Program Guide Winter/Spring 2024

“We wanted to make sure that whatever team worked on this, they would be invested in, inspired by, and connected to the vision, our team, and the community’s needs,” McCray says. Through the process, the City partnered with Vines Architecture and Evoke Studio, both MWBE businesses. Edwin Harris, the lead designer on the project, said the team went to the Greensboro History Museum to go through the archives to learn about the neighborhood. It turned out to be fortuitous. Taking Hints from the Past From the beginning, community buy-in and collaboration was a central tenet of the initiative. “We were intentional from the very beginning, and knew that we needed to have community support and buy-in before anything else moved forward on this project,” McCray says. That’s the way it should be, says Betty Watson, who’s lived in the nearby Ole L. Richardson Neighborhood since she was a newlywed in 1965. She served on a stakeholder committee for the project. “If you want something that is going to be supported, you have got to invite the people who you are supposedly building it for. You have to build

what they want,” she says. One thing the planning and design team learned early on from residents was the importance of the history and culture of the existing facilities and neighborhood surrounding them. Nocho Park was developed in the 1920s as a middle to-high income neighborhood for Black residents. The neighborhood was named for Jacob Robert Nocho, a college-educated Black man who served as a school principal and was the first Black federal postal clerk as well as an influential community leader in the 19th century. Another important community leader, Abraham H. Peeler, was known as the father of Nocho Park. He was a skilled advocate for facilities to serve the community and fought against the disparate treatment of Black residents. His papers, including his original sketch for the park, inspired the project consultants. When Harris considered Blanton’s vision of a space that could serve many needs – he saw a lot of parallels to what Peeler wished for this place a century ago. “When we did the research and we looked at Abraham Peeler’s plan, that is exactly what it was,” Harris says. Continued on page 25

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