Valpo Parks held its annual Party in the Park event at Central Park Plaza to fundraise for exciting upcoming projects and to announce future plans for those upcoming projects. Attendees gathered under the pavilion to eat, drink, and play a music trivia game while hearing about what the future holds for Valpo Parks.
“Party in the park is a great way to showcase the entire inventory of parks that we have in our community,” Tim Verschure, Treasurer of the Valpo Parks Foundation, said. “It's a way to bring the community together to celebrate that, but also to raise awareness and raise funds for the future growth of the parks. Both in terms of impunity, improvements, and maintenance and programming.”
This event brought members of the community together to celebrate the parks and learn more about what the future holds for these parks. Chairperson Jamie Sulcer explained that each member of the community has a love for a specific park or memory that took place in one of the parks, and that nostalgia emphasizes the importance of maintaining, improving, and adding to Valpo Parks.
“It's a great event to bring the community in to see what the parks are doing, what the future is, what we've done, to collect money, and get everybody together,” Sulcer said. “Everyone has a part of the different parks that they love or the things that they've done with them. It is nice to get together, celebrate, have fun and play a trivia game of Name that Tune.”
Attendees formed teams of up to four people and played a music trivia game called ‘Name that Tune’ after hearing about Valpo Parks' future. This game invoked fun, laughter, and friendly competition into the event. Foundation President Jim Cunningham touched on the energy present at the event and mentioned the importance of the Valpo Parks Foundation in fundraising for future projects and events such as this one.
“It's a good gathering event to have the community in a very light, airy kind of feeling and for people to enjoy the night, have a little fun, and hopefully get a feel for what the parks are doing and how they might be able to help support the parks,” Cunningham said. “There are a lot of parks projects in the works, which has made the foundation's portion a little more important because we're trying to fundraise for some of these events.”
Valpo Parks has countless projects that are up and coming. Valpo for All Generations is a plan of Valpo Parks that consists of serving each and every community member, no matter their age.
The project highlighted the most during Party in the Park was the skate park. There are many young community members that skate around the downtown area where it is unsafe, so creating a skate park provides a designated space for those community members to skate without harming anyone.
“There is a lot of momentum and excitement right now around this proposed skate park. We've got some amazing designs and we've already done some fundraising,” Verschure said. “We've got a big announcement coming later that we're excited to share with the community that is believed to accelerate that momentum even further.”
Fundraising for the skate park is going on now, and Valpo Parks received a grant that will match each donation dollar for dollar up to $50,000. The announcement shared was that the department has plans to break ground in the fall, and the skate park is projected to be open by this time next year. The new developments in the area will not only provide for the community members but will also provide for the economy.
“What is happening here in the downtown area with the parks and with the schools is also going to drive economic development,” Chairperson Kaye Frataccia-Seibert said. “All the time people look for a community that has the spirit of Valparaiso, which started with the spirit of Valparaiso. People like it here. They like the feel of this town because we give back, we have good things for the community for all generations. We want to keep having that.”
The sense of community that the City of Valparaiso has to offer is one that surrounding towns are working to replicate. Countless community members gathered to celebrate at Party in the Parks showcasing that sense of mutual support from the community to the parks department and back.
“It's very rewarding to have a community where there's a shared sense of values and no matter what you do, or how old you are, the parks offer something to everybody,” Verschure said. “When you see a big crowd like this come out to support the parks, it’s a good feeling that you're spending your time and your money in a good way to support yourself, but your community and your peers and your neighbors and that's a pretty neat thing.”
Director of Valpo Parks and Executive Director of Valpo Parks Foundation John Seibert emphasized the mutual relationship between the community and the parks department. One would not be the same without the other, and inspiration and support flow both ways.
“The best part of my job is about relationships and connecting with people. We have an extraordinary community and bringing out the best in them and them inspiring us and each other is a good life,” Seibert said. “We're connecting people, enabling them to not only do things individually but as a group and as a community. To me, that's the best that we can do. Not just building things, but having a process where people come together and inspire each other to do good things.”
To donate, or get more information about Valpo Parks, please visit www.valpoparks.org.
