PORTLAND, Maine - The group that successfully mounted a referendum effort to prevent the sale of a public space in downtown Portland and to provide more protection to the city's other open spaces has been awarded a $100,000 grant from Southwest Airlines.
The "Heart of the Community" funding will allow Friends of Congress Square Park to develop programs and identify ways to better utilize the space.
Southwest is partnering with the Project for Public Spaces, which is administering the grant. Senior Vice President Cynthia Nikichin says the organization was very impressed with efforts made by the Friends last summer to bring people to the venue.
"I mean, literally taking furniture out of their basement," she says, "you know, things out of their garage, taking the flat screen TV off the wall, putting it in the square so people could watch the World Cup, having their friends play music. They did this unbelievable do-it-yourself place making intervention to demonstrate that people wanted to use that site."
The Congress Square Park project is one of six new Heart of the Community projects announced today across the U.S. The program aims to re-imagine and activate important underutilized public spaces.
