Community input sought for 7th Street park project

Ryan Marshall, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
·2 min read

Oct. 28—The Downtown Frederick Partnership and the African American Resources Cultural and Heritage Society will hold a community meeting Nov. 9 to discuss plans for public art in a park in downtown Frederick.

The area around the park and fountain at the corner of North Market and Seventh streets will be refurbished with landscaping, brickwork and green space, along with some furniture, benches and a small stage.

The design workshop will be held at 7 p.m. on Nov. 9 at the Bernard Brown Community Center at 629 N. Market St. in Frederick.

The meeting is meant to gather more information about what people would like the public art in the area to look like, said Kara Norman, executive director of the Downtown Frederick Partnership.

With a small area in the northeast section of the park, they will have to "think about how to make a big impact from a small amount of space," she said.

They'll use information from the workshop to hire an artist or possibly a team to design the contemporary art sculpture, Norman said.

The process to improve the fountain has been a long-running one.

The Downtown Frederick Partnership hired a landscape architecture firm to create some concepts, which led to a vetted concept design after several community input sessions in 2013.

In 2019, the city set aside about $250,000 as part of its Capital Improvement Plan for repairs to the fountain and other parts of the project.

With the new money available, the Partnership worked with the Ausherman Family Foundation, which has agreed to match the city's CIP funding for the project.

The Partnership and Ausherman Family Foundation will pay for the park improvements, while the fountain and other infrastructure would be paid for by the city, according to a previous News-Post article.

The Partnership is working with AARCH on artwork that will express a common humanity and building a more inclusive community, Norman said.

AARCH President Protean Gibril said she's excited to see what concepts they come up with.

The park and fountain makes an interesting space, and Gibril said she's curious to see what will end up there.

"It's a very interesting thing to find out what we have in common, and where do we go from there," she said.

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