Building Neighborhood Belonging through Infrastructure Improvements
Recognizing the longstanding unmet infrastructure needs of the working-class, predominantly Black and Latinx Garden Hills neighborhood, the City of Champaign allocated $13 million of its $25 million in ARPA fiscal recovery funds toward infrastructure projects in the community, including a stormwater detention basin along with streetlights, sidewalks, and a new park. Collaborating closely with the community on the design of the single largest infrastructure investment in its history, the City aims to eliminate flooding while increasing community safety and well-being and strengthening its relationship with long-underserved residents. The investments are a part of the City’s equity strategy. “The equity journey for the City does not just stop at the Equity and Engagement Department but entails creating a city-wide equity plan,” explains Rachel Joy, Champaign’s Equity and Engagement Director, “That means not just acknowledging systemic issues and doing some projects, but revising the practices and policies hand in hand with the community.”
Why this investment?
Originally a suburban subdivision in the 1950s and later annexed to become a part of Champaign, the Garden Hills neighborhood was built without sidewalks, few street lights, and undersized stormwater pipes. Flooding has been a recurring issue for residents, and the issue has only intensified with climate change. Gun violence has also increased in the community in recent years, especially at night, which many residents attribute to inadequate lighting. While the City had plans to make the more than $50 million in infrastructure improvements needed to alleviate the chronic flooding, it was going to take them decades to raise the necessary resources to complete the five-phase project.
ARPA funds helped dramatically speed up the process. In June of 2021, Champaign adopted a set of guiding principles for allocating its $25 million in ARPA recovery funds that included prioritizing underserved residents and neighborhoods as well as providing significant financial resources to meet unmet needs. Investing in the Garden Hills neighborhood quickly emerged as a priority among City Council members and community members sharing input through a participatory budgeting exercise, and in August 2021, the City Council directed staff to allocate up to $13 million of the ARPA funds to address the neighborhood’s lighting and drainage needs.
In total, more than $13 million was allocated to the Garden Hills project, including $5.6 million for lighting, $5 million for the drainage infrastructure, and $722,770 for yard lighting. The City dedicated an additional $2 million toward sidewalks and lighting. Rob Kowalski, Champaign’s Neighborhood Services Director, explains that while the project was on the City’s radar, “ARPA, along with the City’s increased recognition that we needed to serve this underserved neighborhood, helped us to accelerate the project and get it done much faster.”
What is this investment?
ARPA funds are supporting four related infrastructure improvements in Garden Hills: the construction of a new stormwater drainage basin; the installation of new streetlights; grants for residents to install new lighting and make other home improvements; and the construction of a new park.
Construction of the stormwater basin began in October 2023 and will be completed when the streets surrounding the basin are reconstructed in 2026. Prior to receipt of the ARPA funds, the City had acquired eight acres of land through buyouts and conducted engineering studies in preparation for the stormwater project. The City is now in the process of building the stormwater retention basin, which will be surrounded by green space and several amenities including a 1.5-mile walking path, decorative retaining walls, overlook areas, ornamental bridges, native plantings, seating areas, and pedestrian lighting.
The new Hedge Park will be the centerpiece of the neighborhood green space, featuring a basketball court, reading circle, turf area, playground, splash pad, exercise stations, and a plaza gathering space.
A total of 119 street lights are currently being installed throughout the neighborhood, with the project expected to be completed in 2024. Finally, the City’s Safety Lighting Energy Efficiency Program (SLEEP) has provided more than 400 homes in Garden Hills with new exterior lighting for each entrance, a front porch light, and/or a video doorbell.
City staff turned the technical engineering challenge into a community-building opportunity. Lacey Rains Lowe, City of Champaign Planning Manager, explains that the team’s guiding question was: “How can we bring some positivity to this space, to hopefully try to alleviate that issue [gun violence] as well? You’re not going to just do that through enforcement, it has to be a more comprehensive and holistic approach.”
Recognizing the value of community participation in urban design, City staff conducted extensive outreach and engagement to shape the project based on residents’ needs and interests. This involved creating tailored, responsive tools to allow a diversity of residents including youth, seniors, and non-English speakers to share input and feedback, such as using magnet activities for public input on the design of the new park. Staff also spent a lot of time in the neighborhood, and that presence enabled them to build relationships, gain valuable input, and make observations that helped them integrate solutions to neighborhood issues such as pedestrian safety into the project.
By the end of 2025, the second phase of the drainage improvement project will be complete. The final three phases will involve the installation of new storm sewer pipes and sidewalks along with additional street lights.
Centering equity in the program
The City sought to build trust and relationships with Garden Hills residents through the process, pursuing this goal primarily through two strategies. First, by adapting traditional government approaches to service delivery. For the SLEEP program, for example, they simplified the process dramatically: instead of requiring residents to complete a long application, they went door-to-door, asking residents if they wanted the improvements and if so, arranging for their free installation.
The second strategy was genuine community involvement in creating the space. Hedge Park emerged as a part of the project following the success of a temporary park—Hedge Pop! Park—that was established to breathe life into the empty space created by the City to build the drainage basin. The team used this opportunity to engage with the community, dispelling the notion that they were just city employees, and instead fostering relationships based on active listening, careful observation, and true community involvement. As Rains Lowe emphasized, “To get the temporary park built in 100 days with just $75,000, construction was a hands-on effort. We were on-site digging holes, moving mulch and rocks, installing fences and so on, along with neighborhood residents, volunteers and folks from First Followers, a group that supports formerly incarcerated community members. We built it together.”
In constructing the park, the City faced another challenge: changing perceptions around the type of service the community could access. Concerns arose that the park would attract crime or be vandalized, requiring the teams to address these perceptions and stigmas.
The City worked to ensure that the park's amenities and design truly addressed the challenges faced by the neighborhood's most vulnerable residents. For example, the decision to include a splash pad in the park stemmed from observations of the community's needs, particularly during hot summers when many homes lack central air conditioning. Similarly, after hearing about and observing pedestrian safety concerns along the road adjacent to the park, the team was able to integrate traffic calming into the street reconstruction design. As Kowalski noted, “These are things that we perhaps would not have considered if we didn't better understand the needs of the neighborhood or resources that they haven't been provided in the past.”
Outcomes to date
The project is currently being implemented, involving the construction of a detention basin and the reconstruction of Hedge Road with new sidewalks and storm sewer piping, as well as the streetlight installation and the construction of Hedge Park. The infrastructure improvements are expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
Toward transformative change
Joy sees the participatory process of addressing Garden Hills’ infrastructure inequities as a stepping stone toward community empowerment, describing how she hopes residents will feel after those neighborhood gaps are closed: “Then maybe you feel like you can organize, then maybe you feel like you can get involved politically, in what happens around you, because it's not just happening to you, you have a voice. And this process gave people a voice.”
For Garden Hills, the stormwater retrofit project will continue after the completion of phase two in 2026. Hedge Park will be managed by the Champaign Park District, and Kowalski said it is the goal of the City to ensure plans are in place to continue programming at the park after its completion.
The successful community engagement process has set a new standard for the City, one that the Champaign City Council now expects from all city projects, according to Joy. By raising the bar for inclusive planning and design, the targeted ARPA investments in Garden Hills could have reverberating impacts on other underserved neighborhoods and residents throughout the City.
Lastly, the City is evaluating the process, and planning to integrate its learnings into future projects as well as its Community Gun Violence Reduction Blueprint, a citywide strategy to address the root causes of violence.