby Campus! We should aim to make Looby a place of gathering, where people feel safe to hang out and be active.
Small Changes You’ll See
Throughout this process, we’ve identified some quick wins we can achieve with the right funding or interest. This includes a community garden, which requires a team of champions to maintain; new scoreboards and signage, which could help improve the look and use of the sports areas; and a Z. Alexander Looby Museum, a proper dedication to the life and work to the Civil Rights Lawyer the library is named for. We encourage you to share some of your quick win ideas with the survey below.
Creative Girls ROCK and Elisheba Mrozik will be unveiling a new look to the Looby Center next year! We hope you watch closely for that progress!
Hull Jackson Paintings
We’re excited to be working with Romerus Greer again for a street calming on Kellow St. We’re partnering with the 5th grade students of Hull Jackson to design safer walkways and to use paint as placemaking. We can’t wait to reveal all of our painted placemaking results at our Basketball Tournament! Keep your eyes out for more information.
Basketball Mural
Youth Design Team basketball court ideas
Next year, we’ll be unveiling a new basketball court mural and some painted pathways, designed by the Looby afterschool youth patrons. The two half courts behind the Looby pool will have a bit more whimsy and will hopefully encourage kids to come out and play! We understand that the parking lot gets pretty full during practice time. The mural will act as beautification and signals to drivers that they are on an amenity. This will not deter them from parking in the mural, especially if no one is playing!
We hope you’ll attend our NYDT Basketball Tournament next year, where we can show off the hard work everyone has done and shoot some hoops!
Nashville Youth Design Team's vision for a mural basketball court
How you can get involved
And we’re not done yet. These recommendations and more have been given to our architectural partners to create a final design! It’s really important that you share your thoughts on the Looby Community Campus Masterplan as it continues. We anticipate having new designs and wins to celebrate when the city warms again in the Spring!
We’re hopeful that a new community center can be formed in the image of its patrons! You can provide feedback on the Looby space here: