Downtown’s pop-up park is closing, and you can help decide what will take its place

UPDATED — For fans of the ICT Pop-Up Urban Park downtown, this may sound like a bit of bummer, but organizers of the park would like you to hear them out.

The park’s last day of operation in its current form will be Aug. 31. Then it will temporarily close as organizers — with help from the community — dream up something new for the space.

“It’s a great space to reimagine something new,” said developer Michael Ramsey, a partner in Bokeh Development, which owns the property on Douglas between Main and Market streets.

“It’s in the heart of downtown,” Ramsey said. He said it’s “a space that has been shown to be very successful.”

So why change it?

“It was always meant to be temporary,” Ramsey said. “Part of the evolution of the pop-up park, in addition to being temporary, was that it was supposed to be . . . reimagined at some point, and it’s time.”

In 2011, Bokeh purchased the property, which had a giant hole in the ground that became known as the pit under a previous owner. Ramsey said the time wasn’t right to build there then, and he said it’s still not, but it’s the plan for one day in the future.

In 2014, Bokeh worked with what’s now known as Downtown Wichita to create the pop-up park with help from a $146,025 Knight Foundation Fund grant, administered through the Wichita Community Foundation.

Food trucks have been a key activator for the park, which opened in 2015, and at least one of them would prefer not to go.

“It’s disappointing,” said Jeff Schauf of the Flying Stove. “But if 2020’s taught us anything, it’s that things always change.”

The park had become a favorite spot for many, which was the intent, yet its success still has been somewhat of a surprise.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” said Jason Gregory, Downtown Wichita executive vice president. “It’s been amazing to watch the community respond the way they have to that space. It truly became a destination.”

He said it had been a challenge coming up with what to do with the pit, and now it’s a new challenge to re-create the space.

“It doesn’t take a significant amount of investment,” Gregory said. “You just have to do things thoughtfully.”

There’s no schedule for when something new will happen.

Part of what Gregory said makes now an ideal time to make a change is the pandemic. Due to COVID-19, not as many people are working in offices downtown or using the park.

“We don’t want to operate something at half capacity,” Gregory said. “We just don’t feel that’s a good model.”

Gregory said the change has nothing to do with rallies that Project Justice ICT has held at the park.

“No, it absolutely has nothing to do with that at all,” he said.

Gregory said lots of groups, including religious and political ones, request use of the park. The request is almost always forwarded to Bokeh. Ramsey said he didn’t receive a request in this case, but he said he didn’t have a problem with it if a rally happened there, and he said it isn’t related to the park’s closure.

Gregory also said this change with the park almost happened in the spring — before racial injustice protests swept the country — but the pandemic delayed plans.

Downtown Wichita director of community development Emily Brookover said a fence will be put up around the property and it will have banners and some ways for the community to engage about the property.

“We’re going to have some fun with that fence.”

Information also will be provided at the ICT Pop-Up Urban Park page on Facebook.

Whether it’s in person or through social media, Brookover said, “We’re really looking forward to starting that conversation with everybody.”

Even though Gregory said that “we’re ecstatic over the next evolution of this space,” he knows not everyone will be.

“Change is a good thing, and sometimes that’s really hard.”

As Ramsey said, though, “Sometimes it’s important to look beyond our memories.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 2:45 PM.